9/20/2023 0 Comments Bass pro big cat quest![]() ![]() “My father was a commercial fisherman, and they used to go to a creamery in Tupelo and buy 55-gallon barrels of contaminated cheese. “Any bait with cheese in it catches catfish,” he says. Freeman says differences among dipbaits are mostly in consistency, additives, and distribution. Sonny’s Catfish Bait, Cat Tracker Wicked Sticky, Bill’s Cheese and Brains Catfish Bait, Team Catfish Secret 7, Hoss’s Hawg Bait, Rippin Lips Bootleg, and dozens of other manufactured baits each have followers who swear by their favorite brand. ![]() That’s one area where the normally congenial catfishing community breaks into factions fiercely loyal to specific brands. Mention of the flavor of dipbait opens a discussion about the many different brands and flavors. Then we load up with fresh dipbait and catch the catfish we attracted to the area.” On the Mississippi River, for example, sometimes when we’re fishing calm water between wing dikes, we rig dipbaits, cast them out, and rip them back fast a couple times to ‘chum’ the area. It seems dipbaits spread flavors quicker, attracting catfish as soon as they touch water. Amino acids in cutbait kind of ‘ooze’ out. ![]() You can see dipbait disperse as soon as it hits the water. ![]() Ken Freeman, promoter of the first all-artificial bait catfish tournament, and founder and owner of Bass Pro Shops Big Cat Quest tournaments says “Lactic acid sort of ‘explodes’ in the water when dipbaits dissolve and disperse. It’s tough to quantify, but experienced anglers note that manufactured baits seem to “spread the message” more widely and more quickly than cutbaits. The way flavors disperse from baits also plays a role in their effectiveness. So with cheese-based baits, you’ve got two compounds in one bait that are both highly attractive to catfish.” Certain lactic acids are attractive to catfish. Cheese baits are made from milk and animal products that have both amino acids and lactic acids. “The amino acids in the blood and oils in these baits light up a catfish’s sense of smell and taste. “Natural baits, whether cutbait or guts, always get the attention of channel catfish,” he says. It’s less understood why chemicals found in cheese products, the foundation of most manufactured catfish baits, trigger aggressive feeding among catfish, but the results are undeniable.ĭenny Halgren, veteran Illinois catman and guide, says manufactured dipbaits actually have the potential to be more attractive to catfish than natural baits. They’re the flavors and scents that flood their senses when they crunch down on a gizzard shad or skipjack herring. It makes sense that fresh cutbait has chemicals attractive to catfish. Each of them has some degree of the numerous compounds that are attractive to catfish.” “The chemicals that attract catfish to cutbait are probably different from the chemicals that attract them to cheese bait. “Catfish like different baits for different reasons,” he says. Keith Jones, former director of Berkley’s Fish Research Center, explains there’s no single magic chemical or compound common to gizzard shad, beef blood, chicken livers, rotten cheese, nightcrawlers, or the dozens of other baits famous for catching catfish. The folks at Pure Fishing, during development of Berkley’s PowerDip Catfish Bait, delved deeply into the chemistry of what triggers catfish to feed. My success with dipbaits is grounded in science, common sense, and experimentation. Sure, I’ll take a whopper when I get the chance, but my goal when I go catfishing is to catch as many as possible, and dipbaits are the way I reach that goal. Not one or two “braggers” that took all day to find and outwit. I associate the unique aroma of dipbaits with catching catfish. ![]()
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