I'm new to the bullhead experience so if any body out there could give me some tips and pointers on where to look and what to use to catch them would be great.

Bullheads will hit most anything. Nightcrawlers,stinkbait,shrimp,liver,even cut bait.I've seen people use hot dogs & soap as well. Good luck!

Fish ponds or lakes.  I've fished some streams or creeks that have a lot of them in the slack waters.  Just make sure it's good water so you don't transport invasive aquatics to another body of water.

for just learning i would start off making shure there is bullheads in the water that you are planning on fishing and then id recomend using nightcrawlers under a bobber and dont let them have it too long or you will be retriving hooks out of the guts of the fisty eaters, a side note watch the barbs on the sides and the dorsal of the bullheads they hurt for hours if you get poked by them!! good luck

use chicken liver on a size 4 bait holder hook. The easiest and one of the most effective rig for these guys would be the slip weight rig with an egg sinker and snap swivel. Make sure to set the hook immediatly and hard on these guys because they will swallow the hook by the second bite

I've been trying to figure out what a bullhead is.  Are they what some Southerners call "speckled cat"?  Another man told me that in the old days(?) they use to call them Government Cat because when times were hard the Government stocked them all over the country?  I looked them up in one of my books from NAFC Library and it appeared to me that they are what you would call a "Brown Bullhead" which rarely gets above six pounds and that they bite best in hot weather and late in the afternoon.  Waiting to hear from some of our bull headed experts (that don't seem quite right but what the heck)  Uncle Tom Are they could to eat?

bullheads do belong to the cat family and they do not get very big per say like yer channels or flats. a 6lb bullhead is very big. expect most of them to be between 12 and 18 inches-- for browns er yellows and for blacks 8 to 14 inches is the average.

depending on the waters you are planning on fishing is what rig you might choice to use. in a lake in early spring i use a bell sinker at the bottom of my line with a couple of hooks tied about a foot apart above that. the bell sinker should only be big enough to hold it on the bottom and to get your bait out far enough from shore.

another rig i use is the slip egg sinker about a foot or 2 above a hook, like when i drag a crawler for smallies er eyes.

for bait, a bullhead will eat about anything. crawlers, worms, minnows, hotdogs, baloney, cheese so on and so forth......anything you would use for cats and then some.

oh ya like it was said before.......wait until you can feel them pulling as they are taking off and you will have to dig deep ta get yer hook back during the summer that is. early spring you might have to wait for them to start there run with the bait to set the hook.

Thanks Mr. Bill, I learned more about bullheads in the last few minutes than I have learned in a lifetime and that is already nearing three score and four.  Has anyone ever heard them called "government cats".  My Dad who is knocking on the door of four score and four says he thinks they called them that back in the days of the CCC Camps.  He is seldom wrong!  My Mom use to say there are very few homes that has someone in it that knows everything but one that has three is unbelievable!
Good luck and good fishing!  My wife says she caught a bullhead more than forty years ago.  Happy Anniversary Dear!  or was it Happy Birthday!  Uncle Tom 

lmao tom......so which is it and ya better get it right if ya want ta see her have another........hehehehehehheeee

went to the river to fish for smallies. i caught 6 bullheads to nite on minnows. did get a few bass too.

tom i think yer goverment cats were any small cat or bullheads that feed the family during the depression.
but i did hear a story once about that during the depression that the main fish that was harvested by the market fisherman were cats and the gov. help allot of fish farms get started during that time and cats were the main fish planted in these farm ponds. so maybe we just might need to do more surching and find the answer.

I usually catch them with hot dogs and dough balls (bread) by accident when fishing for carp. They grow pretty large in the place I fish.
TIGHT LINES!

oh tom the big dif between a cat and a bullhead if ya didn't know already is cats have forked tails and bullheads are rounded

Mr bill, there are other differences. Some bullhead have squared tails and different fin shapes.
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Mr. Bill, I knew you would know something about them government cats during the depression.  No wonder George Perry ate that WORLD RECORD LARGEMOUTH BASS!  Lake Montgomery has pretty near dried up and the DNR filled the River with Flatheads and the Flatheads filled themselves with most of the panfish.  Use to be common to catch big ole bluegills "Copperheads".  I caught 6 in Old Hughes River once that weighed 11 pounds and had several to break my line (4 pound on ultralite).  "Sweetie" caught several over a pound for her birthday.  Wish I had a camera with audio--what a picture of her trying to get a bluegill in a net for Northern Pike and squealing Hold em Hook!  Hold em Hold!  Hold em Sweetie!  Uncle Tom  Gotta go dig her some worms before she gets home from work!

yer right multispecies there are allot more detailed differences, but the forked to rounded or slightly squared tail is the most noticeable.

happy fishing everyone

will thanks tom......i'm just saying what i remember what was said by dad and uncles........i just hope i remember right....on the government cats that is.

Posted By multispecies101 on 30 Jul 2010 10:21 PM

...by the way, vweeks, did you get an avatar?
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haha yea, one of the many recent pictures from california fishing. I was there for a summer camp but in my free time i was with my brother, his girlfriend and her family and her dad her brother and a guy who works with bass pro shops took me out on a boat. I got to drive it as well.

Went fishing for Bullhead tonight at my local pond. Caught an 8 in., 12 in., and a 14 or 15 in. monster. I was using wheat bread wrapped around a hook on my baitcasting rod. I got a few pictures, but I took them with my phone and I'm not really sure how to get them off of it at this time. I'll try to post them soon!
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Here it is!  I'm pretty sure this is the twelve incher.  The other pictures didn't turn out.
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Has anyone tried using Berkley Powerbait Catfish Dough Baits?

I catch more bullheads off of a Powerbait soft plastics than I would ever catch on any Powerbait Catfish Dough Bait. I went through a whole package of blood doughbait over one summer and didn't get a single thing.