By Allison Miles
Although my favorite method of catching stripers is using live bait like pogies or the feisty mac-daddies, there are times when chunk bait is the right choice; especially when fish have plenty of bait around and have been gorging themselves.
We’ve all heard that fish will not ex- pend more energy in trying to catch and eat bait than it will give back in nutrient value. So think about well-fed fish in those terms. They have all the bait they need around them: macks, pogies and even squid in the harbor. They’re full, they’re satisfied, so they just spend their time cruising around looking for a place to lie down and digest their feast. When they come across your “livey” swimming and splashing around behind your boat, although they’re stuffed to the gills, the predator in them will still turn on and get em’ up and moving to take a look. Sometimes they’ll even give a halfhearted chase, playing with them and batting them around. That’s when you see the swirls, get excited and then….nothing but head scratches and the infamous line “what the fish” emanating from our mouths. Far too often we chock it up to “ah, must have been a small fish, not big enough to take my bait anyway.” When in reality, they may just be big fish that are too lazy to give chase with a full belly. This is when you can’t go wrong with a chunk or even an entire bait fish….just a dead one. Toss one out when you see this happen and you might entice that bass to have one more morsel before it pops a stripe.
Compare this to Thanksgiving dinner. After huge portions of turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cranberry sauce, green beans, warm rolls, and well you get my point…. something just shy of gluttony, we sit back stuffed and moaning while lying on the coach saying “man I shouldn’t have had that last piece of pie, but damn it looked too good to pass up”. Game over….you’re hooked.
So the Angler-2-Angler tip this month… put that chunk of dead bait right in front of that full bass because it won’t be able to resist that “one last bite.”
Angler Allison Miles holding up a Striped Bass that couldn’t resist that one last chunk bait!
Allison Miles is an award winning angler, fishing enthusiast and blogger. She is Pro- Staff for Esca Lures and an Ambassador for Pure Fishing. You can follow her angling adventures at www.gopogy.com
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