Ive caught one big blue that burped up a teal duck on my deck. I also caught a biggun that burped up pretty big cormorant. I imagine that blues eat chicken thinkin it�s a duck or water bird. With that being said, I�ve seen countless bigguns burp up a handful of shad or a couple of sandbass.

I don�t buy bait. I actually enjoy finding and catching it. Sometimes it�s not easy getting the right bait but that�s part of the blue cat puzzle.

Dave fished while here in Texas mostly with chicken breast soaked in Dead Red, sometimes with Bar S wieners soaked in Dead Red. Exactly hopw long they were soaked, if they were cut up into pieces, and how large the pieces were, I could not say. But after moving up to Oklahoma, Dave still uses my Catfish Calendar & times his juggin' to catch the maximum amount of Blues. I have taught him to utilize certain tricks & tips of my Calendar to get the maximum, such as baiting out to meet the BC days head on for the best volume, as well as the overlaps before & after (bleedover). This was the last posting he did on the TFF here ... back in November 2016.

<http://texasfishingforum.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/11941303/>

with two pics

Dave laughs it off if he loses one, even a big one, as he knows he will always catch much more.

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from his PM to me-
Hey Lynn, even though I moved to Oklahoma, I continue to to use your calendar. I baited my jugs on the afternoon of the 10th and made a meat haul on the 11th. These fish were taken at Ft Cobb Lake in Oklahoma. 20 jugs with 2 hooks per jug, pulled just once.

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he posted this also on TFF to the forum-
Had 20 jugs with 2 hooks each. Baited out on the afternoon of 10 Nov and pulled them just once on the morning of the 11th. Brought home 21 nice fish. Released the big one and six small ones. Also had 4 jump the hook when pulling them in. 32 fish on 40 hooks. Fresh chicken breast and Dead Red. BTW I've been using Lynn's Catfish Calendar for 5 years now.
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I recall once in Texas, he & his partner caught so much, they ran into a problem upon returning home. The huge ice chest of catfish fillets was too heavy & could not be picked up out of the truck, so they had to build a ramp to slide it out into the garage.

That's pretty wild! Once, I had a good fish die on me up at Arrowhead (30+) so we kept her, and she had someting stuck in her gut, like poking. No lie, it was a femur bone haha. I assume it was from a deer. Crazy.

My PB (??lbs) from Grapevine was caught on chicken breast soaked in clam juice. I believe they eat them thinking they are mussels.

Decided to try some chicken breast bait last week on Lewisville for blues. Socked chicken breast cubed up in black cherry coolaide and fresh smashed garlic for 2 days in the fridge then froze it. Thawed it out in cooler during my morning crappie trip. Drifted fresh cut shad and the chicken side by side on 2 drifts in 2 different areas. Ended up getting lots of bites and landed 15 blue cats. 10 on the chicken and 5 on fresh cut shad. Had lots more missed bites on the chicken as well. May have just been fish to small for my hooks. Was using 6/0 and 7/0 circle hooks. With a treble hook we could have possibly caught more eater sized fish.

Very good side by side test and exactly what I was referring too when people that don't even target large blues were giving their opinion without actual proof to substantiate results.
Your recipe is pretty much spot on with mine, the fresh garlic is the key.
Each bait may be better one day and not the next but for the most part I have found it is not worth the time for me to go find large gizzard shad when I want to fish.
I only fish for large blues in shallow water in late winter or early spring but it works for me. I catch at least one fish over 10lbs each time out and fish 2-4 days a week, I cant keep count of how many I catch from 20-30lbs and my largest this spring from Hubbard was 49.38lbs on chicken breast. My daughters largest was 34.42 when she was 15 three years ago which broke the junior record if I would have taken it in to be certified, all caught on chicken breast.

To answer the OP's original question, it works, and is very good bait.

I want to try this. Much cheaper than dead red. I�m thinking you mixed the dry koolaide with water? If you did, did you add sugar to it? Thanks.

Just enough water to get it all soaking up the red color and garlic. Make sure to use 2 bags because it smells thru one bag easily. Still can smell it thru 2 bags but not as bad.

Thank you sir!!

So, i finished my fishing trip. This was a trip i have done for the last 3 years with kids at my parish. I take a group of the boys out each summer with a few adults to run trotlines for 3 days. We had plenty of live bait with live perch, so the chicken breast was just something to try out as they had been in my fridge a while and were too far gone to cook and didnt want to waste them. I ended up getting a few packets of cherry coo-laid, added mexican vanilla and some garlic and onion powder with a little bit of water then left the bag in the back of my truck for about a day and a half. One thing i noticed was that it seemed like the chicken breast "ceviched" by the time i started using it. Im not sure if it was the sun shining on the bag that cooked it or something in the marinade cocktail, but it was coming out like it was cooked. That being said, i started using it during the day as i didnt want to waste good live bait on the hooks during the day when gars and other critters are more likely to poach my lines. I think we caught around 8-12 good channel cats on it from the different lines we set. It stunk to high heaven, but it seems like it worked pretty well. Over all, for the weekend, we caught almost 40 pounds of fillets. We had a nice fish fry to end the weekend combining the boys with the girls trip that had been taking place out on the coast and cooked up around 20 pounds of the fish and was able to send 2 pounds home with each boy. Over all, it was a VERY successful weekend. On a side note, there is a variety of perch that has become my go to favorite perch to use and i keep running into different names for it. I had someone tell me they were a hybrid perch/bass, another called them a "rockfish" and i am not sure what they actually are. They have a longer body than a normal sunfish with bright yellow/white ribbing on their fins. Ive also noticed they have larger than normal mouths as well. Looking online, it is definitely not a rockfish...those things are UGLY!!! I think it might be a Green Sunfish or Green sunfish/Bluegill hybrid. Whatever they are, i have consistently caught my biggest fish on those guys.....lol

Post pics of your perch and TFF will accurately determine what you're using.

I dont have a pic from the fishing trip, but this is pretty close to what im always looking for:


Dont know if that actually posted the pic or not. From the website the pic is from, it is a green sunfish or goggle eye, though looking up goggle eye shows something completely different....lol

My guess is a Green sunfish/Bluegill hybrid. Banker or someone else will chime in and will give us the exact name.

It�s a green sunfish! I used to hear it was a bass/bluegill hybrid growing up, but it�s just a plain greenie. We have warmouth around here too that get the bigger mouths but they tend to have a little bit more brown coloration. Anyway, of all the varieties of sunfish we have, a lively greenie or longear seems to be hard to beat, however, I�ve caught plenty of fish on every variety. If you like fishing live bait, I suggest trying some bullheads if you can find them! They�re easier to keep alive and big cats of every variety love them.