It was a nasty day around here today so I decided to stock back up on channel-chum and dough bait. Inspired by a recent post on chum tubes I decided to do a little show n tell. I have generally chummed with sour milo but often find the fish I catch are completely gorged on milo so I thought I'd use some old offshore fishing tricks on freshwater channel cats. Ground bycatch chum froze into blocks.
The general list:
I find shad to be the most important ingredient on the list. Second on the list is the sour milo water from the milo chum bucket. Use your wife's finest food processor and finely grind these ingredients into a pudding consistency.
She will give you more time on the water once she finds her food processor shad stunk! I then add a little water at a time until it pours like thick gravy.
I then use a custom funnel and pour into plastic bottles with lids.
Once I've used up the majority of the gravy I will cap, wash, and then freeze the bottles until future fishing trips.
Once frozen these chum bottles can be used as cold blocks to keep beer and bait cold until ready to deploy. Once on location you can cut small holes in the chum bottle with a pointy knife, hang over the side of the boat with twine, and adjust to waterline. The boat rocking and wave action will liberate small particles of bait and tons of scent into the water column. Best of all they don't fill up on chum! I suppose you could sink one to bottom if you like. I've found this technique to work best for channel cats in shallower water. Especially good when slip floating close to the boat in shallow water.
What to do with the leftover gravy? What to use for bait? We're going to make tortilla's!!
I like to make numerous types of dough bait but I like to match the hatch, so to speak. So, let's make dough bait to match the chum. Ingredients are gravy plus a tad more sour milo juice mixed with the tortilla mix.
You will knead this into a gummy tortilla/bread dough. Once completed you can tear off a marble sized piece and knead it onto a #4 or #6 treble hook.
It is very durable and won't generally cast off even after numerous casts(if necessary). I generally fish this bait with no weight at all. I normally just use the hook and dough suspended just off bottom under the boat or fished with a slip float. Either way, fish will be drawn in close by the chum scent slick from the frozen chum block(now thawed and leaking). I generally only catch channel cats with this bait although a stray blue isn't an oddity. Does it work?
You be the judge! Please post your results if you do choose to try this method or have any additional input. Afterall, I do love a good fish story!
Pretty good recipe there.
