I've been thinking about making some coon lure any suggestions

Dry cat food coated with molasses is real good for DP bait, check your mail box.

It depends on what you want. Coon like 2 things the most; Super sweet or Really fishy. Just use your imagination. One super sweet lure that I highly recommend is Wildlife Research "Hard Core". Buy a bottle and take a sniff. You will see what I'm talking about.

On the fishy side I use salmon cat food and a good loud shellfish oil

Farmkid, think about using some of the proven lures as a part of your concoctions. A little this, A little of that. Trapping is a HUGE learning curve!

Do y’all not have ants? Sorta limited down here, corn generally get the nod, unless we are forecasted to have what we consider serious cold weather...highs in the 50’s for a few days straight. I envy y’all’s bait options!!

I'm still in the learning curve phase myself. One of the most helpful bits of information I found on baits came from this publication on using body grips from State of WI.

https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/trap/documents/safeandethical.pdf

In addition to the reference to sweet or fishy was WHEN to use sweet or fishy. Sweet early when sweet is available.....loud and fishy after frost and freezes have taken natural sweet off the table.

Have also been using a couple concoctions of my own.......one is a sardine based fish paste.....works.....but is a lot of work. What is simpler and high on the hit parade now is a 50:50 mix of cheap dry cat food and bacon grease.....laced with fish oil. This time of year, it seems most things wearing fur are interested in that one.

A few months back, I was also testing flavored cat food.......plain dry cat food plus, vanilla, anise, bbq sauce, liquid smoke, bacon grease and fish oii. Samples were placed in 4 DP sized pipes setup side by side with a game camera setup to watch. Thinking was if there was a preference, they would look for the preference first. While they ate it all, what they always ate first was the first one they came to.

My conclusion has been that plain dry cat food works pretty well.....is clean and easy to boot. The rest all work, but are not needed.

Many simple baits you can create on your own. Cheap dry cat food serves as a good base, and works on it's own, but the sky is the limit for what you can add. I have found a shot of salmon oil on the cat food to work well.

As far as a lure/trailing scent goes: fry some fish for dinner some time and save the oil. After the oil is cool, pour into a squirt bottle and add a healthy shot of anise extract. You can buy the anise extract at your local grocery store. Again, don't be afraid to experiment. There are several food grade extracts readily available in your grocery store that will attract coon.

I started using cheap tuna a couple weeks ago...been doing pretty good with it.

I mix cat food with mollasses and pure anis, seems to do the trick

I mix cat food with mollasses and pure anis, seems to do the trick

Just remember, coons are dumpster divers. They will go for just about anything. I've caught them on stale egg rolls and soy sauce. Go figure?

I’m pretty certain if they can smell it and it smells even remotely edible, it will work for bait.