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I have heard that sucker fillets work well for fishing, because they stay on good. I'm not sure where to consistently find suckers; however, carp are readily available. How well does a fillet of carp stay on the hook? Assuming it stays on, does one scrape off the scales? I know, I know, BLM I should have got more cisco when they were running.
BTW - I have found that frozen red shiners stay one quite well, but anchovies are really soggy.
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Smith and eddies usually stocks sucker and chub meat. Just dont let BLM thaw the bag in the cab of your truck. Once frozen bags tend to leak fish juices.
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I've used sucker before at Bear lake and it stays on the hook great and I've also seen people do good with carp meat, both will catch fish. Use what you got and hope for the best. WH2
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Sportsman's also stocks sucker fillets; however, I was hoping to save some bucks by filleting a carp myself. Once summer arrives, I will be able to get a large supply of red shiners out of Strawberry with my casting net.
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[cool]My two cents. I use a variety of fish flesh to "sweeten" jigs, spoons and bait bugs. I have found it is always best to use the "bait du jour", for the waters you are fishing...i.e., cisco for Bear Lake. However, most predatory fish are opportunists and will at least sample something else before deciding it ain't fittin' to eat. If you stay tuned to the "tap", of the sample munch, you can get the hook into the curious fish before he rejects your faux fish.
I have decorated with strips of carp flesh on many occasions when that was all I could scare up...that was legal. I have found that (for me at least), the "mirror carp", with the smooth skin and only a few large scales, seemed to work better than the more common scaly kind. I "discovered" this while fishing Yuba a few years ago. There were a higher percentage of the mirror variety in Yuba than there are in most waters, and it was usually easy to catch them on worms or doughballs, if you couldn't get a couple of small perch. When properly filleted and cut into fluttery strips, they worked fine. When I tried a regular scaly carp, side by side, the mirror carp meat often caught several times as many fish. Who knows?
Which ever type carp you are using, first scale the fish to be used for bait. Then, cut off a fillet and slice out the rib cage...still with the skin intact. Next, with the skin side down...AND A SHARP BLADE...slice off most of the flesh from the skin...leaving about a 1/4" of meat still attached to the skin.
Flip the fillet over, with the skin side up. Now you can cut strips...using a sharp knife, a single edged razor blade or a craft knife. For perch and other small fish, cut strips about an inch or less in length...about a 1/4" wide. For larger jigs and larger perch, walleye or small cats, cut about 2" to 3" strips, about a half inch wide. For big cats, walleyes and trout (cutts and macks), you may have to cut the strips from the fillet lengthwise.
To improve flutter and appeal, cut your strips wider at the top. I usually cut out a strip as wide as the length I want my strips. Then, I use the blade to cut little triangles back and forth down the lenght of the strip. The wide part of one strip is next to the narrow part of the next. Don't know if I described it well, but if you do it right, you end up with a bunch of equal triangular baits, ready for the hook.
If you have trouble getting your hook point through the tough skin, borrow a trick from the "jig and pig" bass crowd. Use the point of a sharp knife to cut a SMALL slit vertically at the wide end of the strip. The jig goes in easily, but the bait stays on the barb well, until you twist and remove it. The other way to minimize problem hooking and removal is to flatten the barb on the jig hook. Only rarely will a fish snatch the bait, but it will be easier to stick it and to pull it off when you need to change it.
Still another option is to visit a good Asian fish counter. There are many salt water species for sale in some of these markets with bright silver skin and "fishy" smelling flesh that is attractive to a lot of species. Most of these are not too expensive, as whole fish. And, when you factor in the other costs of getting on the lake, a couple of bucks for a good "sweetener"...the final catalyst to success...ain't bad insurance.
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