I am struggling getting any interest in some dog proofs im running on a piece of private, there is a dried up canal with a highway of tracks down the bottom of it, im setting right off the side of their trail in the bottom and they're just walking right on by. Ive been using dried cat and dog food with some store bought sweet coon lure on the rim. Its in the mid 40s during the day and low 20's at night. Today I topped them with some expired wet cat food.

The caveat of me trapping this property was dog proofs only so blind setting the trail wont work.

Any ideas?

First, put the DPs dead center in the trails.

Second, stink up the area around the traps. Gotta get them in the mood to work the sets. When they're on a trail, they're traveling and not really paying attention to anything else. Pet food and corn generally don't have a lot of smell

I give a good squirt of fish oil around or to the DP

Sounds great, ill make up a batch of something real smelly tonight and move traps to the middle of the trail, thank you!

Whatever you mix up, make sure its something the coons will want to eat. If it is bitter or otherwise tastes bad, coon will move on and not commit to the trap.

I make trails of fish oil to my dp and that seems to work but I am no expert

I had the same problem. Went to dg and pick up some bbq sauce on sale for 50cents a bottle. Mix a little in the cat food and a little on the rim of the dp. Has a lot of smoky flavor and the coon love it.

Think sweet. Give them a little taste outside the trap. I throw 4 mini marshmallows inside the trap and place a glob of sweet bait under the trigger with a butter knife. Then I grab about 4 more marshmallows, dip in the bait and toss out front.

Two of the best sweet baits I have used is Sticky Fingers and Jameson's Fireball.

Sniper and Silky nailed it. Put your sets on the tracks not near them and throw a few pieces of cat food on the trail to let them get a taste, if its edible they will want more. Dogproofs can be presented in different ways and filled to different levels for different reasons. I like to angle mine so that the pull triggers is horizontal to the angle then bait with enough to just cover the trigger, drop a few pieces on the ground and collect coon on his next trip down the trail. Everyone loves a dirt hole, drill a big enough hole the the spring can work and stick a DP in. Some coons are reluctant to put much effort into DPs or may shy away from a catch circle, just move the trap out of the circle and production should pick up giving that there are still coons to be caught.
Good luck

put the trap "in" the trail. not beside it.

put it where he has to go over it or off the trail to get around it.
coons at night know where their going. they dont wander around like coyote. when they go to feed they know exactly where that is.

when i set a coon trail i set a trap at the feeding area. then i follow the trail back and set traps every 15 - 20 feet back along it. coons lot times travel in groups.
i have caught more than one off one trail many many times in one night.
depending on how many dps you have and how may trails you have you can pile em up

Moved everything and reset with some fish oil and bbq cat food and got back into them, thanks guys!

I do this too.
I also set the edges of roads that the coons travel and squirt a line of fish oil across their path to get them to follow the scent to the trap.

Quadruple catch. Only a few months old, though.

Good post....these dp traps take some "learning" to use them correctly. I like chocolate syrup the cheapest I can buy and have used cheap hot chocolate powder too...that wasn't mentioned earlier. It's also hard to beat bacon grease when the temp.s allow....but it is messy.