Best Way To Catch Catfish Proven Methods

When looking at the best way to catch catfish, copying proven methods and systems is always the way to go. Dan delivers some great methods in this article. No need to try and reinvent the wheel, the secrets to catching catfish are already out there, you just need to find them!

Proven Methods For Catching Catfish

There are a variety of methods used for catching Catfish. It all depends on how you prefer to fish. We'll go into several tried and true methods.

We'll start with trotlining. First you need to make sure it is even legal in your state to run a trotline. You can either build your own trotline or buy a ready made one at your favorite fishing supply store. Most of the ready made ones are fairly inexpensive, running about $8.00, they already have the hooks tied on and it's pretty much ready to go. You may want to go with the pre made one until you decide if you are going to like trotlining.

If you're going for the lunker cat, it's better to either build your own with heavier line or buy a more expensive pre made one. If you do decide to build your own, you will be working with a 150 foot line and 25 hooks. Check your state laws regarding the length and the spacing of the hooks.
Once you've checked your state laws and have your trotline, you will need to buy or make a weight. A good cheap weight can be made by filling a coffee can with cement and a large steel eye bolt that you can buy at the local big box home improvement store for about $4.00. This works great. You will also need floats, for those you can use store bought floats or save some money and use empty gallon milk cartons with the lids screwed on tight.

Now you're ready to set your trotline. Pick a spot that has a channel running down the middle of it, tie one end of the trotline to a tree or a stump on one side of the channel, carefully unroll the trotline and when you reach the other side tie the end to another tree or stump. Make sure to leave enough loose line that the trotline will sink down close to the bottom. Double check your knots! You could end up with 25 fish on this line and they are not going to just meekly sit there and wait for your return, they will be thrashing and twisting and doing whatever they can to escape and you don't want your trotline to come untied.

Once you have your trotline secured, it's time to bait the hooks. Your best bet for bait will be live bait like shad, minnows, nightcrawlers and small crawdads. After you've got the hooks baited, attach your floats to the trotline at about 20 feet from each end then take some good heavy twine or nylon rope and thread it through the eye of the hook on your weight and attach it securely to the middle of the trotline and let it sink.

You should check your trotline, at the very minimum, every 12 hours. Don't leave it sitting for longer than that if you don't want to come back to a whole line of dead fish. Again, be careful pulling the trotline up, you do not want to hook yourself! I've seen inexperienced trotliners end up with hooks in some very bad places that we won't even mention here. You do not want that, so use caution.

Dan Eggertsen is a fishing researcher and enthusiast who is committed to providing the best saltwater fishing information possible. Get more information on proven methods for catching catfish here: http://www.askcatfishfishing.com.

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here are some more tips on catching catfish

Tips On Catching Catfish

 Here are some good tips on catching catfish.

Catfish Fishing - Catching the Monsters

Catfish fishing is a very fun and energetic sport which requires a lot of hard work once you have caught one on the end of your rod, from the mighty wels catfish which can be huge to many other different types which you can catch across the world. One thing for sure especially with the wels catfish you will have to battle to win you catfish. This is why catfish fishing is such a highly addictive fishing type, because you have the excitement, energy and rush that will make you want to do it more and more.

Anyway enough about the fantastic rush catfish fishing brings us and lets move on to giving you some tips how to carry out this sport successfully. Read on to find out more.

Catfish fishing can be carried out in a lot of lakes and rivers etc all across the globe and can be the most fun you'll ever have fishing, you will want to try a lot of different techniques until you find the one that works best for you and believe it or not in no time you will be bringing in massive hauls of catfish that are massive in size.

One of the main things to catfish fishing is the time that you go out and do it because you really want to be going out and looking for them when they are feeding, now bearing this in mind the best time for you to go fishing is probably to go in the early mornings and in the evening when they will be out in force looking for their food. You don't need to fish for catfish at these times of the day but this is when they are most vulnerable to pick up your bait and they will be in the shallows of the lake or river making it easier for you to find them and catch them, remember though that catfish fishing can be done at anytime of the day and also in many places nearly all year round.

There are a few different places that they will tend to hide or hang out around as well so when catfish fishing look out for the reeds and see if there are any blockages in the river for example as catfish tend to swim around upstream from these looking for food on the bottom of the riverbed and also the riverbeds and to the side of rivers by the banks where they will be skulking around looking to feed.
Next a very good tip that I can give you when you go catfish fishing is to always try to use live baits as catfish tend to go for these a lot more, also another good tip that you should take into consideration when catfish fishing is to make sure that the live bait is very smelly (that's right the smellier the better), the reason for this is that catfish have a highly developed sense of smell and will sniff it out and come and feed, baits such as shrimp, tuna and other fish etc, but also remember that you should be varying the bait that you use because if you don't then catfish will just act like we do and get fed up of the same food and not bother going for it.

One of the last things I am going to tell you in this article about catfish fishing is that when you are fishing you need to decide on what size hook you are going to use as this can determine quite a lot with catfish, if you use a huge hook then you are only really going to be looking for the bigger catfish as the smaller ones will not go for the big hooks, some small hooks will also only catch the smaller catfish. So when you are next out catfish fishing you should try and mix up your hook sizes and experiment and see which ones work best for you, also don't forget to rotate the bait.
Until next time happy catfish fishing!

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