I'm not a trapper by any means but I have definitely caught my share of coons and opossums. Always caught them in live traps. We bought this property last winter and when I put out my deer feeder, that turned into a deer/turkey/squirrel/bird feeder, I was getting a lot of pics of coons coming in and stealing corn so I pit a live trap out beside it about 8 feet away. I started out with dry cat food as bait but when I was at Kroger I found a bunch of small canned cat food for like .10 cents and let me tell ya I caught about 5 in 1 week off of that! I'm sure whatever kind of trap you use if you use bait try a small can of cat food.