Oysters as bait?

I was collecting some lug and rag worm bait this afternoon and found about 6 oysters.

Do they make good bait?

If so is there any species that likes them in particular?

How the hell do you open them??

if you do open one without slitting your wrist a mile of bait elastic should do the trick , sure bass and flats would eat them

to open them, get a tea towel and an oyster knife. hold the oyster in the tea towel and protect your hand. turn the knife to drive it into the gap between the two halves of the shell.

you need to put the knife through the point where the hinge that the two shells are anchored together on are and twist all in one fluid motion

otherwise if you pick a random point between the shells youll be hacking away for ages and more likely to attack yourself a few times :lol:

Sure it was an oyster? If you dug it up around here most likely a clam I would have thought?
Most of what the lads say above still applies, I find the shells usually quite brittle so I often break them digging though...
Something like the below?

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

used them in december.... opened them by hitting them wit a rofck t crack open the shell and then used a knife..... the shells are very flakey so break up very easily...... when i was finished with them i emptied all of the shells and bits that fell off into a bucket and through this into the sea infront of me as i was setting up for the evening.

i had codling, bass, coalies and dogs on them from claycastle in youghal. very juicy bait but also extremely soft so plenty of lightly bound elastic is the order of the day

Had one of my best ever dabs on a pacific oyster, close to speciemen weight and strangely i haven't used them since :roll: At the height of summer they will be quite milky (close to spawning) and definetly exude a lot of juices when wrapped with a good wadge of bait elastic.

These were definitely oysters - see photo

Thanks for the advice

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

What on earth is that crab trying to do!!.....this is a family forum :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Tom.

sorry for doubting you rockhunter :oops:

that's an oyster alright.

Trying is about all he can do - I think the oyster is perfectly safe :lol:

By the way I should mention that I didn't dig the oysters up - they were lying on the sea bed. There was an old commercial oyster cage which must have been torn up and thrown up onto the shore in a storm. If I had found them in a prestine bay I might have eater them myself :twisted: - but not oysters out of Cork Harbour - which begs another question - why would anybody farm oysters in Cork Harbour?? :shock: :shock:

i have used them a few times in last few years, worked o.k. had bass/bream on em. intend to give them a better trial this yr.

Thanks Cortez,
If you used them to catch bass and bream then that is recommendation enough.

Just have to find some time to get out now, open those shells up and give them a try.

I was out searching for bait near Glenbeigh last year and came across a man loading boxes of them onto a trailer, he generously gave me a small bucket of the smaller ones for bait. I had a problem putting and keeping them on the hooks as they were very soft and bait elastic seemed to slice through them so I used them in a cocktail with other baits wrapping mack and squid around them. I had one of my best sessions last year using them with other baits but how much of the catch that was down to oysters I can't say.

Derek

I might have eater them myself :twisted: - but not oysters out of Cork Harbour - which begs another question - why would anybody farm oysters in Cork Harbour?? :shock: :shock:

There was a commercial oyster operation running down by the dump outside of carrigtwohill, went bust a few years back but there are / were thousands of them around in that part of the harbour a few years back.

I used the oysters that I collected a couple of weeks ago when fishing in Youghal at the weeked, see my Shore Report - Youghal 23rd Feb 2008.

3 of the 6 six fish I caught were taken on oyster. I was using a range of different baits and probably only used the oyster for half an hour at the most but it still accounted for 50% of the catch.

So oyster definitely looks like a viable bait alternative.