Strangest bait you have used

[skeetshtr]

Whats the most unusual bait you have ever used to catch a trout on? Strangest lure? At Swift creek reservoir I caught a rainbow on a piece of peanut butter sandwich molded around a single egg hook. Saw my brother catch a planter at Harriet lake on a piece of black licorice. Whats your stangest bait or lure.

[Poindexter]

Back in my teens, I used Cheetos quite a bit (pre-Power Bait days). They worked pretty well -- they just didn't last long on the hook.

[Fisean]

Hot Dog right off the grill (with mustard) cookie cutter.

2nd best was.... I was trolling for trout @ Eagle lake, and eating pistacios....hooked a fish and later found a pistacio shell in it's belly. The next day I was trying to figure out a way to put them on a hook to no avail...

[Jimmy]

About 25 years ago when my wife use to fish with me she caught a nice rainbow off a gummy bear at East Lake.

[native steelie]

cheeto puff. i caught my largest ever lake trout with it. close to 9lbs

[perchmaster]

last summer i was playing a prank on my best friend while bank fishing for trout. he went to relive himself and i reeled his rod in and put those multi colored sour gummy worms on. i will be damned if he didnt get a bite and get the biggest trout of the day.

[Eagleclaw]

PB&J sandwich. we ran out of worms. makes a good dough ball if you roll them up in your hands. We caught a few trout on them.

[tsorrels]

when i was a kid me and my dad use to fish blue river reservoir, we would use a marshmallow worm pautzke egg combo off the bottom with a sliding sinker.. also one time my dad let me use one of his cigarette butts trout really tore it up i would put one on a hook and cast it out and let it float they would come up to the top like a feeding frenzy

[fishcentral]

i use ear plugs for marshmellows while worm fishing from the bank !
baby food jar with what ever scent i want in it , with cut in half ear plugs - pink or orange !!! works great ! and they never fall off

[Crazy Outdoors]

I showed up to a little lake with my buddy one day and a couple of his buddies had been there for 2 hours without any bites. So i decide to put on a small triple hook and a bubber with 2 large ants on it had hits on alomost every cast and my buddy tried it as well. caught some nice trout.
Nothing else worked dry flies, spinners, or any other bait.

[kill2hunt]

ive caught trout on the little north fork of the santiam on red huckleberries, ive seen them caught on gummy bears as well, and one older gentelman who was drifting for steel with gummy worms, he outfished everyone i saw that day.

[skeetshtr]

Years ago, before Mann lake was a goldfish infested mud puddle The lake had lots of decent sized Cutthrout trout. One day I got bored of catching them on a spoon and got out the fly rod. All I had was a floatiing line but we were getting the fish in shallow water and sight casting to most of them. After fishing a while on top with no luck I put on a streamer and a split shot a foot or so up the leader. I had several fish follow and then missed a couple of strikes. On the next cast I watched a fish follow and strike and I thought it looked like the trout hit the split shot. After missing several more takes I saw the same thing happen again.I was standing on the bow deck of my buddys drift boat and could observe the action fairly clear. My buddy did not believe the trout were hitting the shot so I took off my fly and tied on a #4 bait hook and moved the shot down the leader right next to the hook eye. I cast to a trout I saw cruising by and he took the set up and was hooked and landed. I caught a couple of more on the rig just to prove it was no fluke. Not sure what the trout thought they were eating but there hundreds of coots on the lake. I called my split shot pattern a coot poop special!

[Andy E.]

I caught a steelhead on an chartruse colored ear plug once, and thats no fish story. On the Santiam after I ran out of bait and nothing was working. I found it in my pocket left over from work. I've tried it sence but no luck, finally gave up and figured it was just luck of the draw.

[Jrr]

Out of frustration as a kid watching others catching fish with worms, caught a catfish and used the whiskers, best artificial worm I ever found and cheaper than the Eggs that didn't work.

[Sgt.Slaughter]

SPAM.....had spam musubi (hawaiin sushi) with me one early summer day at frenchman's sturgie fishin....they weren't interested in my squid so i figured why not...within 45 min. i'd banked a 3 big shakers and a 3 lb flathead...all on the same exact piece..stays on the hook real good
(in case you're wondering it was the low sodium one...lol)

[Doc_Rhen]

Don't remember using anything odd for trout but many years ago I was in Minnesota catching panfish. We were using worms but soon ran out so we tried the barehook to no avail so I got to looking in my tacklebox and found a rubber worm. I broke off a piece that would fit the shank of my little hook, threaded it on and the action resumed.

