I mostly use shad guts,and cut bait in the summer months and night crawlers in the winter and early spring.

I use live bream on the river...the big ones seem to prefer them to just about anything else, plus you can pick up a stiper or two along the way! In ponds or lakes, I either ask or experiment to find what they're biting.

DoA don't let the man in green catch you using the live bream for bait.

Back when i was commercial fishing I used to use grass shrimp. Not sure if it was just because what they liked most or the fact that my lines are 1000 hooks. :rolleyes: It takes a while to bait those suckers, and they have to be baited and put out on a tub before you go out. the shrimp made it cheap enough, and where they would fit on the tubs(3 of em).

Used to catch all the big cats i could handle on a little bitty grass shrimp.

When we do bush hooks at our camp, we use cheddar cheese during the winter. During the summer, we use chicken livers or shad.

Never tried the cheese Chad,grandpaw was also a commerical fissherman, he used Ivory soap on his trot lines,got some good memorys of all of us settin under the big oak tree rackin lines.

Small squid cut bait, will shock you on how many catfish it will produce. They just go nuts over it and it dosen't come of the hook easy either.

had more luck with either cut shad or the stinky cheese dough bait.might try that squid boone is talking about, need something that dont come off easy in the current Im fishing in.

Live bream are legal bait in Alabama. Can't use goldfish or small gamefish such as cat fingerlings or small bass, but you can use bream, as long as you don't have more than 50 in your bait bucket...limit on bream is 50, whether they're half a pound, or half an ounce!

Metalhead, you might have to find them at a chineese grocery store, but their cheap and have won me several chatahoochie trash fishing touney's.:}

Heck, just about anything will catch a catfish. I use what I have available. But I hardly ever fish for catfish!

I use cut up skipjack most of the time. When we run trot lines at guntersville we use marshmellows. DOA it is legal to use goldfish in Alabama most bait shops on smith lake sell them for stripe fishing.

Try using fresh water mussels the catfish love them but you only get one bite and its gone.

Tip for keeping soft bait (i.e. mussels) on your hook:
A pair of nylons (for some reason women always keep them when they have runs, even though they don't wear them). Cut a small patch of the nylon and wrap your bait in it before running your hook through it...the nylon helps hold the bait together and on the hook.

We use um too DOA with chicken livers.

boone, what the heck are you doing in a chinese grocery store?

DOA that nylon thingy is a good idea

live bream

I usually use shad but recently I have been using cut bream with better results than shad, I rarely fish for flatheads, I usually fish for blues but for flatties live bream is the way to go. On the coosa river we don't have skipjack and it's illegal to use them here.

We usually have great luck on fresh bream heads catching flatheads on the Locust Ford of the Warrior River.

Cut bream and crawfish.

Do the marshmallows work on noodles as good as on a trotline?