Kind of annoying___Help.

[wooduck26]

Do any of you guys use "Stinger" hooks on your live bait rigs? The reason I ask is it seems we are getting aot of Channels (I belive they are Channels doing this) playing with our live bait. They swim with it a little bit, they drop it, pick it up again, and when you finally set the hook you get your bait back with chomp marks up to the dorsl fin, and the rear half of the fish is smashed........Is this common? Its a bit frusterating. HELP!

Dave

[DTro]

Dave, this has been happening a lot lately to everyone. Is is channels....probably. If it is, then the Flats are on a very slow bite.

People have used stingers in the past, but make sure that you put a spinner on it to make it legal, if not then your rig has an "extra" hook and is no longer legal.

Frustrating, yes, but if it makes you feel any better, it's happening to everyone right now.

[wooduck26]

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Frustrating, yes, but if it makes you feel any better, it's happening to everyone right now.

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Cool, Not Cool that everyones getting this done to them, but being a "Rookie" at least it tells me we are doing this right, and being consistant with other guys....!

[hanson]

Yeah, the last 2 nights out, we've had lots (LOTS!) of weird activity with the baits and lots of short runs with the fish dropping the bait. I'm not entirely sure as to what species fish is doing it but we did catch 5 flatheads Friday in an area where this was happening, soooo.... it sure could be finicky flatheads. I don't know.

[rushing]

Just consider yourself "punk'd" when this happens.

[catman71]

i was out on the chain yesterday and had all sorts of funny stuff happen.

I thought I was fishing walleyes for a minute they seemed so finicky.

I haven't seen this happen before, I caught fish (channels) but I really had to downsize my bait. A small sucker minnow cut thin and small finally caught me a few fish

[ec30_06]

It could be small flats(under 25"). There seem to be a lot of them again this year. I have had a few under 20" in the boat already this year, and they have taken 7" bullies.

[jtk15]

My wife and I got out for the first time (together that is-new baby) on Sunday night. She missed four runs, and I missed one---very odd to miss that many...here and there is understandable, but five in one night, and not one hook up was quite odd....Often, bullheads were messed up litterally right behind the hook.....are the fishing taking from the tail rather than the head...Is everyone hooking their bait with the gap forward when posssible?

jk

[Flaco651]

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Often, bullheads were messed up litterally right behind the hook.....are the fishing taking from the tail rather than the head...

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I've found that a lot of the scratches behind the hook is from the bullhead swimming around and scratching itself on the barb and point of the hook. Could that be it?

[jtk15]

No, some serious stuff---I am thinking that the fish were taking them from the tail first, and fouling up the "circle hookset" or whatever you wish to call a circle hook....would have tried some octupus, and actually did some setting but the weather started moving in on us and chased us away.....next time

jk

[DTro]

All of our runs last night were like this again.

They would actually pick up the bait and run right until we got the rod out of the holder......then drop it

[rushing]

yep that has happened over and over this year for me. Pick up the rod and nothing.

[wooduck26]

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yep that has happened over and over this year for me. Pick up the rod and nothing.

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Makes you wonder if they arent feeling the vibration from grabbing the rod thru the line, and being spooked? possible?

[mplspug]

You might want to try something I have been trying to do lately and that is peeling line off so there is enough slack that the fish shouldn't feel you pick up the rod.

From what I have heard/read from last night, the flatheads are getting aggressive again, so hopefully we will have less misses and drops for the weekend at least.

[Kurt Paulsen]

I have been out 5 or 6 times in the past two weeks and that seems to be the only kind of activity I have been getting. I did have a smaller bullhead my line for awhile and that actually pulled in a 12lb channel, so my guess is that the channel cat theory is probably accurate. It seems strange, though. I didn't think the channels were active around midnight.

[dps]

As dtro said, its happening to everyone lately. I ave been using smallr bullheads than normal and its happening several times every night out. I have caught some good channels as of late on the bullies with regularity, and itsa screaming run, or run toards me every time.

I think the channels are finaly recoveredfrom spawn mode.. just in time for the flats to go into spawn mode. If you want fewer of these runs, use a bigger bullhead and it will reduce the number of these smaller channels(unhookable, bait killer fish). If you want to catch them, switch over to fresh cut bait wth a hook that matches the bait(usually 5/0 +/-), that often puts a few more flats into the boat during spawn time to.

[DARK30]

Got two little thumpers last night...both on the stinger. Missed two also. The first one swallowed the stinger so I cut it loose. Had a nice dragster right before I packed up...no stinger... no fish.

I'm not sure stingers are the answer tho cause they get hooked deeper...thats why I don't hook bait through the lips either.

[aanderud]

Nice job. Good video. I haven't tried a stinger, but I do hook my bullies in the bottom lip, hook point down. I haven't had a single fish that was hooked deep. I use ocopus hooks in 8/9/10 sizes. Maybe that's why, the dang hook is almost as big as the bullie sometimes