Whats your go-to fish bait for Channel catfish?

[slider]

cut shad

[Ghosth]

In the past i've caught my biggest cats on creek chubs.

I used to live 1.5 miles from a small clear creek that was full of them. Was no sweat to grab a minnow seine and go grab a bucketfull to go fishing.

Now that creek is 40 miles away from where I live and with the price of gas it just doesn't fly.

So its mostly nightcrawlers although I'm starting to think some of the prepared baits like Sonnys will be good for smaller cats.

Picked up 3 sat night, all in the 2 to 3 lb range on sonnys. Nice healthy frisky fish that are a blast on light spinning gear. My fishing partners got 3 also on nightcrawlers.

[jdmert]

Sonny's Dip Bait but fishing in Coservation lakes for eaters as I don't believe there are many of good size in them.

[eyeguy]

In my part of Michigan we use mostly chicken livers. We will try small bluegills, perch and cutbait but we catch many more with the livers
eyeguy

[hunted]

shad all the way,i have caught from maybe a pound all the way up to 12.

[lilgriz]

I like using a real veriaty of baits for channels. They eat just about anything you put in front of them. Right now on Barkley Lake you can tear the channels up with crickets and redworms. A few weeks ago they would only take stuff like chicken livers or shrimp.

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[kat king]

gotta go with gut bluegill or shrimp works good on my rivers..

[crankbait77]

Shrimp works well, but for big channels I prefer cut eel. Seems to work for me.

[PaJay-p]

During the summer it's almost always chicken livers and cut bait. In the fall when they're fattening up bacon works great because of the oily fat. Put 1/2 pound in baggie put in microwave just until it get good and greasy.I then roll it up and put it on the hook. this seem to only work for me in the fall though.

[Trevor1]

I'd have to say for me shad catches more good sized channels than any other bait I've used, but it all depends on where you're fishing, usually something native to the water seems to catch bigger fish. Small channel cats will pretty much eat anything you put into the water, but it seems the bigger they get their diets get a lot more specialized.