Best catfish baits

just woundering what some of the best baits for some cats

mostly channels

when fishing in the mon river we do pretty good on mcdonalds chicken nuggets and french fries, give it a try

Spam. Cut into cubes and lace onto the hook.
Channel cat killer.

corn and the blood bait my buddy swears by chicken livers

Chicken liver. they always work for me. I am from around New Castle and I fish Lake Arthur and Sharpsville quite a bit. I catch many fish over 10 pounds on chicken liver. As well as the occasional striped bass ;)

ORIGINAL: wayne c

You'll hear all kinds of weird stuff, and lots of it will work to some degree occassionally. But if you want consistently the best baits you only need 3 for channelcats. Chicken liver. Cut bait (cut pieces of bluegill, sucker etc). And/or live baitfish-- small bluegills, 3-4" chubs, shiners or other similar.

BIG +1

Take some chicken breast and cut in strips and soak over night in strawberry or butter and nut flavoring. Caught my biggest flathead, a 39 pounder on butter and nut flavor.

Fish live chubs & when they die, step on them & chuck em back out.Sometimes they work better stepped on.fish chicken livers on your other rig & you'll do ok.

The big toe off of a dead hooker.

True, cats will eat just about anything, but i agree that raw shrimp (shelled or unshelled) is the best bait. I think this tops the others. Anything cathes them, but shrimp stays on the hook forever. I can catch multiple fish from just one piece. I have caught some sheepheads and silver bass on shrimp, but 98% of the time if something hits, it's a cat!

ORIGINAL: mr.crappie

I have tried shrimp the last 2 times out & have gotten picked clean several times with-out the line jerking at all. The last time I had 1 cat hooked & got picked 3 times. The shrimp seemed to stay on the hook well & when I did reel to recast it was still on the hook,but after about 15 min. with-out a hit if I reeled in, the bait was gone. The only thing I could think of, was that a softshell turtle was the culpert. Any thoughts. sam

It may have been. I never had that problem with shrimp.

There are a lot of shad in the area, I just didn't think they could strip the bait with thier small mouths. That is why I normaly use fresh cut bait,seem to get bigger cats than with liver & the smaller fish don't seem to bother it as much.The soft shell turtles often will just peck the bait off without running with it til they swallow the hook.Really just wanted to try the shrimp because it is less messy & more convenient than most other bait. sam

I just caught a soft shell on a shrimp out of the Ohio last weekend and my rod/line never moved. I do catch a lot of turtles on shrimp, but I did on liver too when I used to use it. Liver is just to messy, and with solmanilla present,I don't use it anymore. I use the biggerst raw shrimp I can find. I get it at WallyWorld. 50-60 pcs for like 5-6 bucks. I'd spend that much on crawlers or other bait easily & I can refreeze the unused shrimp. So it's not that expensive to use shrimp. I have also done well on crayfish tails that I caught and then ripped off, hot dog chunks, dead shad, worms, chubs and shinners. But shrimp is my #1 best producer, at least in Beaver County waters.