Best House Fly Attractant Bait For Catching and Trapping Flies

[Nifty-Chicken]

I've tried so many different things over the years as bait in my fly traps. The traps themselves (like this) work great when they have a good bait / attractant inside.

... but I've yet to find the "perfect" bait

I've tried all kinds of things: raw fish, chicken-poop, vinegar + sugar combos, professional fly-bait concentrate, etc. etc. etc.

So far, none of them work GREAT. The only ones that seem to work "ok" on houseflies is the faw fish and chicken poop, but even those don't seem to "pull them in" like I'd expect or want.

Maybe my expectations are too high? I remember as a kid seeing big gallon-sized traps FULL of gazillions of flies, and I'm really wanting to duplicate that level of success.

So, WHAT DO YOU USE for attracting houseflies?



Here's my setup where I've been testing different attractants. In this case it's raw salmon on the left (with a few flies), and a "professional fly bait liquid" on the right (zero so far... and it smells TERRIBLE).

 

[orloffer]

I use the Victor Fly Magnet trap for house flies (outdoors, of course). We set it up several weeks ago and it caught hundreds of flies. The thing was just crawling with flies, and they were all crushing each other in there. I think some of them even started breeding eventually, as I saw a few small yellow worms squirming around. We threw them all out a couple days ago and just filled the trap up with water (it still smells nasty so it will probably keep working). It is great for normal house flies but not so great for lesser house flies (the kind that fly endlessly around in circles and never seem to land - they lay eggs in chicken poop).
EDIT: just realized this trap is the one you linked above.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

I use the Victor Fly Magnet trap for house flies (outdoors, of course). We set it up several weeks ago and it caught hundreds of flies. The thing was just crawling with flies, and they were all crushing each other in there. I think some of them even started breeding eventually, as I saw a few small yellow worms squirming around. We threw them all out a couple days ago and just filled the trap up with water (it still smells nasty so it will probably keep working). It is great for normal house flies but not so great for lesser house flies (the kind that fly endlessly around in circles and never seem to land - they lay eggs in chicken poop).
EDIT: just realized this trap is the one you linked above.

Thanks for that!

What are you using for the attractant? Is it stuff that came with the trap?

My traps came without any fly attractant / bait, so I'm trying to find the absolute best thing to use to draw them ALL in!

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

I just looked it up on Amazon and found the Victor bait that comes with the traps:
https://amzn.to/3fHCmVM

I'm willing to give it a try... but have had such poor-success with other "man-made" baits, that I'm a bit hesitant to buy more.

 

[orloffer]

Thanks for that!

What are you using for the attractant? Is it stuff that came with the trap?

My traps came without any fly attractant / bait, so I'm trying to find the absolute best thing to use to draw them ALL in!

Yes, it's the stuff that came with the trap. It seems to have worked pretty well for us. At first it only caught a few flies per day, but then once the first flies died and started to smell, it attracted a much larger quantity. There were flies going in and buzzing around in there all the time. Now that we have thrown out the bait and started over with water, things have slowed down a lot. I'm hoping the flies will catch on again.

 

[Painted Calls]

I have a friend that swears by regular Dr. Pepper. I never paid attention to his fly traps, but his barn was pretty fly-free.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

Yes, it's the stuff that came with the trap. It seems to have worked pretty well for us. At first it only caught a few flies per day, but then once the first flies died and started to smell, it attracted a much larger quantity. There were flies going in and buzzing around in there all the time. Now that we have thrown out the bait and started over with water, things have slowed down a lot. I'm hoping the flies will catch on again.

I remember that as a kid! It definitely seemed that dead flies were the BEST attractant for other flies!

I wonder if I get to the point where the trap is REALLY bringing them in and gets full, if it would make sense to only empty 3/4 of the trap? That sounds like a super horrible/messy experience, but I might have to add that to my experimenting.

 

[orloffer]

I remember that as a kid! It definitely seemed that dead flies were the BEST attractant for other flies!

I wonder if I get to the point where the trap is REALLY bringing them in and gets full, if it would make sense to only empty 3/4 of the trap? That sounds like a super horrible/messy experience, but I might have to add that to my experimenting.

That would probably work well. We couldn't do that because there were some maggots in there, and we didn't want the fly trap producing more flies!

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

We couldn't do that because there were some maggots in there, and we didn't want the fly trap producing more flies!

Why not? That sounds like a self-renewing bait?

... and they can't escape, right?

... but still

 

[speedy2020]

I used the Flowtron BK-40D bug zapper last year to get rid of the fly. You can get rid few hundred flies a day. The home made bottle which similar to the jar setup didn't work that well and only got about 15 flies in a week. As far as the bait, I used the left over parts from the chicken.