catfish bait

you see all kinds of baits at stores and stuff does anyone have a mix or bait that is pretty consistent they would like to share thanks in advance

I’m a fan of using creek chubs.

I use live minnows, I've also used pieces of red meat with success as well.

Smaller catfish will eat just about anything. For convenience I use store baught punch bait for smaller 'eater' size channel cats and blues.it holds really well on a treble hook and comes in easy to mess with containers and is allways available and u will catch a few bigger fish with it every once in a while. For bigger catfish I use what they are used to eating.shad skipjack bluegill ect.u gotta match the hatch for bait with the bigger fish for the best results

I've used all kinds of bait, including home made burger cheese dough balls, livers, live gold fish, chubs, skipjack, zote soap, ivory soap, commercial baits etc etc.
For convenience and performance it is hard to beat cut fresh blue gill, cut chub, or cut gold fish. Maybe catfish in other parts of the country are different, but i've noted that I would catch 3 times as many fish on chubs cut in 3 pieces as on whole live chubs, bluegill or goldfish.

One day as I was leaving the boat ramp a guy came in with a live well full of catfish. He said he caught them with jalapeno dough balls he made himself. I asked for details and didn't let on that I believed not a word of it. THE BEST bait he said. The spicier the better.
A week later I made 10 jalapeno spiced meat and cheese balls . Sure enough they DID catch fish. About as well as anything else. So I made 20 with habaneros (the spicier the better). The bait the next day was still on all 20 hooks. i think it burned the whiskers off those cats.

Live perch or crawdads. I like flathead and blue cats. No channels for me, I think there is a lot better fish to eat then channel cats.

Fresh cut bait for channels and lively green sunfish or bullheads for flatheads. All you need.

You can catch a pile of small channels on docs dip worms and sonny's in the warm weather if you want them for something. No way you'll mix up some concoction that will out produce it imo.

Exactly the way it is here as well.

I will add that I have used beaver liver with good success here as well. The turtles seem to hit the liver a lot but not the Sonnys. Rare to catch a big Cat on Sonnys though.

I like to use shad. Easy to catch and everything likes them!

Use live goldfish or bluegills

For channels around here use dip baits and catch a ton of small/medium cats, cut bait or chicken liver catch bigger channels.

Raw shrimp (must be raw) sprinkled with either garlic salt or garlic powder let it marinade for an hr or longer and you are ready