LIKE most older Australian fishos, I was brought up bait fishing. I did my fishing apprenticeship soaking all manner of baits in Sydney and up and down the NSW coast. My father was a bait fishermen almost all of his life and my grandfather never fished with a lure his entire life. He fished for luderick and snapper from the South Coast rocks and bream and whiting from the beaches and never used a lure. My father was brought up doing the same but at age 50, my brother and I convinced him to start lure fishing. He never really took to it but did catch a few flathead on soft plastics.
That was 50 years ago and the lure fishing options weren’t anywhere near what they are today. My grandfather and father would be blown away if they could see what fishing is like these days. There were no bag and size limits back in their time and no marine parks or sanctuary zones. There were also a lot more fish around 50 years ago. Bait was how you fished back then and lure fishing was in its infancy. You went fishing to catch a feed of fish or fill the freezer. Catch and release was unheard of. Why would you waste time catching good eating fish only to let them go?
These days there are still many anglers who fish with bait for one reason or another. Some old timers still just go fishing for a feed of fresh fish and they prefer bait to fish for their bream, flathead, blackfish and whiting. With fresh bait, they probably catch more fish than the lure angler and that’s their aim. I see them in St. George’s Basin and Jervis Bay every time I fish.
They’ll be anchored up with some chook pellet and tuna oil berley going out the back and fishing local prawns or strip baits to catch a feed. They don’t let much go but usually know their bag and size limits. They probably look at us in our $80,000 boats using $1000 outfits to catch and release bream, flathead and jew and shake their heads. That’s the glaring difference between bait and lures right there. Neither of us are right or wrong, it’s just how we prefer to enjoy this wonderful sport of ours.
The age-old debate
The bait versus lure debate will always exist in fishing circles. The bait fishos will always tell you that bait catches more fish while the lure anglers wouldn’t fish with bait if their life depended on it. I’m not an unusual case these days because I grew up fishing with bait until the sportfishing bug bit me at age 15. I learned how to catch and collect bait at an early age and how to put it on a hook and present it. I pumped nippers, trapped poddy mullet, caught beach worms and yellowtail to use as bait. I’ve also seen how effective bait fishing is.
I’ve caught some big flathead on live poddies and snapper on pilchards over the years. I’ve cubed for yellowfin with pilchards and caught marlin on live slimies and frigates but these days I almost exclusively use lures for all of my inshore, bay and estuary fishing. The two exceptions to this would be chasing blackfish from the rocks with sea lettuce or cabbage and float lining for inshore snapper.
I was brought up chasing luderick from the Kurnell ledges south of Sydney and I still love my blackfish from the rocks. I fish a 12’6” rod with an Alvey centrepin reel and 8 pound mono, a handmade float and 6 pound trace. Using cabbage bait is the most effective technique to catch luderick from the rocks and using mono line and a centre pin reel is very old school but I really enjoy fishing like that.
My blackfish from the rocks trips are a food gathering exercise and I’m happy to get half a dozen for a few feeds each trip. If they’re biting and abundant I’ll often catch a feed then pull out the fly rod and throw weed flies at them to make it a bit more challenging. I usually berley by kicking in a bit of cabbage. Float lining for snapper involves anchoring up over some inshore reef and berleying with pilchard cubes. We fish a whole pilchard on a 3 hook rig, salted tuna or cuttlefish lightly weighted and drift the baits back down the berley trail. You need a bit of current or tide running to get a berley trail going and this technique is very effective on snapper. I fish a medium double handed baitcast outfit for this with 8 kilo mono. Notice the similarities? Berley, bait, mono lines and food gathering.
We’re not going to solve the bait versus lure debate here because there are obviously a lot of contentious issues on both sides. I worked part time
in two tackle shops after I retired in 2018. Trying to convince bait soakers to try soft plastics was damn near impossible and trying to get dedicated lure fishermen to give bait fishing a
go is even more difficult. Most bait soakers would either say they’d tried soft plastics and never caught much or even question their effectiveness. As a mad keen lure fisherman there is no way I’d fish live poddy mullet for flathead or fresh prawns for bream. That would be cheating in my book because I did both many years ago and I know just how effective that is. I’d rather catch a few fish on lures than a bagful on bait.
