Here is an easy way to catch sunfish for catfishing without having to use a fishing rod!

Excellent!!

Dang! I'd hit that! Way to go Chris!

I’m very interested in this, thanks for posting, I’ll check it out-

Thanks guys! I thought y’all might like that one. Sure makes getting Flathead bait a lot easier! Thanks for watching. I probably won’t use it much for Blues but it will come in handy later this summer for Yella cats.

Do you ever use bluegill for Blues? I have a couple times and had good success with it, not as good as shad but it works...

I used to use them a lot more 10 yrs ago before I started using the deep net year round. I had easy access to my neighbors pond that was loaded with them but he moved. They work great for eater blues cuz the chunks don’t get picked off by dinks and in reservoirs like Lewisville there is definitely a certain population of big fish who will key in on a big sunfish over a Shad. My buddy Mike MJMetro719 is a high level bluecatr and primarily uses big sunfish and catches a toooon of toads on em. My guide buddy Steve pretty much just uses whole sunfish and he catches a bunch of toads on em out of Grapevine and Lewisville. It was explained like this to me, if you had to eat tuna fish sandwich for every meal day in and day out what would you do if a juicy cheeseburger was put in front of your face? You’d probably gobble that thing down! Same goes for a Bluecat, Day in and day out Shad are going to be the go to food source and also the #1 bait for a big portion of blues but blues like variety and often other baits will out produce. This is a big part of figuring out the Bluecat puzzle each week. There are also groups off fish that aren’t there to eat the baitfish, some are there to eat what is eating the baitfish. I always give them a variety of baits and let the fish tell me what they want.

Makes perfect sense. I have cleaned blues with bluegill, crappie and sand bass as well as shad in their bellies.

Any thoughts on trapping 'gills (perch, etc.) in public lakes, ideas on where to set out maybe? Trap rules and gear tag info is readily available, of course. Though banking for them, the afternoon before, might be a better option.

This would be good for you and Eddy for sure Ed. It’s very easy and takes minimal effort. You can always go rod and reel fishing the day before for gills but I don’t have time for that. My son is too young to bank fish for sunfish affectively anyways. On the boat he is contained but at the pond he is insane. He has every fish spooked after 10 minutes and after 15 he is waist deep in it.

The trap takes 1 minute to deploy and then you go home and eat supper and drink a beer. If I told my wife I needed to go fishing before I go fishing things could start to get heated!

You’ll need a gear tag just like trot lining or jugs. Fishing license number and date set. If I was setting trap at the lake I would set mine around some rip rap or next to a boat dock and I would hide my line. I also would not let anyone see where you set your trap so it doesn’t go missing. I threw a cup of chicken scratch on top of it after it sank. It’s a great little tool and we’ll be using it for years I’m sure of it.

Neat video. Teaching your son RIGHT!