Where all my live bait fisherman

[Uknowjusticemill]

I catch all my live bait with either traps or dip nets (cast netting where legal) so price is not something I usually consider, I have a live bait bucket that I strap to my kayak and keep dipped in the water so it's always oxygenated. Mortality rates are an issue and that's why I mostly only use live bait for Stripped Bass, Catfish, Crappie, or Sturgeon, but I will use crawfish for bass since it takes them much longer to eat crawfish and I've never gut hooked a bass with live crawfish.

[Bluebasser86]

I do occasionally for bass, but usually when I'm using natural bait, it's for big uglies.

[schplurg]

3 hours ago, Uknowjusticemill said:

Stripped Bass

Closest I could find...  

[Spankey]

10 hours ago, Mobasser said:

When I was much younger, my brother and I fished nightcrawlers for everything.  Here's what we did: take a large fat crawler, use a worm blower or a hypodermic needle and give him a shot of air. Not too much air, just a shot. Put a split shot weight about 12 to 15" on your line, so the crawler floats up off the bottom. Cast him out and reel very slowly, pausing occasionally. The bass love em.

That’s how we bass fished as kids at the quarry. 

[desmobob]

13 hours ago, bass4life.... said:

My only thing against live bait is that it has more of a chance of being swallowed

and hooking the fish to deep

I guess circle hooks have lessened that hazard but I haven't fished live bait (other than rarely while ice fishing) since long before circle hooks became popular.

 

Wasn't there sort of a bass fishing fad of using really large shiners floated under balloons in the late seventies?  I seem to remember something like that...

[Spankey]

7 minutes ago, desmobob said:

I guess circle hooks have lessened that hazard but I haven't fished live bait (other than rarely while ice fishing) since long before circle hooks became popular.

 

Wasn't there sort of a bass fishing fad of using really large shiners floated under balloons in the late seventies?  I seem to remember something like that...

I don’t know about the balloons and big floats but I’m under the impression in Florida a lot of guided bass fishing is done with large shiners. 
 

I’ve never fished Florida Bass. Would love to. 
 

Please correct me if I’m wrong. People who told me they were there, this is how they went about it. 
 

If there comes a time I can get there I think I’ll drag my puddle jumper down, seek some advice from local shop, patron his place by buying his recommendations and have at it. I would think this is a good honest approach. Than maybe not. I don’t know. 

[Ski]

14 hours ago, TnRiver46 said:

Present and accounted for! Lure chuckers can’t even throw a cast net......

I've thrown one @ least a thousand times for off shore bait. And still throw lures for Bass fishing.

 

[ACGOG]

I don't use live bait but my buddies do.

 

One night we were on a lake up near Dallas on his boat night fishing. I don't know if it was the under-lights on the boat or the speed he was going but I noticed the shad were jumping like crazy. I held a net over the side of the boat to see what would happen and caught hundreds of them in a single go. He had bait for a good while ?.

[Spankey]

I believe there is a skill set to fishing live bait for bass. And catching bass with it. I know that I know nothing about. Sure I can put together a nice rig and throw it out into the river and set back and listen to the radio and kick back a beer/iced tea or two and wait for something to jump on it.  But that could be a Cattie, carp, walleye or a nice perch. 
 

Not knowing how to target the bass with live bait might be a waste of money and bait. I be better off going to the shop and picking up a new Shad Rap or a Rat-L-Trap in a new pattern and have better results. 

[TnRiver46]

2 hours ago, Ski said:

I've thrown one @ least a thousand times for off shore bait. And still throw lures for Bass fishing.

 

^ A true gentleman 

[Spankey]

Not sure if this something y’all say to yourselves at some point in time. But there are time when you can’t buy a dang bite and I threaten myself to sell off all my stuff and go at it with a Zebco 33, a rod holder, and a few live baits. And the heck with it. But it never happens. You just go back out and grind away at it until you make something happen. 
 

I’m not knocking the old Zebco 33. Still have a few of them floating around. 

[MAN]

Loud and Proud live bait user right here!

[roadwarrior]

If you don't like fishing live bait, then don't.

 

For more than a decade I fished with my best friend and another regular

guest. They fished live bait exclusively. I started out with artificials until

they caught 20 smallmouth between them. Over this ten year plus period

I sometimes caught two, but usually just one to their ten.  Proof is in the

pudding.

[Uknowjusticemill]

8 minutes ago, roadwarrior said:

If you don't like fishing live bait, then don't.

 

For more than a decade I fished with my best friend and another regular

guest. They fished live bait exclusively. I started out with artificials until

they caught 20 smallmouth between them. Over this ten year plus period

I sometimes caught two, but usually just one to their ten.  Proof is in the

pudding.

 

This had always been my perspective, I've always done much better on live bait then I do on lures most likely because I'm not good at using lures to their max potential, it's like a 5 - 1 ratio with live bait winning for me. Plus I get a kick out of catching bait and then catching fish two for 1 special.