I know there has been a lot of discussion on DP bait and a lot of good advise. I read a post where someone was trapping near deer feeders and asked what to use, and was told to use the same thing in the feeders that they have been eating. Well, I can tell you that was good advise! I was asked to help trap some coons on a friends deer lease. I had left my cat food and fish oil at home. So the 1st thing I did was check the feeders to see what they were feeding the deer. It was a mix of corn and berry flavored protein pellets. So I grabbed a big drink cup out of my truck and scooped up a cup full of the feeder mix. Last weekend I set 12 DP's in the area and used the flavored protein pellets in the DP's and the 1st morning I had 4 coons and a grinner. I re-baited last night and had 4 fine coons again this morning. I guess a lot to be said by " keeping it simple". No fish oil, no exotic cat food recipes, no sardines and sticky marshmallows. I'm sure there is a time when all that comes into play, and I have used it all myself, but I have had 2 good sets with just dry feed.

Sometimes different is better

well, I feel I may need warm up the skillet and eat some crow ! I didn't have a single coon or possum this morning. Not one trap was fired. maybe they didn't move? I talked to a friend of mine that was trapping about 10 miles down the road from me, and he had a good night w/ sardines and cat food w/ fish oil. He had 4 nice coons and 2 possums and 1 coyote. "One more humble lesson for an old wore out trapper"!

When i set multiple dps in a area, say 3. I'll use two different baits in 2 dps and the 3rd will have mix of the 2.One thing i've noticed over the years is that the mix well get more hits.Good luck

Thx, I will definitely do that! I will try dry and fish oil mix. I also put some lennons on the top of the traps. Im worried about this extreme weather change down here. Its going from 45* to 15* tonight with ice and snow. I wonder if a extreme change hurts the movement???

The 15 Degree weather will slow them down.

Doesn't get much better than that if you can use what's there. But if the circumstances were different and you had to use what's available to you. A nice sweet lure that wont freeze smeared on the lip of a dp, in a dirthole, or draped in a cage is just as effective. For those trappers that have trouble with trap placement edible bait&lures are your friend.

I would leave the fish oil out of my dp's. Fish oil for trailing sent. Try a mild smokey barque sauce. DP bait is a taste bait !!!

I would choose a wet paste type bait over dry baits all the time. They last longer, have greater smell appeal and I catch more coon on that then any dry bait I have used. Making sure that they have some taste appeal is important but that isn't difficult to do.

I have trapped at deer feeders, hog pen areas and corn crib storage areas with paste baits with excellent catch results. I don't need to feed the coon as seems to be the norm these days by using so much dry type baits. Coon aren't hard to catch but give them what they like and what they think they want and they come pretty easy.

Coons like most animals are opportunists and will take what they can find unless they have been educated to some degree by sight or some other stimuli. Then they may pass up or avoid such presentations of any kind. Then you will have to make some changes in your methods to catch those coon.

Coons are like any animal that can get "specific feed" focused. They are connected to feeding on what is seasonally available for them to eat and they cycle their nightly routines each season that way. At times they may seem to disappear since they have transitioned and moved to other feed sources more readily available.

Other times they may be conditioned to feed at man made food draw areas like farms, refuse dump sites, dumpsters around restaurants or many other food opportunities etc.

I used Bob's fireball bait in my dp's the first year I tried using dp's and took over a 100 that year on that bait alone.

has anyone had success w/ "Coon Candy" lure on the lip of the DP's ?

Smoked fish, honey mix. I keep all the trimmings from perch, bream, bass and catfish that I catch. Then I grind it up really good. Minced basically. And then i cover it with salt and let the moisture draw out and create a brine.. once it sits in the brine a week I smoke it on my grill. I take the brine and use it as a trailing scent
. I only add honey to it. Works awesome for fox and coons.. and coyote

Man, that sounds like a recipe that my ol Shrimp boat captain use to cook us !!!

