Dip bait

It comes in a tub and it has the consistency of wet cement mixed with something that died. Cheese, blood, shad and fish oil are common bases, and the smell is the entire product, because a catfish hunting in muddy water finds food by scent long before it sees anything.

It will not stay on a plain hook. The delivery method is a ribbed plastic worm or a hollow tube with a treble hanging at the base, dipped into the tub so the grooves hold a load of bait. That worm is reusable and the bait washes off it in twenty or thirty minutes, which is your rebait interval.

It is a channel catfish bait specifically. Flatheads want live fish and largely ignore it, and blues are somewhere in between.

Store the tub somewhere that is not the house. Nobody has ever regretted keeping dip bait in the garage.