Chicken Livers

[leo]

anyone have any tricks tokeep chicken livers on the hook?

[Gavin]

No, but I have a mean recipe for some linguine & chicken livers.

Might try wrapping em in panty hose or spawn sack.

http://www.lakemichiganangler.com/tips/salmon_eggs/making_spawn_sacks.htm

[BolivarBasser]

Use a treble. Before you tie the hook on, thread the eye/shank through the middle of the liver chunk, then tie the hook on and hook the liver. The only place it can go, if anywhere, is up the line, but it won't.

Also, check these out:

http://www.basspro.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product_10151_-1_10001_58187____SearchResults

You can cram little liver chunks inside the red netting and it'll keep it in there. Those work awesome with dough bait but work with meat too.

[J&J Melton]

anyone have any tricks tokeep chicken livers on the hook?

Grandpa taught me to put chicken liver on a trebel hook then wrap a small piece of pantyhose around it. Then when the liver gets soggy it won't fall off the hook. It is also harder for the fish to get so they take the whole hook in their mouth.

[FlyFishinFool]

Use chicken gizzards instead of livers - just cut them in half (or quarters depending on the size) before covering all three points on a treble hook. Guaranteed they will not come off, and they definitely attract cats!

[solus_vero]

I got into the habit of using turkey livers instead of chicken livers because they are a little tougher than chicken. Either way, get them as fresh as possible. They both get mushy if they aren't fresh. Also, running the shaft of the treble hook through the liver helps too. (as mentioned earlier)

I have found that cats mouths are very sensitive and although putting the liver in panty hose and such is great for keeping the liver on the hook, I always got less hookups because the cat would spit it out.

Also, never put anything else on the line besides hook and liver. Don't put any lead weights on the line. If the cat feels ANY tension on the line, he'll spit it out, TO THAT END I always set the pole down (not holding onto it) and open the bail then run the line under a small pebble. That way the cat wont feel ANY tension on the line and hold onto the bait longer. When you see the line come out from under the pebble, close the bail and set the hook.

Hope this helps.

[Jigggg11]

Freshness is key, but keeping your bait fresh during your trip helps immensely,I always keep my baits in a cooler with ice,as for the rigging I use a soft tip rod,4/0 bait holder hook in a snell configuration and a 2/0 barrel swivel, no weight, I use the weight of the bait and soft tip of the rod to"lobb" the bait, I prefer turkey livers, over chicken livers, either one works good.Always follow the bait down as it falls, big channels sometimes will tee off on the bait before it hits bottom. I hope some of this can help you.

[ollie]

I have done the gizzards as well and have to agree with flyfishinfool, they are darn near impossible to get off the hook and they still do the trick. Also, you might want to give this method a shot. An old timer told me of this trick, but I don't catfish a whole lot so I haven't given this one a try yet. Take your livers and put them in some kind of pan. You know, like a small sided one. Take brown sugar and coat the livin dickens out of them and leave it in the sun outside. You keep puting brown sugar on them and cure them in the sun for like several days. Eventually they are suppose to become rock hard and you have to slice a pice off to put it on a hook. I would think eventually they would become soggy on the hook, but it sure sounded like a mean recipe for catties!

[toadfrog]

Take 1 lb chicken livers add 1 cup salt 1cup granulated sugar mix in a sealed container put in fridge mix daily for 2 weeks. The livers will be decidedly tougher.

[Bill B.]

It's easy to keep fresh chicken liver on a single hook, using a trick I learned at James A. Reed in the 1960s. Just run the hook through the liver lobe a couple or three times. Then wrap the liver moderately tightly about a dozen times with sewing thread. Cut the thread, and you're ready to cast. You can toss the liver a country mile without throwing it off the hook. Catfish don't seem to notice the thread; if anything, the thread absorbs blood and juices and tastes as good as the liver. To rebait, just snip off the old thread with a pair of scissors.

As for treble hooks, a single hook is usually one heck of a lot easier to remove from a catfish's throat.

I've used the brown-sugar trick with livers before, and it's deadly.