How Long Should You Be Chumming Before Actually Fishing?

Catfish Chum: How Many Days in Advance Should You Chum Before Fishing?

By: Peter Egan

How long before fishing should catfish chum be deposited into the water in and around the desired fishing hole?

Catfish chum is a wonderful enhancement to any catfish fishing experience for many reasons, most notably because it will help the fisherman catch more and bigger catfish, and depending on the location possibly other species as well.

How to Make Catfish Chum from Dog Food

As many readers of this blog are probably already aware, much time and effort is devoted to the topic of fishing over at the Peter Egan YouTube Channel, and in particular fishing for freshwater catfish. While reading and replying to comments on one of these videos recently, I came across a comment by a gentleman named Robert Chillcott, who shared with viewers that his preference is to wait a week and a half to two weeks after planting scent in the water before returning to actually go fishing in the waters where the chum was deployed.

"I always waited about a week in a half to two weeks to fish an area that I baited." ~ Robert Chillcott

A week and a half to two weeks may seem like a rather lengthy wait for most fishermen, many o whom probably plan their fishing trips on far less notice than that. Paul Atkinson was one such fisherman.

Asked Mr. Atkinson:

Really? You hang the chum and let it soak that long before fishing it?

I decided to jump in here since the discussion was taking place on my YouTube channel in response to a video teaching viewers to learn to use dog food as catfish chum*, a technique in which the fisherman takes one or more cans of large dog food, pokes plenty of holes in each can with a pocket knife, then ties the cans to a metal wire before suspending them in the water at or around the desired fishing location.

Back to the question of how long must one start the chumming process before baiting that first hook, let me make clear that it is not necessary to start chumming efforts 1.5 to 2 weeks in advance if traveling to and from your fishing spot is overly burdensome. Notice that greater portion the previous sentence is underlined, with the latter half of the statement in bold. This is deliberate.

While one can have plenty of success beginning chumming efforts only a few days before the planned fishing trip, and will likely still experience better results waiting until the day of the fishing to chum the water than if no chum had been used at all, there's a science to why those of us with ease-of-access to water (or opportunity to venture out to the fishing hole a week or more in advance) prefer to do so whenever possible.

I can't really speak for still bodies of water, such as lakes or ponds. The lack of movement of the water makes the patterns of movement by the fish far more difficult to predict. However with regard to rivers, streams, canals, bayous or any other bodies of moving water, regardless of pace, that movement of the water carries the scent downstream (or in whichever direction the water is traveling).

Catfish Feeding Frenzy

The objective is to use a chum that is soluble enough to get immediate effects, with scent being released immediately serving as an attractant that lures fish into the area, appetite inducer that makes the fish hungry, and ideally also a drug of sorts that causes the fish to part with their rational judgment in favor of "feeding frenzy" type behavior. However, the ideal catfish chum will also be insoluble/dense enough that it doesn't all dissolve at once, but rather over the course of a week or two. This retains the scent in the area in which you plan to fish, while also steadily disseminating a scent trail downstream, covering as much aquatic linear and cubic distance as possible. Ideally, a chum that meets these criteria and smells good to the fish will consolidate all of the catfish that encounter the scent trail over the course of the week right in the very spot you'll be fishing.

With rivers like the Tchefuncte (the river which the bayou my home is located on connects to) where water levels can vary widely based on local and regional rainfall, as well as tidal movements in the Tchefuncte's case, you'll typically observe the best results from your chumming efforts when the water level recedes due to whatever the reason. As the water drains out, the scent is spread far and wife. When the water eventually subsides to mean levels, with the water come fish - lots of them.

The exception to this rule would be in a very large, fast-moving river such as the Mississippi, where there is to much water traveling at too great a speed for chum to produce the same effects that it does in most moving freshwater bodies, rivers, creeks and streams.

*Of the many different techniques I've tried while chumming for catfish, using dog food has yielded some of the best results if done properly.

The first embedded video within this post teaches viewers to use canned dog food as catfish (and other fish) chum. The subsequent videos consist of catfish eating dry dog food off of the surface of the water inside of a boat slip located along a bayou which drains into the Tchefuncte River in Covington, Louisiana.

Catfish Eating Dog Food

Reader questions and comments are welcome both at this blog and on the respective YouTube pages for each fishing video featured within this post.