Good afternoon all,

I have been baiting for channel cat in the past. Have used soured corn and wheat, because i had easy access to it at work. I also buy bags of 20% range cubes. Both work well for small channel cats close to my dock.

BUT, would like to have a better chance at the Blue Cats. What do you bait holes with for blue cat? Also, what kind of areas should I look for? Especially for the summer months. I am on the north end of Cedar Creek - Gun Barrel City area.

Do you need deeper holes or drop off's for Blues? Structure - bridges? Shallow coves around boat docks work? I have caught a couple of blues from my dock in the fall, but it is usually just channel so far this spring - summer. And mostly small channel cats. Most not legal size.

My family really likes eating crappie and blue cats.

As always, thanks in advance.
stay safe!

Ken

I can’t think of a good way to bait for blues, other than potentially chumming with cut shad and perch. Their diet is nearly 100% baitfish as far as I’ve ever been able to tell.

From my experience, you'll catch more blues in the cooler months up in that shallow water baiting with range cubes. As spring hits, you'll notice more channel catfish moving in and blues slowly moving out. By summer time, I rarely if ever catch blues but catch tons of eater size channel catfish. Then fall hits and you'll start seeing blues moving in and channels moving out. The blues don't seem to like the hot shallow water like channel catfish is what I'm saying. I don't think its a matter of what chum to use as much as time of year. But I have a buddy that chums for blues some in the warmer months and he literally finds them on his graph, ties a laundry bag with range cubes to his downrigger and drops the laundry bag down to the level the blues are at and spot locks. He has been very successful doing so. Maybe try slightly deeper water for blues? Maybe 10-15 foot range as a starting place. I'm not too sure

Even though YellowCat is great, I prefer Blues best. Yellows are very rich & give most Vitamin F (OK, in other words, gasarama). But Blues you can eat 3 times a week without that problem. I am not into Channels that much, but some are tasty. And of course, as I have said, Lake Limestone Blues are the best tastin' out there. One morning Eric (my son-in-law) & me came back in with two Blues, 27 & 28 pounders. Another guy had been fishing with his buddy & they had caught two Yellows (50+ & 30+. He said he would have preferred outr Blues over the Yellows, as they tasted best (coming from Lake Limestone).

At Lake Limestone, most of my Blues have been caught on perch, goldfish, and soap. But as to baiting holes, I have no clues. There are certain areas that we tend to catch more blues than in other places.

If you do find you can draw them in by chumming, be sure to advise us of what you find.

Regarding the chumming with cut shad, etc. I have some shark steaks that got lost a couple of years ago in the bottom of my freezer. Freezer burned now, not good to eat unfortunately.

Wonder if I cut these up into pieces and used them for chum, if they would be good? The shark does not really have much oil in it, so not a ton of scent, but might be better than nothing? I hate to just throw it in the trash.

Do you all think the Blue Cats would eat it?

Thanks as always for the help and info!

Stay safe - tight lines

Ken