I’ve been surfing the net looking for information on using chum for catfishing. Everything I have read indicates it works pretty good. Check out this website for some chum recipes: http://catfisherman.net/cgi-local/cook/recipe.cgi
Has anybody had any experience with chumming?
Last Spring someone posted a warning about fishing with Mavzer. Said that Mavz will try passing off a pinch of chew in hopes of making his fishing partner provide the chum. Spose it would work
Mavzner gave Katman2 some spiked chew and he puked his guts out!! The good thing was we got a couple channel cats about a minute after he “chummed”. Every snag we fished after that Mav was offering but Katman wouldn’t partake. I guess it just wasn’t worth it for him. Comanchero, there are some MN regs about chumming I think. I don’t think you can use any fish parts but don’t quote me. I’ll check.
Dirk – I think you are right about fish parts. On page 28 of the 2002 Fishing Regulations; under OTHER it states “Depositing fish entrails or fish parts into public water or onto lake or stream shores is prohibited”. I am a little confused with that requirement. I interpret that to mean using fish for chum but wouldn’t it also apply to anyone using cut bait? Obviously you are using fish parts when using cut bait.
One of the chum baits I am interested in is the fermented Milo or Wheat. I have seen a number of chum recipes that say that stuff really works. It is supposed to smell like @!!#$ but really attract cats. I am wondering if anybody has ever used the stuff?
Find an old metal minnow cage/bucket. Put a large rock or chunk of concrete inside, and tie off a pop bottle/milk jug/marker-bouy-of-some-kind with plenty of line to reach the surface.
Fill the bucket/cage with your mixture and drop it to the bottom of the river. I would drop it right under the boat, then fish just downstream of it. When it’s time to go, grab the bouy and haul it up.
Gianni – That was the technique that I planned on using. Just put a chum pot directly beneath the boat and then fish in the chum line behind the back of the boat. I found some fairly inexpensive chum pots on the internet that looked like they would work pretty good. See this site: http://www.fishermansheadquarters.com/28185bags.html I am kind of curious what kind of chum to use. There are hundreds of different recipes out there. I was curious if anybody on our forum had any experience with this?
I have chummed for carp before – don’t ask why. Soured corn in a milk jug poured out over the bottom.
For cats, I have used chicken livers to chum before. I’d buy two pints and use one for baiting hooks while the other one sat in the bucket anchored to the bottom. It seemed to work pretty good, but if I were really into the idea I would garage-sale-up a blender especially for the purpose and toss in some shad or other oily baitfish with the liver, and possibly some crawdads. Those baits seem to bring in the bigger cats for me.
When I did it, it was on one of the smaller rivers here in NE Iowa, where it’s a traditional riffle/run/pool/repeat pattern. I would anchor the boat at the top of the drop into the pool and put the chum bucket right underneath, then toss the lines out covering the drop off (two lines, two baits per line can cover a pretty good distance).
We tried chumming several times last year with fermented soybeans. Attracted lots of very small cats, 1 lb and smaller and when we reeled them in, they were almost exploding with soybeans (they all were puking them out at the boat.) It seems that we do so much better with either cut bait or chicken liver, that it’s not worth the effort or the smell.
I did buy a 1 bushel bag of beans, and we haven’t hardly used any, so I am sure we will try it in a few more spots this coming year, but so far…
Tom B
Did you just scatter the beans on the bottom? I would put them in something breathable, but large enough that there is no way the fish could eat it. That’s where the minnow bucket anchored to the bottom works handy. A burlap sack would probably be a better solution, since you could just anchor it, leave it for a couple days, and then come back and fish it.
When I fish around/near it, I’d use big-fish baits that smaller fish usually ignore. Leeches and crawdads seem to keep the fiddlers away.
Yep, just scattered 5 gallons of the stuff in about an area as big as my boat. Used the electric motor to position ourselves a little ways away and we fished in, around and next to the chummed area.
It was pretty funny, the first 1/2 dozen fish we caught were puking beans all over the place while we were unhooking them. It was pretty obvious that they liked them.
But, why did we scatter them??? That’s what the article in the Catfish In-Sider said to do. They were writing about baiting in Nebraska with Milo and they spread it out, usually 5-10 gallons at a time. My bro in law is a dirt farmer, so I bought a sack of beans from him, and away we went.
Interestingly, soybeans really swell up while they are fermenting. 1 full ice cream bucket is about all we needed to end up with 5 gallons of fermented beans. The first batch I made, I put a bit more than 2 gallons in the 5 gallon bucket and by day 2, I had to put a bunch of them into another bucket.
We have also tried corn. We cook field corn for carp fishing and have had a couple batches ferment. We tried using it, but sure didn’t have much success.
Actually, we have almost no success with any of the fermented or stick baits. We have caught our biggest fish on either liver, spam or cut shiners. Kinda bums me out, it’s not always easy to find shiners (we catch them in a nearby creek.)
We fish the Miss near Sauk Rapids and the Horseshoe Chain.
Tom B
The thought of catfish puking rotten soybeans that end up getting ground into the carpet of my boat created a pretty livid image in my head after the first post. It seems like if something breathable was used, like a cloth sack or a minnow bucket, the stench would bring the fish in without having them gorge themselves on the chum while ignoring the bait. That was the main reason that I’ve always done it the way that I did.
Seems to me that anyone who traps could gin up a bag of ‘extra parts’ from critters, let it rot, and anchor it. Not sure that the law (at least in Iowa) is very clear on preventing something like that.
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