Favorite channel bait

[Brad B]

Are you guys buying your shrimp at the grocery store?? These aren't the little shrimp that guys use in the winter for panfish, are they?

yes you go to the grocery store and buy it. get the mediums to ex large and the big thing is they need to be the raw ones not the fully cooked ones. the ones that are used in the winter are different.

[wooduck26]

Live Frogs. Anyone who has used them will tell you they are awesome!!

[nsnutter]

I have caught channels on everything from crawlers and chicken liver to live creek chub and live bullhead.

Lately it seems my channel bait 'o choice would be cut creek chub ... frozen or fresh, it doesn't matter (although I will add that freezing your minnows while their still flippin seems to work better than tossing the stiffies in the freezer).

Chicken liver works well - hard to keep on the hook though ... I have heard of folks using pantyhose or cheesecloth to ball up the liver on the hook ... sounds like a good time investment.

My biggest two channels to date from the MN river have both been caught on live bullhead. (8 inchers I might add) .... takes a mighty big channel to scoop up a bait that size.

My advice to you is to find a productive spot where fish are actively feeding before throwing in the towel on a certain bait's effectiveness. More often than not, if channels are actively feeding in your vicinity, you will find out. Cut sucker (as you say you use) is excellent bait choice, and you will pull in some quality fish. Don't get discouraged if you don't find the fish (or they don't find you) right away. Keep searching for "honey holes", and you will reap the rewards. Best of luck to you!

Nick

[Steve Foss]

I've used frozen goldeye, suckers and frogs before. Over time, I'd say they were slightly less effective than fresh, but not by a lot.

Almost all my catting was done along the Red and Red Lake Rivers around GF/EGF and Drayton, with a bit more farther north.

Typically when in for a night of channel cats, I'd pick up a dozen 6-inch suckers at the bait store (or frogs when they were in season), and would spend the first couple hours of the evening fishing for goldeye. Mostly, the suckers were backup, because I did better generally on goldeye than suckers. Frogs work whenever you can get them.

So if I got blanked on goldeyes (rarely happened), I'd still have enough good bait for the night. With 12 6-inch suckers cut in half and a dozen frogs, that would be 36 baits. Also, a typical goldeye (we cut them like salmon steaks about an inch thick and hooked them through the skin on the spine side of the steak), would yield about 8-10 baits).

But in order to make sure I had goldeye when they weren't biting, and just to be frugal, I often froze them whole or steaked to bring along another time.

I'd rather use frozen natural bait native to the river (in my case it was the three baits already mentioned) than fresh bait not found in the fishery (like stinkbaits, dip baits, shrimp, etc.)

Best of all, of course, is fresh native bait. If I started the night with plenty of fresh goldeye, sucker and frogs, and fished known excellent locations, it was always FISH ON!