[shed head]

got a nice one on the rogue when i was a kid. used the flip top off a pop can.

[OldTymer]

I have caught Cutthroat trout out of the river off of sucker fish. Landed a sucker fish one day and dont know how I got to the conclusion of using it for bait but man does it work. I landed numourous wild cutthroat trout that were 16-18 inches that day.

[supertim]

Originally Posted by OldTymer

I have caught Cutthroat trout out of the river off of sucker fish. Landed a sucker fish one day and dont know how I got to the conclusion of using it for bait but man does it work. I landed numourous wild cutthroat trout that were 16-18 inches that day.

I've actually heard that cutthroat love sucker fillets, so that sounds about right to me, though ive never tried it.
Also, i've caught trout on the following things: peanut butter (plain and sandwich form) gummy worms, the back legs off a cricket, and a piece of a twig that i tied to the hook while fly fishing

[tundra5]

sage rat. gutted a nice bass one day that had one in him. so on ocasion i will shoot one and tie it on. havn't got the nerve up to try one thats still alive, too scared of rabies i guess. way back when i was a kid we used to catch live mice in the barn and use them, they never failed.

[shed head]

Originally Posted by tundra5

sage rat. Gutted a nice bass one day that had one in him. So on ocasion i will shoot one and tie it on. Havn't got the nerve up to try one thats still alive, too scared of rabies i guess. Way back when i was a kid we used to catch live mice in the barn and use them, they never failed.

yup. Bass love the baby mice!

[Tinman]

Not a trout story, but I grew up fishing Opaleye Perch off the beach down in So Cal. Opaleye are herbivorous, so the standard bait was frozen peas from the grocery store. And since we had to wade out in the rocky surf to cast, the most logical place to store the peas was in our mouths.

Many a tourist stood in total shock as they watched us spit little green things out of our mouths, pin them on a hook, and catch fish! And we caught a LOT of opaleye.

[billjr64]

Strangest is fresh fish eyeballs, planter trout love them. Side note, fished the Spokane river years ago without bait and only managed a sucker, fished harvest trout on Cowlitz for years with sucker meat so gave it a try. Walked through 9 mile park with a 25" and 30" trout that night, no one had seen trout like that come out of there. Bill

[deeptrout]

Dad and I were drifting pautzkies on the north fork John Day with a single egg on a gold egg hook and hooking up pretty consistently, but if you missed the strike your drift was over because the egg was gone for sure-so we thought. A couple of times, we were picking up fish on the reel in, and we started to wonder if they might be hitting the bare hook. Long story short, we caught and released some thirty fish with nothing on but bare egg hooks and some pencil lead held on with surgical tube. We told everyone in camp about it and the next day some sixty more were caught the same way. I have often wondered if we were technically breaking the law by using 'lures' in a bait or fly fishing only section.

[Wang]

Years ago at Detroit Res. we caught a few fish using Bubble Yum bubble gum.

[rtg]

Cigarette butts. Fishing a pond outside of Ukiah. The trout were biting on white cigarette butts..

[blueduck]

Originally Posted by OldTymer

I have caught Cutthroat trout out of the river off of sucker fish. Landed a sucker fish one day and dont know how I got to the conclusion of using it for bait but man does it work. I landed numourous wild cutthroat trout that were 16-18 inches that day.

Grew up using sucker bait. In the smaller north coast streams plunking at the bottom of riffles entering the hole. It's oily and you can keep putting it right back where you caught the last trout. At times when we were meat fishing cuts we would move on down to the next hole because every trout in that hole was going to get in line to get caught. We were just kids so we used a small treble with a couple of split shot and a wad of sucker meat. Not even sure it was legal. Way better than night crawlers, eggs, lures, etc.... We could always count on it producing a nice stringer. Only trick was catching sucker first which we many times caught in a different part of the river prior to the trout fish. We always put every one we caught in the freezer for eventual use. The frozen stuff was softer than fresh and not as good.

I figure it's the oil drifting downstream so went to the store one time and bought a couple of small snapper filets because it was white like the sucker. Worked for native cuts, but not as good as sucker.

