They're bottom feeders, but they like clean, fairly clear water. Submerge a croaker sack of chicken feed in a hole that borders the current and dead water, then throw a few pounds of loose chicken feed around it. Fish just off the bottom, an inch or two, with red worms. My brother and I catch tons of them every year like that. Old timers say cut them this way and cook them that way, but they have a ton of bones and just aren't worth the extra trouble, to me. We use them for crawfish bait.
Interesting way to bait them! The easiest way to deal with the bones is to just fillet them like you would a bass and then cook them in the pressure cooker a few minutes. You could can them, but that really is a lot of trouble. But once you cook them in the pressure cooker, you can freeze them in pint bags and then use them exactly like you would canned tuna or salmon. I've never given any to anyone who didn't agree that it was much better than tuna or salmon.
