The one thing about catfish fishing is the smellier the bait the better it is to catch a catfish. It might smell as if something died, but the catfish will strike it. The stinky bait recipes only require one main thing, stink. The catfish has an incredible sense of smell and taste. If you want to attract the catfish, you need some more powerful than what they have underwater. Here are some recipes for stinky catfish baits.



The dough balls are stink bait for catfish. You take the smelliest thing you have in the house, maybe a chicken liver or rotten spoiled meat and wrap it in a dough ball. Make the dough with flour and water as if you were making a piecrust. Instead of flattening out the dough ball, make a hole and put in some smelly spoiled meat. Then reform the dough ball over the smelly ingredients.

Some anglers will cook the dough a little so it holds together better once submerged in water. You can put this dough ball on a circle hook large enough to hold it and still hook the cat. This is a popular recipe, but there are a few more ingredients to use that stink just as much as the dough ball with chicken livers and spoiled meat.

Soap for some reason attracts catfish. It is a mystery to everyone, but for some reason unscented soap works great. You could use a knife and cut the pieces up small, then add them to a dough ball. You will be surprised as to how well the soap balls work. The fish will be fight over getting to your stink bait. This recipe works well if placed on a circle hook. You can use some other ingredients that will work great as stink bait as well.

Cheese has been a favorite. It has to be the smelliest cheese you can find. Use a blender and make mush out of the cheese. The best cheese for making the mush is Limburger cheese. The mixture might not be able to be held together, so you can use a dough ball to encase the stinky cheese bait. The raw fish is another mixture you can use. Go to your local meat market and ask for the fish guts and scrapes. Anything they would throw out in the garbage will work great. Beware, this is going to be horrible smelling and can cause people to become ill.

However, the catfish loves it.

One can only wonder why a fish would want something so stinky, but the catfish are the only fish that will attract to this type of bait. You will never hear any angler tell you that they caught a walleye or a bass with this type of bait. The catfish is a bottom feeder and may just prefer garbage rather than something tasty like a mayfly or a sunfish. They will eat these fish or insects, but the sure way to bait a cat is to give it something stinky.