Catfish fish for you. These opportunistic, bottom feeding fish has sensitive barbels; a slow metabolic rate that loves simple; and love to smell your offering. It’s not only about catching them, its about how little effort is required.
There aren’t elaborate retrieves to learn or imitate particular insect hatches. Simply put bait down there and keep it down there. Because catfish don’t see well, they depends more on vibrations and smell.
That makes them forgiving targets whether youre new to this or a seasoned veteran. Traditionally, fishing for cats mean spending hours preparing bait. Boiling up some chicken livers, skinning some shad, or wrangling a bunch of live bait in buckets gets old fast.
Easy Ways To Catch Catfish
Why Catfish Are Easy to Catch
It kill the mood before you’ve even gotten the line in the water. Enter catfish combos. A synthetic combo of these baits come pre-rigged so you can step onto bank with a rod ready to go with no mess, no fuss.
Simply put, it’s all about throwing something big that looks good and smells even better while staying in place on the current. Catfish combos provide that and they do so without the need for all the trouble of live bait handling. The best known among these are Bobby Garland products.
Benefits of Synthetic Catfish Combos
He set what we now consider to be gold standard of artificial catfish baits. What he created were usually big chunks of soft plastic or foam suspended on a wire leader with several hook. It was simple stuff.
Understanding Bobby Garland Catfish Combos
The foam is there to carry scent and also provide some floatation. The wire leader keep the hooks away from the rough bottom but also protects your line from being cut up by big catfish teeth. Just snap one of his combos on your line, tie on a sinker, then cast out.
You will have no more messy by-catch and no more knot-tying to slippery plastic sleeves. If you take good care of them you can reuse the bait as well. That’s why going synthetic makes so much financial sense.
The bait last long enough to make it worth the switch. The secret sauce for these baits are the scent. The foam alone would be nothing more than some floating trash if there were no scent.
The Role of Scent in Attracting Catfish
In dirty water when cats cant see well, powerfully scented attractors is what prompt the bite. And that’s what Catfish Combos are all about. The foam matrix contain a special combination of scents including fish meal, anise, and more from Bobby Garland’s original recipe.
Before you throw them out, you’ll want to make sure you add some additional scent drops or soak the bait. You’re trying to leave a scent trail that will attract catfish from long distances away. Then once they sniff around, the big profile of the bait itself gets ’em to bite.
It is a two-step process, just like with real food items on the river bottom. But one of the big selling points are rigging ease. A good number of combos feature some sort of strong attaching point or even a swivel which makes transitioning the lure to your mainline easy.
Rigging and Hardware Advantages
No need for fancy knots to try and save your line when it’s under strain. Also, most kits include a wire leader which provide protection as well. Catfish has razor sharp teeth and sandpaper like tongues that will rip through monofilament or fluorocarbon in no time at all.
So even if a catfish does get the bait, you’ll still be connected to your line because of the wire. You will lose fewer fish and have fewer pissed off anglers. It is a little piece of hardware, but it goes a long way in increasing your success rate.
Bait choice come second to location with combos. To use these large setups, you need deep water. Slow current will find catfish holding in undercut banks, holes and channels.
Best Locations and Techniques
Make sure to put the bait into these areas of structure. Usually a simple egg sinker above the combo or split shot works to get it down there. Don’t try to retrieve or twitch the bait.
Let the current do all the work. Remember that catfish is lazy hunters. They don’t go out looking for prey; they wait for it to come to them.
Once you have made your bait look like an easy meal sitting off the bottom, patience is the only skill needed. Synthetics excel versus live bait when it comes to storage and care. Rinse with fresh water after use to wash off old scent and silt.
Storage and Convenience
Put them into a freezer or cooler, sealed up. When you take it out next time, the bait will still be good and will hold its scent for several outings. Live bait can die or escape.
Frozen bait thaws and melts. Combinations is always rigged and ready. Convenience makes it easier for those of us that don’t feel like getting into the live bait deal.
This makes spur-of-the-moment fishing days possible. You can get home from work and decide to go fishing and be all set up within a matter of five minutes. There is no learning curve.
Simple Setup for Beginners
With combos, you just need to be able to make a cast and you’ll be catching catfish. There’s not much to it. They give you a good feel.
When they hit, there’s a firm thump. Then it pull steadily. You don’t have to try to figure out if they are just nipping at your bait.
The rod will load up and the fish will move. That helps novice anglers gain confidence because they don’t think too much about fighting the fish and how to set the hook. They simply do what comes naturaly and set the hook hard and then fight it out.
The gear holds up to the battle. A dependable setup would of been a light casting reel or medium-heavy spinning rod, braid and a fluoro leader. The combo draws the fish in and really does most of the work for you.
Your job is to hang on. Angling comes back down to its roots with a catfish combo. No more fluff, just simplicity.
Put out something that a hungry predator can see and smell. It’s not fancy fishing, but it certainly gets the job done. You don’t have to fiddle around trying to get your bait right; instead, you can just enjoy being outside.
Whether you’re new to this game or a veteran in need of a low key night on the water, these combos provide a straight forward route to getting bites. Keep it simple, cast it deep and let the catfish handle the rest.
