Dead Bait.
How Fresh Is Your Dead Bait?
Hooking Your Dead Bait
Ledgered dead baits are attatched to the line by snap tackle rigs. Using a bomb attached to a three way swivel with the snap tackle attached will leave your dead bait suspended in the water invitingly. When hooking your dead bait for pike the use of a trble and a single hook is advocated to give a deep hooked pike more chance to survive.
What Fish Does Dead Bait Work For?
Dead baits are in effect dead fish. Logic dictates that using fish as a bait will catch other fish, predatory fish, big predatory fish. For example when a pike becomes big and older it is less likely to be chasing younger fish around for a meal, therefore dead bait provide and easy meal and a large fish for the angler.
Predatory fish take all kinds of fish but some of the more popular ones are as follows.
The likes of bream and dace can be fished whole eels are too long to be effectively fished whole so generally speaking these are fished in segments but where there are eels naturally present in the waters these segments make effective bait. Minnows are another excellent bait and when salted the smell they give off becomes an even more effective bait for predators. These are all excellent cheap baits for the angler but investment in rainbow trout make a good pike bait. Mackrel and herring also make good freshwater bait which does not make sense as they are sea fish but they are full of oil and the slick they give off attract predators.
Fresh dead bait has many advantages it firm and hookable and full of fish juices that leave a trail for predatory fish to follow and devour.
Trial and Error
When fishing popular areas where pretatory fish are known to fall then trail and error may be needed to entice the fish. Indeed where a fish may be used to the smell and taste of a certain dead bait then using a different dead bait may bring greater success. Therefore to take a variety of dead baits fishing would be a good idea and possibly bring a greater chance of landing that prize catch.