Secret Formula Catfishing

I’ll never forget The Great Stinkbait Explosion.

I was 12. My friend Bubba and I were experimenting with a new concoction of fish guts, moldy cheese and secret ingredients we swore on a blood oath we’d never reveal. We hoped to discover that which has always eluded catfishermen—the perfect, catch-’em-every-time stinkbait recipe.

Uncle Johnny loaned me an ill-fitting World War II gas mask to wear while preparing the brew. Bubba doled out the aged ingredients, then backed a safe distance away while I opened each and poured it into a gallon pickle jar. One container—an old paint can with moistened cheese scraps—was swollen like a pregnant teenager. When I broke the seal, a rush of mephitic fumes burped out and filled the gas mask. I filled the mask with that morning’s breakfast.

Bubba speculated it was the addition of my breakfast that caused the stinkbait mixture to explode later that night.

“Gastric acid,” he said. “That was the catalyst.”

As I reminisce on the scene after the explosion awoke us, I remember most the nauseating odor, the sting of the hickory switch my grandma used to skin my backside, and the piles of broken jelly jars in the shed where we hid the tightly sealed pickle jar so our catfish potion could age. Gases from the fermenting stinkbait pressurized the jar, causing it to explode.

As we scrubbed the shed, tears streaming down, Bubba and I absorbed the cardinal rule of stinkbait manufacturing: never tighten a lid on the mix.


Catfish love stinkbait like kids love candy. Every dedicated catfisherman has a favorite version. Secret recipes are passed down from generation to generation with explicit instructions never to reveal the contents. KFC’s secret blend of herbs and spices is more loosely guarded than some stinkbait formulas.

One cat man I know mixes his stinkbait with the solicitude of a French chef preparing a sumptuous bouillabaisse. Working in his hog barn, where the odors are less noticeable, he stirs together a pinch of this, a cup of that, a dollop of some secret additive. Then, like a connoisseur sampling the bouquet of an expensive wine, he lifts a cupful to his nose and inhales. His eyes water, his knees shake, and he proclaims, “Whew! That would gag a maggot. But it needs to be stronger.”


Catfishermen believe the worse it smells, the more cats it will catch. To make it so, they add some fetid ingredients to their potions, things like Limburger cheese, putrid fish, congealed blood and animal entrails. Catfish lick their whiskers when they smell the resulting concoctions.

To keep the coons from getting it, and, more importantly, to avoid unnecessary exposure to the toxic fumes, one of my catting buddies hides his homemade stinkbait in a container atop a neighbor’s barn. The poor neighbor believes wild animals are dying mysteriously on his property and has searched unsuccessfully for years, trying to locate the source of the terrible odors.

This catfisherman handles his bait like it’s radioactive waste. He won’t say what’s in it, but if a drop gets on his clothes, the garments must be burned. Still, he catches plenty of catfish with it, and his bank-fishing spot aren’t crowded when he’s there. No one can stand to fish near him.


Decades ago, many cat men used asafetida to catch cats. Also called stinking gum and devil’s dung, this plant resin works on catfish like catnip on cats. A cotton trotline was soaked in an asafetida solution, and when catfish rubbed against it, they got foul-hooked.

Some old-time recipes sound like chemistry experiments. Here’s one, for example, that requires some unusual ingredients: “To 1 pint pine tar oil (in a quart container), add 1 ounce each oil of sweet anise, oil of rhodium, banana oil, sassafras oil and tincture of asafetida. Finish filling the quart container with used motor oil. Stir. Paint hooks and about 1 inch of the line above the hook. Good for all kinds of catfish.”

I never tried this formula because I couldn’t find all the ingredients. I can tell you this, though: the old man who shared the recipe frequently caught huge catfish. He made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone his secret ingredients as long as he was alive, but now that he’s passed on, I can share it and thus leave a written record of this fascinating aspect of our catfishing heritage. No other angling sport is so rich and multifaceted, and concocting special baits has roots going back more than a century.

If you’ve never tried making your own bait, but are encouraged to do so after reading this, just be sure you don’t forget the cardinal rule of stinkbait manufacturing: never tighten a lid on the mix!

Bon appétit!