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Texas Agriculture Archive

March 19, 2004

It occurred to me recently that my friends and I often exchange recipes for desserts, snacks, and other foods. But Mel and his friends get the biggest kick out of sharing recipes for stinkbait. My husband is a catfish afficionado, and fancies himself an expert on the subject.

Mel has concocted some nasty brews that stink to high heaven, and he seems to enjoy experimentation.

"'Em catfish orta love this un," he said, squinting at a scrap of paper a friend had scrawled his sure-fire catfish bait recipe down on. "Raisin bran, stale bread, Big Red sodey pop, overripe bananas, raw chicken livers, an' squeeze cheese spread. Now don't that sound larrupin'?

"Says here you mix it up in a 5 gallon bucket, cover it an' set it in th' sun fer three er four days—a week if you dare," he continued. "If it don't make you gag when you stick yore head in to git a sniff, it ain't done yet!"

Mel cackled, dug around in an envelope, and retrieved another disgusting blend.

"Now this un sounds innerstin'. Come off the Internet an' it's called `Bells of Hell Stinkbait' recipe.

"I can hardly wait to know what's in it," I said.

"Soured hog brains, grated cheese, and shad..."

"Yum. Sounds like the menu from HeeHaw."

"Must be some powerful stuff. Says you gotta leave space in the jars 'cause it swells up an' tries to run over on you. Yore s'posed to dip itty bitty spongebaits in it an' use 'em on a treble hook."

I suggested to Mel it would be a whole lot easier, and probably less costly, to just buy prepared stinkbait in jars as he needed it. He took that as a huge insult.

"That don't take no 'magination a'tall!" he insisted.

"I read once that range cubes make a good catfish bait, but that would be way too simple for you, wouldn't it?"

"If Ah wuz inclined to do it th' easy way, Ah'd use winnergreen chewin' tobakker or give a chicken gizzard a li'l squirt o' WD-40 an' stick it on a hook," he said. "An' b'lieve it er not, you can ketch catfish usin' a chunk o' Ivory Soap or lye soap. But then you don't feel lahk you had a part in outwittin' the fish..."

"Even YOU could outwit a catfish. I always heard a catfish was all mouth and no brains," I remarked.

Mel gave me one of those looks and ticked off the ingredients of another catfish attractant begging to be made.

"You'd have to be careful not to let that stuff drop an' eat a hole in the bottom of yore boat," Mel hooted.

"Tell me why all the recipes have to be so repulsive. Why can't you use something that tastes and smells good to catch catfish?"

"Lotsa folks ketch channel cats with doughbait made out of flour, cornmeal, vanilla and peanut butter er straw-bury jello er Kool-Aid. An some fellars succeed with candy gummy worms, marshmallows, saltwater taffy, licorish jelly beans er pepperoni sticks—but not me."

"Why not?"

"Well it's lahk this. Catfishin' is a long, slow process. Unless Ah stick with sump'n nasty, Ah wind up eatin' all the bait myself!"