I soak mine in cherry cool-aid and garlic salt and it works pretty good. Didn't believe it until I tried it but it works.

I hadn't heard of using hot dogs for catfish before. I'm about out of punchbait, and hot dogs are cheaper so I'll have to give that a try.

I've heard the cheaper the better. Also heard that the cocktail wennies are good too.

The one thing about hotdogs is either cook them so they are tougher or get the ones with a thicker skin on them. I forget which kind we use but they stay on the hook good and have caught a ton of cats.

Here is my one experience with hot dogs concerning fishing for
catfish.

Me and Eddy Hankins took the wifeys over to Baker Park in Sherman. No fishing, just a Sunday afternoon stroll around the lake, late in September.

We spotted a honey bee hive with visible cones of honey sticking out of a sloping hollow tree. Eddy wanted to get some of the honey and was going on a suicide mission when the wifeys put up such a fuss as to get him to stop.

Anyway, we had walked almost all the way around the lake, about a mile and a half, when we came to a picnic table with remnants of a previous outing. Leaning against a tree was a tree limb with heavy mono and about a three ought hook dangling. Eddy picked it up and started scavenging for bait. He came across a piece of hot dog, charred almost black on the outside, but the inside was mauve...well, maybe not mauve..more like terra cotta but not exactly....rather pinkish.

Anyway, Eddy puts the hunk of dog on the enormous hook and wades into the lake up to his waist....wallet, smokes, shoes and all! I told him he could not possibly catch anything on that ridiculous rig.

No sooner were the words out of my mouth than Eddy was fast onto a huge catfish. He lost his balance stumbling backwards toward shore, the tree limb bent double! It was funny and I was laughing and so were the wifeys!

Eddy recovered enough to drag a NINE POUND channel cat, flipping and flopping onto the bank! He had a bad case of the shakes and had to bum cigarettes from me to calm down, his smokes were soaked.

I have never fished with hot dogs, but whenever I hear somebody talk about using them for bait, I am reminded of that Autumn day when old Eddy snagged that big cat with a hunk of hot dog!

Anyone tried soaking hotdogs in vanilla? Works with shrimp, but never tried dogs before.

Just fish the dang dogs out of the package and quit trying to jazz up a great simple bait....LOL. I have not used them in years and I don't know why. They have always worked for me but I think I got ashamed to use them for some reason.

Sounds like maybe Eddy may have had a couple of brews.

Never had luck with hot dogs or liver -- but then I haven't used either one all that much.

I will warn you that bluegill like hotdogs too. One of the challenges of using them for catfish is that you'll get nibbled to nothing by perch after a while.

When you use the hotdogs, are they up top with a bobber, or down on the bottom? I caught a catfish once on a marshmallow meant for a trout.

I use dogs on the bottom and haven't had much problem with perch but turtles do love dogs so that can be a problem in some areas. I don't soak my dogs in anything though. Just fish em and they do work.

I put them on the bottom, and caught a blue and a channel cat. But they didn't go over like gang busters though...but they got me a couple of cats, so that was good enough. I would of never known had I not read this forum. Thanks.

I just picked up a package of cheap dogs and will be trying them out sunday with some jugs. Im taking chicken liver, worms, hotdogs and will be using whatever baitfish I get in the net. Ill let everyone know what fish I catch on what bait.

Who threads the whole hot dog on a hook like a big earth worm?

If you break it into small pieces do the juices from the exposed innards draw more fish?