If you’re not offering what your customers want, you’ll go out of business pretty fast. The same economic principle holds true with fishing: If you’re not using the right bait, the fish won’t eat – and neither will you .
The best bait to use is what occurs naturally in a given water habitat. If you’re fishing for striped bass, then you should use their favorite menu item, shad. Crappie naturally feed on minnows, worms, insects, and other small prey.
If you don’t have the real thing, then using a lure that mimics those things is the next best bet. If you don’t have minnows, there are lots of artificial substitutes that’ll imitate the body style and movements of minnows and other small fish.
Experienced anglers also know to add a little extra action to the lure’s presentation – things like twitches, rises and falls, and bumps – to make the bait appear to be injured or otherwise draw attention from predator fish.
Most of the time, I catch my own live bait. Shad, minnows, and sunfish are plentiful in Central Texas waters, and with the right tools and technique, it’s usually easy enough to catch enough bait for a fishing trip.
I use a cast net, or throw net, which is a circular mesh with weights around the edge. When thrown correctly, it opens to a full circle, lands in the water, sinks, and then is cinched together by a quick pull of the rope that binds the net together. Bait fish are trapped inside and pulled back to the shore or boat.
Another way to catch your own bait is with a seine. This is a long net with floats on top and weights on the bottom that connects to two poles at the ends. Most of the time, it takes two people to use a seine, but I’ve seen one person successfully do the job. Since seining requires getting into the water, it’s a good idea to wear waders, especially in colder weather.
To use a seine, one person holds the net near the shore while the other walks out into the water. Then, both walk parallel to the shore for a distance before circling in to the shoreline, bringing the net in at a rapid pace. It’s important to keep the poles positioned so that the weights are near the bottom and the bottom of the net stays ahead of the floats to keep trapped fish from escaping.
Some anglers catch their minnows and other bait by using traps. These wire baskets have cone-shaped features on the entry point that allow fish in, but make it difficult to escape. The traps are baited with dog food, grain, bread, or other items, set out, and then retrieved after bait fish have been caught in the trap.
Live bait almost always produces better catches than fresh dead or frozen bait, so keeping your catch alive is giving yourself a better chance at success. If you’re using a flow-through bait bucket, your bait fish should stay alive in the water where you’re fishing, but aerated buckets and tanks will ensure they have enough oxygen to keep swimming until their number is called.
Like with anything requiring skill, using a cast net or seine takes practice to build proficiency. There are plenty of videos online that’ll teach the basic techniques, and a back yard is the perfect place to build the mind/muscle coordination it takes to use your gear effectively.
Nobody likes to hear old people complain about how cheap candy bars used to be, or how snowy it was when they had to walk uphill to school. So I’m not going to complain like that, but I will say that on a Saturday morning, when I’m rigging my poles for a fishing trip and decide I’d rather buy a couple dozen minnows from a bait shop than spend the time and energy throwing out my cast net, I miss the old days when I could buy minnows at a dozen places around Waco.
Get irritating
Catching a spawning largemouth bass isn’t as easy as it seems, even though you can often see them sitting there on the nest. During the spawn, bass are focused on the job of protecting the nest and eggs, not on feeding.
So presenting your bait in a way that triggers their protective mode will increase your odds of getting a reaction strike. Fishing a spawning bed requires you to get downright irritating. Get your bait into the hot zone, then twitch, bounce, and jerk the bait to entice a reaction.
Another thing that will trigger bites is throwing a different bait. After riling a bass with an obnoxious plastic lizard, cast a small crankbait past the bed and reel it past the agitated bass, and sometimes the different look and motion is enough to cause the fish to lash out.
Most anglers agree that releasing spawning bass is a good, conservation-minded practice that will ensure that the bass population will continue to grow and provide year-round opportunities. Catch them, get a photograph, and turn them back to let them make their babies.
March 28, 2021 at 05:43AM
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Outdoors: Fish await with baited breath | Sports News | wacotrib.com - Waco Tribune-Herald
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