Thread: Artificial vs Live Bait

Just out of curiousity what are your opinions on live vs artificial? Are you strictly one or the other? Are there certain times of the year you would use one over the other? Or certain fish you would target with one over the other? Just wondering what may spark you to say it's a live bait day or an artificial day.

Originally Posted by AJ316

Just out of curiousity what are your opinions on live vs artificial? Are you strictly one or the other? Are there certain times of the year you would use one over the other? Or certain fish you would target with one over the other? Just wondering what may spark you to say it's a live bait day or an artificial day.

I used.to use live bait only and caught fish and smelled like dead fish by end of the day . I now use artificial only now , catch alot more fish than I ever did with live bait and smell alot better at the end of the day

It's not a one or the other with me. It's what the fish want and conditions dictate. Saying you will only use one or the other is tying one hand behind your back. No matter what you are fishing form, IMO.

What CarlF said---The fish determine the bait, except in the early fall when the Spanish are biting the little LYs---I love to drift out those little LYs. My aging and deteriorating shoulder dictates how much casting I can do, so I tend to use bait, especially live bait, and let it do the work for me. Love to catch Spanish on a bubble rig or see a mack take an X Rap.

There is a whole nutha category missing here: and that is DEAD bait (including frozen).
Dead bait isn't just frozen shrimp & squid!
Before you all look down your nose at "dead bait" think about snobbling cigar minnows, cut LY strips and 'fresh dead' shrimp.


I'm more like Carl & Mr. Wire so that makes me more of a 33 1/3 kinda guy ;-) LOL

...I may even mix dead and artificial.
At times it's hard to beat an LY strip on a Looney Jig ;-)
Or 'snobbling' with a mostly dead fresh LY (especially those small ones George mentioned).

Again it depends on the fish available, the water conditions, time of year/day, yada-yada...

Hope this helps!

Plus one for what Carl, #r, and Mr Wire said. Don't paint yourself in a corner. The more options you got the more opportunities you got. That's why we got a 4 foot cart, 3 boxes, and 9 poles. So the fish can decide which one is best on what day. I have been holding an LY pole while X-Raps were killing them and I been throwing my arm out of socket while guys were making me look bad with live shrimp or belly strips. When the guys next to you is putting on a seminar, it is nice to have options in the cart!

I'm a mostly artificial guy for Spanish, but also have to yield to the arthritic shoulders at times.

Mostly dead cigars for kings when current and wind are right, they are just sooo much more cooperative than the live baits. Also, I put a stinger hook on my cigars because I don't pay too much attention (I have an attention deficit). Stingers don't work as well on live bait.

I have been at the rail and whacked the axe handles on belly strips and no one, no one switched up and got in the game.
Same thing a couple of times with using DOA-type shrimp floated under a bubble.

???????

When something else is working better than what you are throwing, you need options!

So there are completely different tactics to catching Kings, Spanish and Cero mackerel? Do they also run at different times of the year? I'm hoping I can make it down once a month starting in march. I'll need to do some searching on the "what's biting when" section of this forum. Do any of you use a wire leader for the Macks or just floro or heavy mono and hope to not get cut off?