Sorry guys, but i just had to ask...i was fishing this past Sunday at Pelican Island beach and had the only other fisherman out there offer me some cut bait just as he was about to leave....i had two surf rods out that were holding cut croaker, so that's the kind of "cut bait" i thought he meant...i politely said "sure i'll take it", but as i was walking back to our camp i noticed that it was HARDHEAD!!!...WTF!!!...needless to say bait ran low as monster gafftop were loving the croaker so i tied on the hardhead...didnt catch a thing...anyone ever had any luck with those pesky things tied on your line?

or should i say...has anyone ever stooped that low?...lol

ive only used hardheads in crab traps, nvr put on a hook ....so i cant really answer that one

Maybe they'll start netting all the hardheads out of the bay for bait...

30# percent of the Cobia's diet consists of finfish. Contents have been examined and they found mostly Hardhead, eel and round scad. The other 70% is crabs. I saw a tv program awhile back and they mentioned that Cobia love to eat hardheads. I don't fish off-shore, so I can't say they will work?

Get a Sabiki Rig and catch as many small croaker and pinfish as you want for cut bait.

Cobia (Ling) will eat hardheads. Cut the fins off of 'em to make 'em easier to handle.

I mainly use Croaker too. I have heard of people using Hard Heads, but never tried it. I catch a lot of Specks in the surf with Croaker.

I was curious if anything inshore would hit it?....bull red?....shark?....or would even those guys turn their noses up to it....not sure if a shark in the surf would pass on a big slab of fresh hardhead....

i've caught multiple 30+ pound cobia on hardhead, cut the fins off, i put it on an fleurocarbon leader, and sight cast them with it...

Caught a few Lings with Hardheads as bait and I beleive a shark but other than that poof

The lowly hardhead is a great bait. When me and some friends would go out on the party boats fishing for snapper we would go out the day before and catch hardheads, croaker, and whiting. We would use this for bait instead of the small cut squid provided and our catch was much bigger than those using cut squid.

Hope this helps

I fished the north jetty last year with a friend and we ran out of bait but he had kept some gafftop and hardheads to show his foreign neighbor. We really didn't want to go back for bait and there were no shrimp boats to be seen so we cut up all the gaff and hardhead and continued on. We didn't get so much as a nibble for about 2 hours. My buddy said lets call it a day but I told him to give it another hour. He reluctantly agreed. A half hour later he caught a 4 foot shark. A few minutes later I caught a 2 foot shark. As we continued to fish we caught about 5- sharks,2- larger gafftops,1- bull red and something else neither one of us could identify. It made the day go by but I make sure I don't run out of bait anymore just the same.