On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:09:42 -0500, Gene Kearns
wrote:

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:01:50 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

Short Wave Sportfishing wrote:

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 16:51:02 -0500, Harry Krause
wrote:

I'm going to try to give up using "live" bait or fish chunks (bait that
was once live) and concentrate on using hard lures and plastics. I
started thinking about doing this last season, and started making the
transition towards the end of the year, going back to the lead-headed
jigs with plastic shrimp, and some of the other larger plastics that
served me so well in NE Florida. Last season, from August on, I
experimented in the Bay with the usual dead fish bait one buys at the
bait stores and with plastics, and the fish-caught count was about even
most days.

I might still use chum bags as an attractant, though. Yes, chum is
formerly live bait. But, then, the life of a fisherman isn't binary.

Interesting.

Around Narragansett and environs, you might say it's about 60/40 live
to artificial. If you want the monster stripers, live is the only way
to go, but last year, I hit a 40 inch striper on a salmon streamer
fished off the bottom as a teaser about three feet up from a 24 inch
tube. My biggest on live eel was 30 inches and a rather light fish at
that.

An awful lot of huge stripers here are caught off umbrella rigs with an
array of artificial lures. I've caught my biggest stripers here trolling
a big Mann's artificial plug.

Actually, there seems to be a trend on the TV "fishing shows" to use
more artificial bait. IF the goal is to catch fish and they'll bite
on surgical hose.... go for it...

We have a local show up in this area called Northeast Angler and you
can't buy those guys artificial baits - it's live bunker or eels and
that's it. Offshore, butterfish and chum for tuna, but I like to
troll. In fact, I'll run a mile or so behind something like a big
Hatteras or Cabo when running lures for bluefin - the sound of the big
engines seems to bring the big fish up and I can latch on to some of
the stragglers using bubblers and squid imitations. Heh, heh, heh...
:)

Later,

Tom
S. Woodstock, CT
----------
The years will bring their Anodyne,
But I shall never quite forget,
The fish that I had counted mine
And lost before they reached the net.

Colin Ellis, "The Devot Angler" quoted
in A. R. Macdougall, Jr's "The Trout
Fisherman's Bedside Book" (1963)