I have fish a lot of cut shad for stripers in the past. I have seen some folks using floats on the end of there catfish rig. I can most likely figure it out but some secrets from folks like Salsa and others can't hurt. Is the weight fixed or an egg sinker? Your thoughts?

I use an egg above the swivel where I tie the leader. Small float is fixed near middle of a 2ft leader to hold bait off the bottom about a foot. Thats the way I do it. Don't know if it right or not just my way.

getting your bait off bottom so the fish can detect and grab it easily is the reason for the float .. if you cast from an anchored position the bottom float rig is best for me ... the santee cooper rig is what most folks drift fish with. Here's how the bottom float rig is designed using a dropper loop to hold the hook ... you can look up "dropper loop" on all the animated gif sites and it'll have it.

I use a santee cooper rig. No roll on your main line (or like me you can use a sinker slide) to a swivel, to leader with circle hook. 2" cigar float near the hook to keep the bait up off the bottom.

I've had decent luck using a slip-cork setup for catfish, although I'm planning to try a Santee Cooper rig more this year. The slip-cork will keep you from hanging up anyway. I use a fairly large slip-cork, 3/8 egg sinker, 1/0 swivel, about 20" of leader and a 5/0 Kahle hook.

One thing I've noticed when fishing cut shad suspended from a slip-cork is that the turtles mess with me a lot more than when fishing on the bottom. Another downside to this rig is if you are drifting your bait will not go very deep and if you use a larger sinker your float won't stay up.

balloons