There’s nothing better than sitting down to a good catfish dinner, especially when you have caught them yourself. Sharpen up your catfishing skills and you’ll soon be eating good. There are many varieties of catfish such as the leopard, the shovel billed, the saltwater cats, the flat heads and the channel catfish, to name a few. The most plentiful and popular is the channel catfish. When you are eating catfish nuggets in a restaurant, then they are most likely channel catfish. Channel catfish are easy to catch and sure taste good.
A good rig to use is a sliding sinker using an o-ring to keep it from sliding to the hook and tie a 16″ leader to the hook. This way the cat won’t feel any resistance when it picks up the bait. Leave the creel open and let the catfish run with the bait and then set the hook. This way you will have less chance of losing your catfish.There’s nothing better than sitting down to a good catfish dinner, especially when you have caught them yourself. Sharpen up your catfishing skills and you’ll soon be eating good. There are many varieties of catfish such as the leopard, the shovel billed, the saltwater cats, the flat heads and the channel catfish, to name a few. The most plentiful and popular is the channel catfish. When you are eating catfish nuggets in a restaurant, then they are most likely channel catfish. Channel catfish are easy to catch and sure taste good. The best bait to use to fish for catfish is live bait. Some of the more popular ones are minnows, worms, grubs, leeches, small sunfish and crawdads. The top choice would be the nightcrawler when you are fishing for catfish. Make sure you have some sturdy gear that will handle a large catfish if you’re lucky enough to hook into one. You can use a 10-15 lb test line with a medium heavy pole. With this you can handle a fairly big fish. Although they need to be strong, the hooks don’t have to be really large. Even a small hook can hold a large fish.
A good rig to use is a sliding sinker using an o-ring to keep it from sliding to the hook and tie a 16″ leader to the hook. This way the cat won’t feel any resistance when it picks up the bait. Leave the creel open and let the catfish run with the bait and then set the hook. This way you will have less chance of losing your catfish.
Using nightcrawlers as your main bait when using the sliding sinker rig makes a good combination. Sometimes this will depend on the area you are fishing and sometimes crawdads and small minnows are the best to use. Try to find an area with a point, cove, dips, or large rocks to really do some good fishing in. Behind a point or rock when fishing in a stream or river where the current won’t be so strong will likely bring in many fish.
A lot of people use homemade baits such as liver, stinky cheese, fermented cornmeal or sour corn. These baits will not always assure you of catching a large catfish but some fish can be caught using the homemade baits. But using live bait or even a freshly killed bait can usually always do the trick. Nightcrawlers tend to be the best bait to consistently give you the best results