A helpful tip is to locate someone who has recently had a baby and ask if they're using cloth diapers. If so, offer to buy them bleach if you can have the bottles. It takes a lot of bleach to keep the diapers white. While you'll have a friend for life for buying the bleach, you'll also have an endless supply of fishing jugs. Some anglers cut the tail off the shad, claiming this allows the oils in the baits to secrete, luring in the big cats.
Numerous anglers use large gizzard shad cut into chunks with great success.
Either way, you'll take home an ample amount of catfish fillets if you locate where the fish are holding. One item very important in the search for giant catfish is a quality depth finder. An LCD graph won't only show you the depth changes you're looking for, but it'll also help you locate fish holding on to the structure as well as school of shad to catch in a cast net. Key areas to look are waters where the depth drops from 20 or 30 feet to extreme depths of 70 or more feet. When the water temperatures drop into the lower 50s, the giant catfish seem to hold on these dropoffs waiting for a meal to come their way.