Fishing
Channel catfish are omnivores and can be caught using a variety of natural and prepared baits, including crickets, nightcrawlers, minnows, shad, crawfish, frogs, bullheads, sunfish, and suckers. Catfish have even been known to take Ivory Soap as bait . Another method of catching catfish is using stinkbaits, which are prepared with dead fish, crawfish, garlic, blood, liver, meat, cheese, dough, and even Kool-Aid powder. Sometimes these stinkbaits are prepared into a doughball and mashed onto a hook; other times they are smeared in special tubes meant to hold these baits, and fished slowly on the bottom. Grocery store baits such as chicken livers, shrimp, dog food, squid, and bubble gum will also catch plenty of channel cats.
Juglines, trotlines, limb lines and bank lines are popular methods of fishing for channel catfish in addition to traditional rod and reel fishing. Another method uses traps, either "slat traps" — long wooden traps with an angled entrance — and wire hoop traps. Typical bait for these traps include rotten cheese and dog food. Catches of as many as 100+ fish a day are common in catfish traps.
When removing the hook from a catfish, anglers should be mindful of the sharp spines on the pectoral and dorsal fin.
Read more about this topic: Channel Catfish
Famous quotes containing the word fishing:
“O mud
For watermelons gutted to the crust,
Mud for the mole-tide harbor, mud for mouse,
Mud for the armored Diesel fishing tubs that thud
A year and a day to wind and tide; the dust
Is on this skipping heart that shakes my house,”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing. It is remarkable what a serious business men make of getting their dinners, and how universally shiftlessness and a groveling taste take refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go without your dinner, I thought, than be thus everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of course, viewed from the shore, our pursuits in the country appear not a whit less frivolous.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“From time immemorial the men of the town have been famous seamen, and have divided their energies between fishing and hating the English.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)