What are the best baits to catch Arkansas blues or flathead catfish?
Several schools of thought exist and can be summarized like this: blue cats mainly like cut bait, while flatheads prefer live bait.
Kerr Lake guide Keith Wall comes solidly down on both sides.
“I like live baits and bigger baits than most people would imagine,” he said. “An 8-pound catfish has a mouth that’s 8 inches wide, which means he can handle a large, whole, live baitfish.
“But flatheads will eat dead baits or live baits. And blue cats prefer dead baits, but they’ll also eat live baits.”
Wall likes live crappie or bluegills and uses them exclusively when he kicks off a catfish trip. But as minutes and hours pass, those baitfish will die, so he’ll cut them into chunk baits, re-hook them and cast them back into the lake. He particularly likes the heads of crappie or bluegill.
“I get my live bream and crappie from a pond near my house,” he said.
It’s legal to throw a cast net to capture Kerr Lake shad baits, but gamefish (including bream and crappie) can’t be caught in a cast net and used as bait.
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