I've had limited experiences with trot lines and want ideas on bait. Used catawble (spelling?) worms from my trees in the past with lots of luck but don't have many worms so far this year so I need a new secret.

I bait trotlines mainly for flatheads and use bream(sunfish)3 to 5 inches long.But they catch a few channels too.
If I was to target blues and channels I would go with shad.Crawfish are good bait too,but be prepared to catch more drum than usual.

anyone ever tried cut up perch?

which parts of the perch do you think work best?

Ran lines all day Sat with limited success on liver and shad. Had something destroying the fish on the lines though. At first I thought turtles but one channel cat was about 2-3 pounds (I guess) and was cut almost smooth behind the gills. Turtles usually gnaw chunks out of them. Anyone know whats eating the fish? Some of these were good sized cats just sliced in half.

woops, i wondered where my pet barracuda went!

Could it be gar eating the cats off of the trot line? Don't know if those toothy critters would leave a clean slice tho.

0719, I've tried using cut up bream on my jugs, and found that about all I caught were channel cats. Using cured chicken liver, I got roughly a 50/50 mix of blues and channels. Cut shad/skipjack produced mostly blues, with a few channels. This was on Dardanelle Lake, Arkansas; other locations may have different results.