catfish bait?

[pdqt]

Live crawfish are hard to come by in my area, but I have caught a number of cat that had them in their stomach. As have been mentioned, cut bait, shrimp, worms. All will work at times. The last time I went about two weeks ago, cut bait or shrimp didn't work. Never used liver, as much as I have heard about it.

[TClark]

It's allot of work catching them, but soft craws are THEE bait for cats.  Only at night though cause everything else like pan fish tear em up.

[socalturkeyman]

In So cal I've been using craft sandwich cheese dipped in garlic. Here is a picture from the one I caught a few days ago,

[doepee]

live and dead small suckers and shiners, you can also cut them for cut bait, as mentioned soft shelled crawfish but sometimes they are hard to come by....chicken livers, and good old cheese bait.. I like Doms  and dip bait I like sonny's ... If you can get them small frogs and whole smelt with guts in them work very good for big cats..

[blueribbon]

Turkey liver stays on the hook alot better than chicken liver does it is tougher it seems. We use that alot up here. The panty hose thing works well too.

[TRKYHTR]

I heard fresh Cooter was the Cats meaow.

TRKYHTR

[TClark]

I heard fresh Cooter was the Cats meow.

Oh fer sure, love Cooterville. 

[oatsj]

ever try stink bait? get it at a bait shop

[mossy835]

A method I learned years ago in CA fishing pressured small lakes for cats.
Small shrimp with tails, a treble hook and a crimp on lead weight. First crimp the lead weight on the hook shank or carefully on the line right above the hook eye. Place the shrimp around the hook shank and push it over the hook points so all three points are in the shrimp but not all of the way through. Cast this out into the water, leave your bail open and watch the line. When the line starts to un spool count to 5 and set the hook. Works great on cats that like to spit your bait out.

[lightsoutcalls]

A buddy and I generally run limb lines every spring when the water rises on a nearby creek.  This year the water never got up high enough.  We have used chicken liver, cut up chicken meat, cut bream, shrimp, shad and night crawlers.  Seems we had good results from the shrimp and cut bream.  We don't have easy access to shad here close, but we used to use it drift fishing on a portion of the Arkansas River.  When the generators were running on a dam near Wister, OK, we could get all the shad we could use in a single cast of a shad net.  Just catching the shad was a blast... I miss those days...

[Reloader]

I like to catch shad in a throw net, then cut them up for bait.  Shad stays on the hook better than liver or worms and the cats love it.  Pig liver will stay on the hook better than chicken liver.  Catfish liver works great as well, the next big catch, save them when you gut them.

A sponge dipped in stinky cheese works good as well, but your wife will not care for it much at the end of the day.

[Mailman]

My uncle taught me this. We would shoot carp with our bows (which is a blast) then we would gut them and put the guts in an old butter dish. Leave outside for 24 hours. Put it on your hook and your good to go. This is all the gut not just certain parts. Its kind of gross though.

[Kylongspur88]

Hot dogs, cheap hot dogs. Have also had luck with catalpa worms and prong.

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

Most guys that fish for the big ones here in MO use cut bait from live fish like shad.  This guy used a cut piece from an Asian carp and look what he caught.  They don't get much bigger than this.  

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2010/07/missouri-fisherman-lands-record-breaking-130-pound-catfish.html

[ILIKEHEVI-13]

Back when dad and I used to set cane poles in the evening and run then the next morning we always had the best luck with live sunperch or bluegill sained out of a creek.  There's something about the sunperch working better than the bluegill though.  My buddy and his dad liked to use goldfish.