use cut Bait or Live Bait for Big Cats

Cut Bait, such as strips of skipjack or cut up creek chubs, bring in the big cats. When using circle hooks, the hook point should not be buried in the bait. Live bait fish are another good choice. These catfish are big enough to take bait fish as large as a man’s hand. The bait fish should be hooked through the back, allowing them to swim freely.

use the Rod, Not the Reel. to Bring in Fish

Once a big cat is on the hook, the angler should use the powerful rod to bring it in. An up and down motion, pulling in the fish and then reeling in slack on the way down, keeps the stress on the rod and not on the reel. Flathead catfish make a run when they see the boat, and the angler may have to let out a bit of line and then play the fish in again.

Baiting a hole for catfish

A good way to get the catfish biting is to bait a hole or an area that you want to fish. To do this you will need to go to a feed store and buy some grain to soak. Milo, horse and mule feed, or even oats are good choices. Get a five gallon bucket with a good tight lid. Now pour the grain in the bucket and run water in the bucket until the grain is covered with water. Put the lid on real tight and let the grain soak for several days until it has soured. (Check the grain after the first 24 hours to make sure you still have plenty of water in the bucket as the grain needs to stay good and moist to sour). After the grain has soaked for three to four days, it's ready to be used.

Take a coffee can, dip out a can full of the grain and throw it out into the area you are going to fish. Take care as it only takes a couple of cans to attract the catfish. Sometimes it may take an hour or so to draw the catfish in. You can do this in several places and move from one place to another as the fishing slows in one place.

Must Know Tips for Every Angler

Timing is everything. Go out and fish in the early mornings and evenings. That's when catfish are looking for food, like you're bait. At those times, they come into the shallows where they're easier to catch. You can always catch cats at any time of the day, but it takes lots more skill.

- Go where the cats are. If you are fishing in a stream, look for a deep spot. Catfish tend to hang out along the bottom and look for food there. If you are fishing near a river, try casting your line right around where the river spills into the creek. This is where you'll find lots of those river cats looking for food.

- Catching cats in a river. The best place to catch catfish in a river is just upstream from some kind of obstruction, like rocks or log jams. This is an area where they'll be creeping around on the bottom looking for food, moving more slowly, and it's more likely that they'll find your lure. If you're going to fish on the open river, you can catch cats this way too, but it's better if there's been a recent rain.

- Use live baits. Catfish prefer live baits, and especially stuff that is stinky. They have serious noses on them, and they love smelly stuff like shrimp, guts, other fish, bits of tuna, hot dogs, etc.

- Switch up your bait. Just like human beings, catfish get sick of eating the same old thing all the time. If you rotate your bait every now and then and experiment with new things, you'll get lots more bites. They aren't picky eaters, they'll eat just about anything.

- The right hook. In general, if you want to catch bigger fish, you should use bigger hooks. For catfish, the best hooks to use are 3/0 or 4/0. A little experimenting will give you a better idea for yourself. Compared with other kinds of fish, it's pretty easy to catch catfish with smaller hooks, so I would go small to begin with. You'll catch some big fish with small hooks, but if the hooks are too big, you won't get any of the little ones.

- Chumming. This is a technique that will definitely get you more bites. Chum is little balls of prepared fish food that you can either buy at a shop or make yourself. All you do is throw the chum into the water and then fish like you regularly do. The chum will attract the cats and you can sit back and reel them in. It takes a bit of trial and error, because some spots are better for chumming than others.

How To Clean Catfish

When fishing for food, many fishermen that catch catfish will hurriedly throw the fish back because they have a reputation as being hard to clean. However, that simply is not true when one knows what he or she is doing. And catfish have some of the tastiest fillets out of all freshwater fish. Here is a simple guide that will teach you how to clean catfish the right way as quickly and easily as possible to ensure you don’t release your dinner back into the lake ever again.

First of all, you will want a sharp fillet knife and possibly an anti-cutting glove that is made out of steel mesh or Kevlar. Make sure that you have a trash can to throw away the parts of the catfish that you don’t want or need and a large, clean workspace.

Many people mistake the barbs that the catfish have surrounding its mouth as a weapon for stinging, but this is not true. They are actually used by the catfish to find food.

Clean the catfish as soon as possible. You will find that its body is covered with skin, not scales like most fish. This requires some special steps in cleaning and filleting the fish. To begin, grasp the spine of the fish firmly and make a shallow incision all the way around its head with a sharp knife. You will find that the catfish’s skin is thicker the larger it is. Sometimes the skin is so thick because of the catfish’s size that you may have to lay it in a pot of boiling water for a bit to soften it up before making the incision.

When the initial cut is made, you can begin to peel off the skin. This is done by starting at the head where you have made the cut and pulling firmly but slowly back towards the tail. Many times, the tougher spots can be overcome by using a pair of pliers. Once all of the skin has been removed from the fish you can remove its head simply by cutting it off.

Once the head is off, you can begin gutting the catfish. This is done by making an incision in the underside of the belly from where the head was removed all of the way back. Reach in with your bare hands and remove all of the guts that you can grab.

Once this is completed, you can remove the fins and the tail, if you so desire, and rinse the catfish with clean water. If you split the catfish into two separate sections, it will be much easier to ensure that the catfish is thoroughly cleaned.

The catfish can now be cooked to your liking. Just a few of the ways to cook catfish include baking, batter-dipping, deep-fried, and pan-fried.