Fresh bait, best bait, live bait
December 3rd 2006 18:05
This is dynamite on fish
Here be monsters!
Now they were probably there all around me the whole time I was traipsing over the countryside. I did manage to catch fish with what I had but the more I read about how mud-eyes were such good bait, the more I yearned after them. To tell you the truth, I didn’t actually know what I was supposed to be looking for. As I had never seen a mud-eye in ‘captivity’ I not only had no real idea of what one looked like, I had even less of one about where to look for them. A local, who was an avid trout fisherman, did try to come to the rescue but to no avail. He couldn’t find any either, so to this day I still don’t know what they look like!
Live worms are now available as bait for both saltwater and fresh water species. There are even bait shops that do occasionally stock live ‘pink nippers’ but if you’re in a big hurry for some and know how to acquire them, then you’re still generally better off going after them yourself.
Incidentally, ‘live’ bait can sometimes be acquired from unexpected sources closer to home. Recently we had to bury a two metre long Hammerhead shark that had somehow washed up on the ‘beach’ where we live on Lake Macquarie. While the grave was being prepared in a disused vegetable patch, the common old earthworm was seen in abundance. I know where to dig for these now! (And as an added boon, we also grew tomatoes over the plot and had a bumper crop of what my partner dubbed “Hammerhead Tomatoes”.)
A lot has been written about catching beach worms, a skill I have yet to master I must admit. Even so, I am getting better at using my shoulder thrown bait net though only in practice for the present. (They are not legal to use in my present locality.) However, now yabby pumping has really got me going! A mate of mine who lived on an island in Queensland taught me the right technique. Someone else in turn had taught him and so it goes on. He had acres of mud and sand flats at his front door and we would scour them endlessly for likely patches of nippers. I too have scoured likely patches around my own current turf and since taken novices along as well to show them what to do. I also searched the net at length for information on yabbies and yabbying techniques. However except for mentioning what good bait they are, there was not much information to be found at all. Nor could I find any pictures of yabbies (“pink nippers”) for me to show others what to look for. (It was the ‘mud-eye’ saga all over again!)
On a recent yabby hunt however my partner finally managed to capture me on film doing what I like doing best, i.e. with the pump in hand getting ‘down and dirty’. (And by the way, unless you are an absolute expert at waving the pump around don’t think you are going to get away staying clean while you’re using it). Optimally, the pump should be made from stainless steel. I have seen old bronze ones in garage sales and I guess they too last the distance. Plastic ones are O.K. but make a better conversion to bilge pumps for small boats.
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