[shed head]

Originally Posted by rtg

Cigarette butts. Fishing a pond outside of Ukiah. The trout were biting on white cigarette butts..

landed my largest trout (7 1/2 lbs) on a butt and a croppie jig. i think i was about 8 yrs old. upper rogue.

[Elkiller]

caught a 30lb springer on the rind from balogna sandwich. Eating the sandwich on a bridge as a kid, threw the rind in and saw a fish take it. Got my rod and put the rest of the rind on a hook.....all she wrote

[jimr0950]

Use to catch trout in Butte Creek above Butte Falls on unripe blackberries when I was a kid and once on a salmon trip on the Klamath we were getting low on roe after landing about thirty salmon so my cousin put on a chunk of his pepperoni stick, back bounced it down, and got a 25 pound hen, which is a huge fish for the Klamath.

[Wiggley1]

Snowballs the size of dimes molded to a hook on the Yellow Breeches in PA. I'd drop them in and fish would hit them as they float on the surface. Yet they wouldn't touch a fly in my box. It was fly only, I always wondered if I was breaking the law?

[fishingbob]

years ago insouthern california we used velveta cheese

[jonn5335]

my dad used to use bubble gum off the piers in cali and actually caught fish don't remember what kind

[a12seccrx]

Originally Posted by supertim

I've actually heard that cutthroat love sucker fillets, so that sounds about right to me, though ive never tried it.
Also, i've caught trout on the following things: peanut butter (plain and sandwich form) gummy worms, the back legs off a cricket, and a piece of a twig that i tied to the hook while fly fishing

I have a buddy that swears by using little "mud cats" for big coastal cutthroat.

[a12seccrx]

Blackberries on the Molalla were the ticket!

[Addicted2Koke]

I like to use the salmon I catch to troll for Sea lions. Wire leaders are a must!

[Green Eyes]

We have always used what we call sculpin for see runs on the coast. Whole if small or fillet if large. But was fishing Clear Crk. in Alaska one year when we were not catching that many fish and someone said to use white yarn. We did not have any but found some parachute cord in our stuff and pulled out the white filler from inside the cord, put a small bit on a egg loop hook setup and proceeded to hammer the kings after that.

[ruger357]

cheddar sharp cheese balls

[lucasmorter]

Originally Posted by Addicted2Koke

I like to use the salmon I catch to troll for Sea lions. Wire leaders are a must!

make sure to bonk them sea lions 3 times just to make sure they are dead

[trout killer1]

last year i went up to twin ponds in john day and we used a quarter of a worm and a raisin. but one weird thing that happened to me while i was cat fishing in pine hollow was i used a quarter of a blue gill and caught a 14-16 in. rainbow trout.

[Cliff D.]

Huckleberries

[fish&hunt4life]

i caught a big catfish off a dead bluegill at haystack lol my buddy went back to camp to grab supplys so i rigged his pole up with dead bluegill and tossed it out there and sure enough within 10min he landed a nice 4pound catfish

[steelhead_slayer]

one day i wasn't catching anything in the river by my house. so i put on a red gummi work, and got a bite right away

[fish-on-bend]

[Springer nut]

Originally Posted by fishcentral

i use ear plugs for marshmellows while worm fishing from the bank !
baby food jar with what ever scent i want in it , with cut in half ear plugs - pink or orange !!! works great ! and they never fall off

shhhhhhhh...... ive been doing that for years and still do i use anise and shrimp and krill those work best for me

[kaimuki49]

not strange per se, but some might think it is. in any place that bait is allowed: hack off the head only from anything thats handy, hook it thru the eyes, and if there is fish to be caught you will catch! i often laugh at the detailed and pointless descriptions of "what" to use or "how" to use it. fish heads with nice fresh eyes will out catch anything anywhere anytime. but dont tell anyone, k? ps - dont use scent. it will give the fish pause, it will try to puzzle thru the scent. plain, unscented baits provoke strikes because predator fish will strike and stop an offering first and ask questions later.

[MegaByte]

Alkaseltzer tablets. Really works! Throw one in the water and after about a minute or two...the fish floats to the surface. A bit bloated, but they cut good!...........

[Herring Problem]

A budwiser pull tab for trout. works great.