His punchbait is durable, allowing him to garner three bites before he has to rebait. One of the keys to catching a lot of channel catfish, he says, is being able to rebait quickly, which he can do in about 6 seconds.

His other bait is a doughbait that he makes out of fermented soybeans and other savory ingredients. Some of his colleagues call it Cat Candy, and it offers several advantages: It works for casting and retrieving, especially in current situations; it can make a treble hook snagless when probing brushpiles; and when catfish prefer a weightless presentation, it’s often more effective than punchbait. The disadvantage is that channel cats tend to nibble at it. Schmidtlein says that his punchbait is more effective than his doughbait overall. Holscher uses a punchbait called J Pigg Stink Bait and finds it works better than doughbait, too.

Both anglers chum only during the summer, the best time being from July 4 until Labor Day. Before about July 4, many of the channel catfish in northeastern Kansas reservoirs are scattered, recovering from the rigors of the spawning season. Around July 4, large concentrations of channel cats gather in deep water along the edges of humps, points, and creek channels. As Labor Day approaches, the massive schools begin to disperse.

Early in the summer, Holscher chums points and drop-offs in 15 to 20 feet of water in the vicinity of the best spawning grounds. In August, he and Schmidtlein ply deep midlake humps and channel bends, where Schmidtlein occasionally ventures into depths of 50 feet or more. Then as the Labor Day dispersal takes place, Holscher returns to the points and drop-offs that he fished in early summer.

During a typical day of chumming, Schmidtlein catches about 150 channels. His best outing occurred in the summer of 2005, when he and his two sons caught and released 403 channel catfish. On that day, his sonar revealed a band of channel catfish that was 18 feet thick along a drop-off that plunged into 35 feet of water.

Holscher doesn’t tangle with as many channel catfish as Schmidtlein does, because most of Holscher’s clients are novices and don’t have Schmidtlein’s touch at detecting a bite and setting the hook. Still, Holscher says it’s a rare four-hour outing when two of his clients don’t catch and release 100 catfish.

Holscher’s found that chumming is a great way to introduce people to the joys of catching catfish. What’s more, Schmidtlein and Shumway say that chumming expands knowledge of their quarry for even veteran catfish anglers, and Holscher agrees.

But to Shumway’s chagrin, until last year, he hadn’t been able to chum on the tournament circuits because it has been prohibited by event organizers, who proclaim it to be an unsportsmanlike tactic. Shumway, Schmidtlein, Holscher, and scores of enlightened anglers disagree.

To Shumway’s delight, on August 11, 2007, Ken Freeman’s Outdoor Promotions’ Big Cat Quest Tournament at Lake Texoma allowed anglers to chum, and in 2008 chumming is allowed at all of the Big Cat Quest events. Perhaps in years to come, Freeman’s innovation will spawn an interest in chumming outside of its traditional domain in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

*Ned Kehde, Lawrence Kansas, is a field editor for In-Fisherman and a frequent contributor on many fishing topics.