Fishing Is Great, What About The Bait?

Fishing is one of the more relaxing things that we spend our time doing. With work, kids, endless chores around the house, fishing is our time away from it all. The fishing is always nice, but sometimes, the catching is not the greatest. The most important thing to consider when you are looking for a lot of fish to start biting, is to consider your bait. Once you have that figured out, you are ready for a relaxing day sitting on the water with your fishing pole having fish after fish after fish biting on your hook.

What is bait? Bait is what you will use to attract a fish and entice him to eat the bait. Which in turn hooks the fish on your line. There are a range of bait options from live bait, to no bait at all. The three main categories of bait are live bait, dead bait, and artificial bait. The bait you choose, depends on the type of fish you are looking to catch, the water in which you are fishing, the time of the year, and even the natural food source of the fish.

Live Bait

Live bait as it sounds is bait that is alive when you put it on the hook. Things such as worms or leeches. Ask any angler and they will most likely say that live bait is the way to go no matter what. The reasoning? Fish are used to the look, smell, and taste of a live specimen that inhabits their waters. When you are using live bait you can either catch it yourself using insects, worms or other small fish that you catch in the same body of water that you are fishing in. Or, you could buy live bait from your local bait shop. Be sure that if you are purchasing live bait, to make sure it is indigenous to the area where you are fishing or the fish won't come near it. 

Dead Bait

Again, just like it sounds, dead bait is bait that is dead when you place it on the hook. Dead bait has all the same benefits as live bait. It looks like, feels like and smells like the real thing. The same types of baits are available for dead bait that you can purchase alive. The advantage of dead bait is it's far less expensive if you are purchasing it and if you are planning on spending your day fishing, you don't have to worry about keeping the bait alive all day. The disadvantage, you have a little more work cut out for you. You will have to make the bait appear alive by moving it through the water. 

Artificial Bait

Artificial bait is not natural, it is manufactured. This type of bait includes bait from using just hooks, to large plastic creature like objects. Artificial bait is a huge part of the fishing industry. Every year manufactures come out with new and improved baits that are guaranteed to catch you fish. It can be said, that artificial bait is more to catch the fisherman than the fish. With the cool look to the bait, to the creative packaging and marketing, I'm sure you have picked up a lure because it looked awesome in the store. 

Regardless of the bait that you choose, make sure that you are using the appropriate sized bait for the job. A good gage  would be the bigger the fish the bigger the bait. Not to say that you couldn't catch a big fish with a little bait, but it would be quite difficult to catch a smaller fish with bait that was meant for something much larger. Take what you have learned today and start to catch more fish, turn a good fishing trip great! Let's go fishing.