Thread: Catfish bait

Went jug fishing at JPPriest, near Nashville, TN yesterday and caught 16 catfish , most about a pound. Used chicken livers and shrimp. Shrimp seemed to do best. Soaked the shrimp in vannila extract from dollar store and left unrefrigerated all night. Livers in garlic salt and garlic powder.


What are y'alls suggestions? What do you use for bait? Would rather catch numbers rather than size.

Read about someone using chicken breast soaked in some sort of concoction.

We like to catch the 1-2 pound channels, I think they are the best eating, so we use either chicken liver or shrip when fishing with rod & reel. If we are juggin for some bigger flat heads we catch some bluegills and depending on how big they are we will put them on whole or cut em up. Usually works pretty well.

Originally Posted by jaycee

Went jug fishing at JPPriest, near Nashville, TN yesterday and caught 16 catfish , most about a pound. Used chicken livers and shrimp. Shrimp seemed to do best. Soaked the shrimp in vannila extract from dollar store and left unrefrigerated all night. Livers in garlic salt and garlic powder.


What are y'alls suggestions? What do you use for bait? Would rather catch numbers rather than size.

Read about someone using chicken breast soaked in some sort of concoction.

there was an article in sc game and fish about someone taking chicken breasts, cuttin em into bait sized chunks and soaking em down with wd-40 and marinating em in the fridge overnight and he was tearing the catfish up on em. it was a good article and got me to wanting to try it on my next catfishing trip.

I go for shad 1st and catch with a castnet.Large creek minnow's next.If I cant do either I'll try bluegill cut's.I also heard about wd-40 but have'nt tried it yet.

we use cut shad, brim or perch. big pieces with big hooks. we target the larger catfish and i havent tried the wd40 tip yet. the guy that wrote the article said he was catching the smaller catfish and occasionally a big one would grab the bait.

shrimp is probably one of the best for me and the wd40 thing has been around for 15 years but i have never tried it

Originally Posted by 78mudbug

shrimp is probably one of the best for me and the wd40 thing has been around for 15 years but i have never tried it

shrimps for eatin :D

Originally Posted by TreednNC

shrimps for eatin :D

:D That's true, I always used the shrimp heads for catfishing, just buy them with the heads on, eat the rest & fish w/ the heads, worked good at the time, haven't tried it in years though.

shad, bream and perch are my go to's....preferably live, as i favor flatheads

Shrimp has done good for me the last few trips. I keep out a third of a 4-6 inch shad on a big circle hook as well, a shad head caught me a 9 lber Wednesday. I haven't ever really done good on small shad chunks for eating sized cats, but 2-3 inch threadfin shad are hard to beat. Chicken livers are hard to beat for 1-2 lb channel cats. Small bream are great for bigger cats, too but must be caught with a hook and line. Small (#10 or less) dry fly hooks with a piece of red wiggler works great. White perch are a great blue cat bait. If you want a big cat, scale one side and cut a shallow slit from behind his gills to his tail. Puts out a lot of scent and they still live good.