Quote:
Originally Posted by Pike fisher
We normally lay our baits on the bottom, but if you were to suspend them they would hang at an angle.
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Crazy that laying them on the bottom works for you, I realize that pike are scavengers and all that... but in all my years of looking down a hole at a mess of bait littering the bottom, I've only rarely seen a pike pick one up. Plus I've always figured that since their eyes are positioned to look up rather than down you'd want the bait over top of them.
Guess I'll have to try one on the bottom next time.
One question for other tip-up guys, with a stationary dead bait I dont really care how it hangs, I'm sure the pike look at enough fish that they are well aware that your bait is dead no matter how you hang it. However, I tend to often have better luck with jigging tip-ups, and since presumably we are trying to convince the fish that our bait is actually alive I've always tried to get it to hang naturally. Just wondering if anyone else has any observations on whether it matters or not?
One thing I do find about hanging a bait horizontally, is that it makes the strike more predictable. On a horizontal bait it seems like a pike will almost always strike either at the head or across the body near the head or middle, so this makes it easyer for me to position a single hook rig where it will be likely to end up in the fish's mouth. I typically run a single treble hook somewhere between the head and the middle of the bait, unless the fish is small the hook should end up in his mouth either way, and I can set the hook immediately with a good percentage.