Worms, minnows just a couple of the live baits that can be effective

Back to our discussion of live bait. We talked about worms and minnows, but there are other live baits that can be effective.

I’ve not seen mud puppies for sale in any bait shops since 1990. Mud puppies are salamanders. They grow up to a foot in length, although much smaller ones were sold as bait. Mud puppies are as ugly as sin and make noises by blowing air through their gills.

Even if mud puppies became commercially available, I’m not using them. They freak me out.

Hellgrammites are the larva of dobson flies. They are nasty little creatures that can bite you. They do catch fish, but I prefer the imitation plastic kind myself. They are much easier and safer to use.

Crickets and grasshoppers catch fish. You’ll have to buy these at your local pet store where they are sold as food for snakes, lizards and reptiles. I don’t use them for bait because I don’t know how to put them on a hook and don’t know how to stop them from falling off.

With the great cicada invasion scheduled to hit Northern Illinois in the upcoming weeks, I fear that hordes of cicadas are going to be the ideal food for area fish. I’ve been reading how animals find cicadas to be delicious, so why wouldn’t fish like them, as well? I fear that there are going to be so many cicadas available to eat, that fish are going to ignore other edibles.

I’ve had the misfortune of planning a couple of Canadian adventures that coincided with the annual mayfly explosion. If you hit it at the wrong time, you’ll see thousands of these bugs emerging from the water. Walleyes and other fish will gorge themselves on the mayflies until they are stuffed. It’s almost impossible to catch any walleyes when the mayfly hatch is exploding. I fear that fishing may be adversely impacted by the cicadas.

That brings me to my favorite live bait — the leech. The leeches you buy for use as bait are not harmful. They do not suck your blood as other leeches do. They are easy to use. Just put the tip of your hook through the little sucker on the end of the leech and that’s it. They stay on a hook better than nightcrawlers do.

Leeches work best in warmer water. Bait stores don’t even carry them when the water is cold. If you put a leech on a hook and put it in cold water it will curl up on your hook and not have any motion at all.

Leeches are easy to care for. Make sure the water they are stored in is kept cool and clean. Replace the water your leeches are in on a regular basis throughout the day. They will last a long time.

Artificial leeches are almost as effective as live leeches. The Berkley Gulp! Alive! plastic leeches catch an awful lot of fish. I was at a local lake watching the big bass sitting on their beds. Bedding bass don’t eat and ignore anything you throw at them. Another angler walking by told me: “Don’t waste your time. Those bedding bass won’t bite anything you have. I’ll bet you 10 bucks that you can’t catch one of those mama bass.”

I don’t usually fish for bedding fish because I don’t want to interrupt their spawning, but I couldn’t resist the challenge. I took out a Gulp! Alive! Leech and put it on my hook. I tossed it in front of a 4-pound bedding bass and reeled it in slowly. Five minutes later, I released the fish to go back to its bed and stuck the $10 into my pocket.

I don’t think it’s possible for a bass to ignore an undulating leech. Now get out there and catch some fish.