I have a buddy saving me some shad and skipjack to make a gallon or two of ground fish bait. I want a fresh fishy smell. Any tips on what to add? Salt, benzoate, smoke oil, shellfish oil? I’ve never tried a fresh fish home made bait but Milligan used to sell one years ago I did well on land with.
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I sent you a message I’m kinda guarded about what I use in fish as nobody will tell you what to use so ya gotta figure it out on your own.
The other day I took a bunch of catfish scrapes and heads and such minus the guts and put it ina barrel of water go cook down see what we get in November.
All a man should need is a spoon and soppin biscuit.
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Sunday i cut up several catfish scraps and suckers and put in a bucket with several double handfuls of stock salt. Shook it up good to coat well and sealed. Checked it yesterday and had quite. Bit of hard smelling liquid building up. May not work but its worth a try. I figure any fish loving animal would come into a pocket or hole for it. Or maybe just made a big pile of possum bait. We will see.
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I’ve never had any luck with shell fish oil
Is it me?
To much to little I d appreciate a conversation ifn
Ya wanna
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The best way I ever used it was adding it to vegetable oil for a coon trailing scent.
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I have a formula written down somewhere from Nevada that uses liquid fish fertilizer, shellfish and some other stuff for bobcat trailing scent but it’s grown legs with six more pages and walked off. A lifetime is too short to be much more than a dabbler. I like the beaver lure the way I make it and think my cat gland is ok. I cracked the bucket yesterday of some ten year old ground bobcat with Nelson solution I made and it smells as good as any bait for predators I ever smelled. I need to test it out this year.
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I’ve always wanted to make something out of ground skipjacks,I’ll have to plan a trip to ky lake next spring to catch a bucket or 2
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I never have had much luck with it either. Your mind wants to believe it will work great, but reality always said different for me! I have had pretty good luck with just jack mackerel for years.
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I believe it’s an artificial oil. I remember the first sniff I ever had of it in E’town. I thought that had to be a super coon atttactor.
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Wonder if you could use those Asian carp that seem to have taken over the lake, they ought to be pretty oily.
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I think maybe they’re being used by some bait makers. I believe Kaatz might use them for their baits? I’ve wanted to try shad since I was a kid fishing at night and one would flip up on the minnow bucket at night, die and start smelling. Since then I’ve used for cut catfish bait and they have a lingering odor on your hands. I have how I want to grind them and what to add in my head. Maybe use them as something added to a meat bait even. Part of the fun of trapping is having ideas and making stuff that most of which don’t pan out when finished. If nothing else and they make an oily stinky mess a man might use them up in the air to create a milling effect?
The fact they’ll be ground guts and all will make them smell different than a pure fish meat type bait. They might make a better predator bait than waterline.
If you could catch some.big ones they’d make a good effective salted fish if dry they have a good lingering odor that stuff will work for at least a little bit.
Even if they don’t eat um they work them enough to be effective.
Colt
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