Good fish bait

[bear04]

I take my 8 year old son fishing quite a bit. This time of year we spend most of our time fishing for brook trout. Later on in the summer we'll spend more time fishing for bass or pickeral.

This might be a stupid question, but is there any bait that works as good as real worms for trout? The last few days have been warm and dry here (around 28C or 84F) which has been great. However, yesterday we spent a lot of time digging in my wifes garden and had a pretty hard time finding enough worms. A couple of years ago I bought artificial worms that were suppose to work as good as the real thing. They lied. The fish takes one nibble on that rubber worm and disappear.

Does anybody have any recommendations about what I could use as a back up to real worms on the days they are hard to find?

[ASC67]

Go buy some worms at the bait store

[PapaBeef]

Not a substitute for real worms. But if it's just too dry to find them easily, just run a sprinkler or hose down the area where you usually get them about a half hour or so before you start looking for them.
Worms breath through their body. So water will force them to come to the dryer area closer to the surface.

[rsclosson]

I live close enough to Sopchoppy Florida to know about "worm gruntin'." It is an art that can be used anywhere. Here is a link to their annual worm gruntin' festival.

http://www.wormgruntinfestival.com/

[Mike Bruce]

What do the fish feed on naturally? Depending on the species and time of year and other conditions, crayfish, minnows, various insects, spawn, etc work just as well. Worms should work almost anytime. Maybe you're not looking in the right place for worms.

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/mag...so98/worms.asp

http://www.wormdigest.org/content/view/412/2/

[uriah1]

Not sure about Canada, but, trout stream in US are protected, as fly only in certain areas, etc, etc..

If you don't have those...try light bobber with about 12 inches to small hook.
use small leaf worms...or maybe a couple magots on a small 1/32 twister tail.
Look for nice deep areas and let bobber drift over

[Slow Reflexes]

It's somewhat horrifying, but I had excellent results from Velveeta.

[pondcaster]

Corn niblets.

True, hardcore fly fishermen would scoff but those "jolly green giant flys" will definitely do the trick.

[BobbyZ]

I can't fish anymore but for trout I liked to use a float bait rig. A bobber and a stick of dynamite.
You put the kids down stream with nets to grab the stunned fish thay think it's great fun.
The game warrden however is another story.

[OlRedNeckHippy]

[Boubou]

I bought just about every kind of plastic worm, even the extra stinky kind , I only caught trout with real worms or fly.
Use a bobit with a worm, you can put a splitshot lead to add weight, or a 2 or 3" inch spoon such as a Toronto wobbler with a hook and worm 12 to 16 inches behind
By the way, I buy my worms
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[getbent]

one thing we did when I was a kid was invest in a 'worm farm' kit...

never a shortage of crawlers after that!

the other guys have it right, buying crawlers, corn, powerbait all work...

one thing that will really improve luck is getting a syringe (get a real one) and inflate your nightcrawlers...

depending on the person, 8 may not be too young to start fly fishing... learning to fly fish is a great thing and using and tying your own dry flies is a nice hobby... (for the right person, it isn't for everyone)

good luck and good fishing!

[Boubou]

In Quebec only the salmon are regulated as fly only, and I am not sure if it's the salmon or the river that's regulated.
There is always the old " stick two rods , connected to a power outlet, in the ground " technique . Works well, including a light bulb in the circuit prevents accidental shorts
Yes and I just read, as someone else suggested , corn, works too
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[jipp]

yeah even here in the states, only some rivers are fly, and catch and release.
iv always been a fly fishermen since i a was a little boy a a older man took me under his wing. you can use a fly with a regular fishing rod. just get your self one of them clear fly bobers. you fill them up with half water. 6 feet of line off that and your fly mosquito is a good all around fly as well as a nympth. look around see what kind of bugs are around. i always took a little fly tying kit with me and tyed up whatever the morning hatch was. but you did say river. so never mind the fly. try a red/white spoon. iv had good luck with them with trout in rivers. or a spinner ie. rooster tails. etc. etc. lots of options besides live bait, unless you just want to bobber fish. ie, throw your bobber out there and wait. i always found that boring for my self.
good luck, and spending time with your kid fishing is memory's you both will remember for years to come.
chris.