It's actually edible. Very salty though.. coons don't mind. Won't freeze, tastes great to the critters, smells really strong of fish and smoke to draw them in from a ways.. they LOVE IT. you can make a 5 gallon bucket full of it for $30. That's a lot of bait. Very simple and extremely effective for me in PVC sets, pocket sets, dirtholes, and dps.. it shines with dp's. I usually leave a few nibbles on the ground around the dp. Once they get a taste they will stick their hand in the dp for more.

$30 for a quart of local honey, 5gal bucket with lid and a throwaway turkey pan to hold the fish in while smoking. And salt.

An old trapper that I use to know down around Venice, La told me that after he would filet speckled trout he would keep the bellies and use them for bait. He would bag them up every time he cleaned fish and save them. Back then we were using long spring traps, so we would tie a white speck belly to a piece of bamboo cane or put a nail in an old board and stick a belly on the board, and then set an old Victor long spring in front of it. He was very successful! Back then, we didn't use a lot of bait like we do now. If you found a trail in the bayou's, something was going to be traveling it! It was so thick and nasty in some areas, trails were used for a lot of different critters.

Yeah it's difficult targeting one specific animal. The abundance of otter, mink, beaver, coon, red/grey fox, coyote and bobcat is unreal! I personally love to make lures and baits. Over the yes of testing and testing again, I've come to the conclusion. The best bait is just bait. Meat and maybe some natural honey or something natural. I'm not big into synthetic oils and all that. I personally think I catch more critters with a meat bait and for lure either straight glands and urine or castor.. skunk musk is good. Keeping it simple has worked best for me.
I don't get any speckled trout bellies but they love fatty catfish bellies.. catfish livers are the beesnees too

I've been making dry bait for our DPs the last several years and had great success with it in December here.
From local Dollar general store...and total bill to make a couple gallons of bait is about a $10 spot or so.

1 large bag of cheap fish flavored cat food (I found some for $2)
1 bottle of anise oil (in baking section)
One box of cherry or strawberry flavored jello
Two cans of sardines packed in oil
One jar molasses
Small container of table salt.

In a couple large one gallon containers, put in 3/4 full of cat food each. Dump half the bottle of anise in each, put lid on container and shake it up until well mixed. Add some molasses to each and shake them again until all pieces are lightly coated.
Let those sit for a couple of weeks, shaking them up now and again to keep pieces loose and until everything is mostly absorbed by the dry bait.
Then dump in half the box of jello into each, and half the sardines mashed up into each, put lids back on and shake em up again once and awhile for next few weeks until all of that is absorbed by the cat food.
Add some table salt to each container too to help retard molding.

This blend had all the classic coon bait odors in one, it's a fishy, molasses, anise odor to it with hint of fruit from jello. And it held that mix of odors nicely too.

It lasts really well stored in the large containers we just keep it on shelf in our garage, it is a dry bait when completed, and easy to handle at sets. We put it up in clean large plastic soft drink bottles and those pour very easily into the small openings on DPs.

I know coon are easy to Target but this mix for volume and cost was a really nice efficient bait for us and we took a lot of nice coon with it last several seasons. We ran it at Duke and ztraps, duffer's, and coon cuffs all equally successful.


Jim

I believe in the give them a choice mindset when at feeder location. I will not set the feeder if there is feed in it I will set back on the trails coming and going. I don't want to compete with the feeder. if the trails are good and the pics show good coon activity I want them fast. because just as was stated above they will hit the feeder for a few days then move on for a few days and come back. (unless you have a super high coon population) will set 2 or 3 traps on the trails give them what they are eating and give them the chocolate cookie mind set and a meat mindset let them choose. I also find that if a coon is in the trap and a trap is set a few feet away the second coon will go to it and get caught maybe a competition thing I don't know.

Wade Ryan, aka Murse, has identified liquid smoke as a [/b]very strong[b] attractant. In line with simple baits like cat food, small piece dog food, fish food pellets, crushed cookies and candy, sweet feed etc, a couple drops of liquid smoke dribbled into the DP shouldn’t disappoint you at all.