Each to their own
I release 90 percent of what I catch these days. Blackfish from the rocks and float lined snapper are the exception.
I might keep the odd red caught on a plastic plus I do a bit of squid fishing now and then for a feed of calamari. When you’re letting most of your fish go there’s probably not much point in fishing bait to catch a heap. For me it’s all in the lure selection and presentation. I find that very thought provoking and something you have to think about. Then working a lure with the rod and retrieve until you feel the eat. The fight is usually good on light braid but so is letting a fish go and watching it swim away. You don’t get that with bait. A lot of the time it’s a set or held rod waiting for a bite or a nibble. You don’t see too many catch and release anglers fishing with bait but each to their own. I’d much rather be working a lure constantly than sitting with a stationary bait in the water.
Berley quite often goes hand in hand with bait fishing. As mentioned above, I’ll berley when chasing luderick or snapper with bait but you wouldn’t normally berley when lure fishing. Most times we’re covering ground with the electric or a breeze and fishing new water with each cast. The opposite applies with bait. You would normally anchor up and get some berley into the water and try to attract fish to your baits. Sitting on the anchor with rods set and berleying just doesn’t do it for me I’m afraid. The closest I get to berley would be a dab of scent on
a plastic. A lot of bait fishos use mono lines for some reason. Maybe because mono is cheaper than braid but it also doesn’t have the feel of braid which you would think would be a benefit to feel bites. Tackle shop work taught me that most bait fisho’s don’t spend a lot on tackle so mono is usually the preferred medium because it’s cheap. Lure fishos on the other hand, will spend thousands on lures, braid and fluorocarbon leader without blinking an eye.
Pros and cons
Bait isn’t all that cheap these days unless you catch your own. When I worked in a Hervey Bay tackle shop we sold a heap of bait for reef fishos chasing coral trout and emperor. That was kilo upon kilo of pilchards but also mullet, tuna and squid. A lot of the small squid came in from California. I often thought about just how big the Aussie bait industry is and how much damage it does to our ecosystems.
There’s no way that taking that amount of pilchards, squid, tuna and mullet out of our waters every year isn’t going to cause damage in the long term. Another problem I have with bait fishing is that quite often the fish is given time to get the bait down and this results in it being hooked in the gills or gut. That probably isn’t a consideration if you’re keeping it to eat but if it’s under sized it probably won’t release in a healthy condition. That’s rarely an issue with lure fishing because most fish are hooked in the mouth.
Another problem I have with bait is that you need to keep it fresh or frozen which often means a bait freezer. I’ve had a few over the years and they were always very messy and smelly. We even had one pack it in years ago and you can imagine the smell when we opened it two weeks later. Bait is also very messy to fish with.
So what’s the consensus? Well, in my books, bait has its place in fishing. I’ve done a heap of bait fishing over the years and usually caught fish. It is very effective as my son in law, Zane, tells me every time we chase snapper.
I’ll fish plastics but he’ll insist on bringing a block of pilchards and making me fit the bait board to my boat. He’ll fish an unweighted pilchard but he rarely out fishes me on the reds. If we anchored up and used pilchard cube berley he’d out fish me every time. He knows better than to ask if he can fish live poddies for flathead or prawns for bream. As I’ve stated above, you’ll rarely convince an old school bait soaker to fish with lures just as it’s impossible to get me to fish for bream with nippers or mullet gut.
As far as I’m concerned, bait has its place and good luck to those who prefer to fish that way. I don’t begrudge them a feed of fresh fish. I’m a dedicated lure fisherman these days and there’s no way I’d put a bait on a hook to chase my beloved bream, mulloway and flathead.