since moving to the desert i have not been fishing. i tryed the local lakes, but it just was not the same im afraid. so i boxed up all my fly fishing stuff, in one box and ebay it off. some great guy in aussie won. i put as much stuff in there as i could fit. figuring he could not get most of it.. just like i cold not get roo hair. heh. i wonder if roo hair is hollow like deer. hollow hair makes for great dry flys. etc. andyhow, only thing i did keep was my old and i guess its worth a lot of money cane flyrod.. to me it has more value because of the old man who gave it to me. i figure maybe just one day ill fly fish again. so yeah i kept my flyrod. :)
chris.l

[' burn 08]

Originally Posted by Boubou

In Quebec only the salmon are regulated as fly only, and I am not sure if it's the salmon or the river that's regulated.
There is always the old " stick two rods , connected to a power outlet, in the ground " technique . Works well, including a light bulb in the circuit prevents accidental shorts
Yes and I just read, as someone else suggested , corn, works too
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I've forgotten the term used for that. Folk do it with a hand cranked box that generates the current. It's pretty dang illegal when it comes to harvesting. But it is a method used for surveying as it only stuns the fish and doesn't kill them.

edit: telephoning is what it was called b/c people would use old crank phones to generate the current.

[jipp]

i remember corn as a kid and told not to use it, the fish could not digest it or something. *i do remmebr old timers putting holes in a can of sweet corn, and putting it near there fishing hole. not sure of there logic, nor could i ever understand the need for dynamite to fish with. so, yeah. laughs............ never looked into it. but that is why i never used corn.
again, i got into fly fishing at a very early age. so i did not do a whole lot of bobber fishing.

i do remember buying salmon eggs, and same other baits in jars. so yeah there are alternatives to worms. as for plastic worms they work for bass. cant say id ever ought a trout with one. with bass i always enjoyed using these larg buzzer baits. loud, and i can only imagine it pissed off the large mouth bass. laughs. cause when they took it, you had a fight on your hands. my biggest large mouth bass was 10lbs and that was couhght on a fly rod using a large mouse i tyed up using elk hair etc.. which is probably not very big, but thats biggest i ever caught out of my small town lake.
chris.

[Boubou]

Originally Posted by ' burn 08

I've forgotten the term used for that. Folk do it with a hand cranked box that generates the current. It's pretty dang illegal when it comes to harvesting. But it is a method used for surveying as it only stuns the fish and doesn't kill them.

edit: telephoning is what it was called b/c people would use old crank phones to generate the current.

Woah, the electricity is to get the worms, not the fish.
As for the other posters artificial flies are probably less digestible than corn

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[' burn 08]

ah, I see that you said ground in your post. my mistake. Ys, I've heard of folks doing that as well.

[SPUDCASTER]

For trout:

Worms (#1)
Pautzkes' "Balls of Fire" Salmon Eggs on a single egg hook.
Berkleys' Power Bait formed around a small treble hook. Various colors and scents.

I don't know about "pickeral", but bass will hit plastics/lures. But even for the bass, worms have always worked great for me.


I usually use sort of a "Texas Rig", sliding sinker setup. So there's no resistance when the fish picks up the offering. The Power Bait floats and I'll use something like a corky or a garlic marshmallow with the worm to get it up off the bottom and more visible.

A lot of the time the salmon eggs will get hit before they make it to the bottom.

With an eight-year old the old worm or egg below a bobber usually gets the job done.

Mix up some soapy water (bio-degradable, of course) in a bucket and pour it out on the lawn and you sould get some worms to the surface. Give 'em a good rinse throw them in a can of dirt and headout fishin'. This was Mom's method.

If all else fails, find you some DuPont Spinners. (just kidding!)

[bear04]

Originally Posted by ASC67

Go buy some worms at the bait store

Believe it or not, there are no live bait stores anywhere near here. Any live bait I use, I have to find myself.

I agree 100% on the live worms being #1 for trout. I like the idea of running the garden hose over the soil about 1/2 an hour before I start digging. There are a lot of good suggestions on here. I also considered building some kind of a "worm farm" because I've heard those work really good. I've learned that artificial worms do not work. The first time me and my son went out we caught 9 trout before running out of worms and switching to the artificial ones. We caught zero trout with those. Last time we went out we caught 7 trout and then ran out of worms and switched to artificial. Once again we caught zero trout with the fake worms.

Once I switch over to bass, I use those plastic Rapella lures. Those work excellent for bass and Pickeral.