cheap bait trays and whiting bait tip

the trays in which frozen foods/ sausages and the like can make useful bait trays. lots of sizes and some are bright in colour which means they are less likely to go missing during/ after a night session. a small tray is also handy for placing your bait elastic, scissors and bait needles in. use a plastic bag as a cover if it's raning. hold in place with stones, etc.

cut up all your fish/ squid baits before darkness falls and keep them in your bait tray. when the witing come on the feed you will be well ready for them. it also means you spend less time cutting up cold baits, and more time keeping your hands dry and cosy. u will enjoy the fishing more.

hi mark thats an excllent idea i thaw out my mackerer ect before going out cut it up and place it in butter tubs or ice cream tubs

but surely the bait is'nt as effective then as it's lying thawed out for a long period of time and wont be fresh? ( note: ? not !)

mmm! i do see your piont. to be honest i have never noticed any significant difference. when the whiting shoals arrive they'll often take anything, such is the competition for food. your resulting catch will often relate to how fast you can bait up and get a second rig out. if the mackeral was frozen in good condition it should be fine. it's often so cold at night in winter that the bait will be kept in reasonable condition anyway. also, i have never seen any angler cut a piece from a mackeral and put it back into a freezer box or similar. maybe some do? what do yee think??

I suppose it's just me being niggly about fresh bait. I blame all those sea angler articles along the lines of :if it aint the freshest bait possible you dont have a chance in hell of catching. :x :lol:

fresh bait keeps the confidence high, which is a good thing as it means you are likely to fish better. however i have had good catches on rererefrozen squid and fish baits at times. doggies can go mad for 'off' fish baits in coloured seas. dabs too can show a preference for stinky mackeral whipped to the hook. i am sure ther're are otherS, but these fella's often succumb to the filth!

Frozen Mackerel should be kept frozen as when casteing it will survive the cast better. It does lose potency and falls to mush when thawed. that is good enough reason for me. As for fresh bait, well frozen mackerel is never what i would consider fresh anyway. Fresh just caught mackerel is a completely different class of bait anyway. outfishing frozen 10:1. When fishing for strong scent finding fish like Ray and Tope I would'nt even bother with frozen. A complete waste of time. Its fresh or nothing. I would use frozen to mix up rubby dubby but that is all. I have fished watching other boats catch nothing while we cleaned up because we had fresh. there really is no similarity between the two... :shock:

Freshness of bait depends what your fishing for. Whiting will take refrozen mackerel its just keeping it on the hook thats the problem. Talking to a former Limerick sac master angler he found he had more success with refrozen mackerel for rays and doggies. Saying that If I could I'd use fresh or frozen if I could every time.

Donagh

i have found frozen mack as good as or better than fresh for rays and whiting and sometimes conger. to keep it on the hook simply use a bit of bait elastic and a hook with barbs under the eye. also if the bait is thawed out before the session it will clearly be more effective, yes it will be softer thats why you use the elastic but its just like meat which tastes better when left to stew its own juices for a while.

The way this thread is going reminds me of an applicable experience a couple of years ago.
One afternoon I was taken with an impulse to fish locally from the shore, so I foolishly put some frozen mackeral in the microwave. On arriving at the appointed spot I found that the unfrozen bait was just sloppy mush. It appeared useless. :oops: However, not wishing to go home without wetting the line I tried an experiment.
I put some of the mush into a small poly bag, tied it to a large hook and snipped the bag in odd places so as to perforate it. Suffice to say that I had a great session catching some decent sized thornbacks.

Peter

cut frozen bait up to coorect size and keep in soup style thermos it will keep it frozen for the session and allow you to refreeze excess for the next. remove from thermos just enough for next cast after re baiting.

credit to seagull for thermos tip