Web-savvy fishing guide finds audience with blog
Posted Saturday, Mar. 20, 2010
By ART CHAPMAN
Special to the Star-Telegram
I look back with great fondness at what we call “the good old days.” Those are different days for all of us, depending on our ages, but for me it was back in the early 1950s when I would go fishing with my grandfather. He was a quiet man who believed talking too much would spook the fish, fishing from the bank was as good as fishing from a boat, and bait was anything that was left in the refrigerator.
Those would be silly rules to fish by these days; might have been silly rules in those days too. But I loved the experience and if I missed some fish because of them, I really don’t care. My memories are of my grandfather, not the fish.
Chad Ferguson, a professional fishing guide from Saginaw, strikes me as a person with similar feelings. He is a family man and clearly enjoys including his family in all that he does. And just about all he does is fish for catfish. That’s what his guide business is based on and that’s what supports his bait business. It is also the reason he has started a new blog called learntocatchcatfish.com.
Fishing for catfish isn’t as simple as it once was. My grandfather would take what seemed to be immeasurable time molding a simple piece of white bread into a hard ball of dough bait. He would somehow work it on a treble hook and drop it in the water. I never knew how he made that simple piece of bread stay together so long, but he did, and he caught his fair share of fish.
Ferguson’s technique is a little more complicated. One of the major topics in his blog includes the different kinds of bait for catfish and the different ways to use the baits.
His primary subject on the site right now is “chumming.” Fishermen know that chumming basically means dropping bits of bait, usually chopped up so that the oils will slowly spread, over a fishing spot in hopes of drawing the fish to that spot. It is probably a technique used more among saltwater fishermen than those hunting catfish, but Ferguson says the technique will work.
But he goes on to explain that the kind of chum you use is determined by what kind of catfish you are trying to catch. Chum that will attract blue cat won’t necessarily draw channel cat, and it takes a different kind to bring in the flatheads.
Chum for catfish isn’t ground up fish guts, either, he points out. The best chum for catfish is actually soured grain.
Ferguson’s blog talks a lot about catfish bait, but there are a lot of different kinds to talk about — punch baits, dip baits, blood baits and dough baits. Everyone is looking for just the right recipe; the general thought seems to be the more it stinks the better it is.
I found nothing in Ferguson’s long list of recipes that would dispel that theory.
I particularly liked the recipe for “Cajun Mud Catfish Bait.” It starts with 24 dead minnows left to stew in their own juices for at least 24 hours. You keep about a quarter cup of those juices for the mix. There is one box of cherry Jell-O; a quarter cup of molasses, some onion, salt and garlic, bread crumbs, soy sauce and just enough flour to thicken the whole concoction into one-inch balls.
You don’t get that information on every fishing Web site.
“I really like passing on that kind of information and I enjoy writing,” Ferguson said from his home in Saginaw. “I started another Web site back in about 2000 and I had never done one before. It got pretty popular, but when I needed to update it, I found out my inexperience was a killer. It was hard to maintain.”
Over the years, he has launched a number of other sites, one for his bait business and one for his guide business, among them, and he has picked up a lot of experience. Now, he said, he felt ready to put together another general catfish site that he could more easily maintain.
He started it in mid-February and the response has been unexpectedly high, he said. He has had a lot of e-mails in response to the articles, and he’s heard from a number of companies who might advertise on the site.
Mostly, though, it has given him an outlet for his writing. It will probably help his bait business in the long run, and it will most certainly add to his bookings as a guide. But he said it will be hard to tell about that kind of impact for quite a while.
“Right now, when the sun first pops out in the spring is when people come out of the woodwork wanting to go fishing,” he said. “My phone is beginning to ring off the wall. It will be a while before I can tell how much of that is due to the blog and how much is just the normal rush to get on the water.”
Ferguson said he plans to have other guides contribute to learntocatchcatfish.com in the coming months. He wants to involve fishing experts from all over the country, not just Texas.
“I’ve talked with a number of guys who might contribute an article or two each month,” he said. “I’d like to do some fishing reports, and write a few profiles, too.”
