BigBendFishing.Net

How many times have you been Trout fishing with live pin fish and get a hit only to reel in a mashed or half bait?
This past weekend I tried something different. I tied a small 3 inch piece of mono to the eyelet of the main hook with a smaller 1/0 short shank hook. Insert the "stinger" hook close to the tail. The bait can still swim freely.
We caught a good many trout that normally would be just short strikes on the stinger hook this past weekend. No more crushed or half baits after we used this method. Didn't seem to bother the frequency of the bite.

Thanks CS. I may try that, since I have only caught one stinkin Trout on a pin.

Half baits are normally the less desirables like sharks so I don't want to catch them. Mashed baits are usually cobia that just pinch the baits in their mouthes. Normally a good sharp khale hook will get those anyway.

Tom I agree on the half baits, however this past Sun. we were getting trout up to 10 foot from the boat and it would seem that they would just let go. We were getting a lot of crushed bait back in 2 foot of water. When we put the stinger hook on, we caught trout and only one shark. That changed my mind about crushed baits and cobia.

Crushed baits in 2 feet were most likely sailcats.

CS, were you using CThunders, or freeline.

Tom, you know more about fishing than I'll most likely ever know, and no that's not a sarcastic remark.
However, we caught trout, and not sailcats or sharks when we started using the stinger. We caught no cats of any kind all day, and only one shark. The shark was caught on the stinger hook though. That's enough to convince me the messed up baits were trout bites.

I'm not saying it won't work at all. Just my experiences using live bait. I haven't got 10% of it all figured out yet.

On the occasions I use live bait for northern pike, I use a two treble hook setup.
The bottom hook goes just below the gill plate and the top hook goes behind the dorsal fin.
As most predators seem to go for the head end of the fish, I get almost 100% hook ups.
With smaller sized live baits, I just lip hook them, but I use a large hook.
On a 3" fish, I would use a short shank 3/0 hook.
This doesn,t seem to put the quarry fish off and I get a very good percentage of hook ups.

I know it may not be quite the same for trout.

Well, before it was illegal, I used trebles 100% of the time with live bait and caught the hell out of the fish. It takes a little more skill now that they have outlawed it.

ds, we were using thunders with about 18" of leader and no weight.
Cran, the two treble hooks would work great, but using treble hooks with live bait is against the law here.

Where are you guys talking about where treble hooks are illegal?

I've never heard of such except maybe in designated trout waters.

Also does this apply to live bait only or is this for artificial baits also?

It is illegal to use treble hooks with live bait in ANY Florida waters "salt or fresh"

Thanks wevans, I wasn't aware of that. Their legal here in GA where I use them on bigger live baits like trout or large gizzard shad when fishing for fresh water stripers.

wevans wrote:It is illegal to use treble hooks with live bait in ANY Florida waters "salt or fresh"

Actually not true. Amoung the fish that can be taken with a treble hook/live bait include Snapper, Grouper, Mackeral (King and Spanish), Bluefish and Amberjack. There are several others.