Pike baits – Food for thought!

[Tom Herbert]

Guy's you really need to careful when transporting livebaits around, didn't a really famous pike guy get into some real trouble for taking live baits into Ireland. The environmental impact of moving live baits and to a certain degree course dead baits around can be catastrophic. There are rules and regulations in place for all to follow, most pike fisheries will not allow you to take live baits onto their fisheries.

I have for years now used sardines as bait, very rarely do i use any course baits if i do then they are shop bought. I find that the oily sardine is the most successful of all the baits i have tried. They are soft and have very high leakage properties, you can inject them with all sorts of oils before freezing and to get around the round the doubles pulling out on the cast i will freeze them with a trace already mounted and the wire pulled through the tail.

I have not live baited for years, i have never really seen the need to b honest, no i am not against it i just don't bother with it. I fish with friends who have to take a float rod and maggots and spend ages trying to catch live baits and then try to keep them alive, they never seem to catch many if anymore than me.

Bait size, a whole sardine catches me anything from a jack to a twenty. I tend to buy them whole from the super markets, so much more cost effective!