the crawdad as bait

[Phish_on]

prompted by another thread - -

Once in a while I've tried crawdad tails or whole little crawdads as trout bait, but never had much success.

Any tips on rigging & techniques?

[First Bite]

Phish
I like using them for summer steelhead on a jig. I take the crawdad tail and carefully remove the shell using the bare meat only. I'll then thread this onto a small red or black jig and fish under a float. If any trout are in the vicinity they will attack the meat like crazy. If a steelhead gets a hold of it hang on to your pole, the takes are vicious. This is one bait that I like to put on my kids pole when I take them fishing...lots of action.
Mark


www.firstcastjigs.com (http://www.firstcastjigs.com)

[hound]

hey phish on

we use to use crawdad tails all the time when we we're living in prineville..we'd do the same thing as stelhdr said peel the tail and use the meet then we would put on lil salmon egg for color and yard em out there and wait for the lunkers to come by..we caught a lot of big trout this way...

[Kwiky]

Phish_on-

I personally do not think there is a better bait for summer steelies. I love to float fish them, but I do so not with a jig but with a eggloop tied hook setup. I initially went with jigs, but I would always get stripped clean by trout pretty quickly. I fish the hook with a large translucent pink or black bead above it, and a little bit of yarn in the loop. With the end of the tail looped in the eggloop, that bait lasts a LONG time. One other thing I do is not peel the tail completely. Instead, I just sort of mash up the shell alot and pick off any big pieces left on it. It hasn't seemed to hurt my hookups at all, and they still hold on tight after the take!

Kwiky

[sinker]

I've had really good luck on sea-run cutts with them with nithing else would work. Toss a chunf of crawdad meant in and they were like pirahnas. (spelling)
Not to mention they're good eatin.

[willierower]

hound,
Crooked river and Crawdad tails?
So you lived in P-ville? So did I for awhile.

Phish, One of the best baits for big trout is a small live soft shell crawdad. Those things are hard to come though. Crawdad tails work for dang near eveything. Ive caught everything from chinook to a striper on them.

[KarenLee]

images/icons/grin.gif