I went to Joe Pool Lake Lynne Creek Marina yesterday to check it out for the first time in several years.

The crappie did absolutely nothing, so after an hour I bought a carton of their expensive nightcrawlers and tried the sunfish. At 47 cents each (3.95 for 12 worms), nightcrawlers are an expensive bait. I cut off a 1-inch piece, so each worm makes about 5 baits. That is still almost a dime per bait.

I caught dozens of 3-4 inch fish but no large fish. I also found them all in a 2 foot square and no where else. They were also picky as to depth- about 10 feet deep.

After a few hours of that I grew tired of it. Two men next to me on the barge were catching carp. They offered me dough bait and I put up the sunfish rig and took them up on it.

An elderly couple came and kind of elbowed their way into my spot, mentioning that it was their favorite place to catch "perch". The lady sat down and began pulling the little sunfish in very rapidly. I noticed they were using a bait I had not seen before - a little bar about 1/8 by 1/8 by 1/2 inch of a pink substance. The old gent saw me looking and explained that the baits were bits of weiners. We have all seen kids use chunks of weiners to catch sunfish, but these were uniform bars all the same size and shape, kept in a small Tupperware container, The little bar of weiner was a perfect size and shape for a #10 gold Aberdeen hook. And each weiner yielded a large number of baits.

The lady caught only one Bluegill of any size but she caught dozens of small ones.

My next trip I am going to borrow their trick. Each bait costs a fraction of a cent, and the sunfish loved it. And the baits wil keep indefinitely in a refrigerator.

You know the saying. A group of hungry Sunfish will just about bite anything.




Also It's a good thing to pick-up good fishing tips from other anglers.

I have seen hot dogs being used a few times over the years. Just like cheese,bacon,and even carrot sticks. Yes carrot sticks. Don't ask me how the carrot sticks worked? Lots of home style baits out there for sure. With the price of commercial baits going up you will see a lot more home type baits being used.

I used bacon in the past. Works really good and stays on the hook. Also when fishing for trout good old American cheese works good.

+1 on both

You got that right! I grew up and was taught on trout with dough baits and cheese baits... I loved those "cheese hooks" with the little spiral wire encircling a treble hook...

Bacon is for crawfish. When I was a kid we used to find crawfish holes in the bar ditch and lower a piece of bacon on a string. The old crawdad would grab hold and if you carefully raised the string you could pull the crawfish right out of the hole. These crawfish were 2 or 3 times as big as the ones you find in markets.

I was at South Padre Island this past summer and saw several kids catching crabs by putting pieces of marshmallows on the end of a hook and line and dropping it next to docks. They had a bunch of em.

Plus #1. I have even seen bubble gum used to catch Sunnies.

To be fair to the worms, they stay on the hook real good and i can often catch 4 or 5 fish on the same piece of worm.Lately the only fish I have been able to get into is bluegill and they devour those night crawlers. I may need to try some hotdogs though. I blame the price of nightcrawlers on NAFTA.

O.k people stop drowning those poor worms . Go out and buy a pack of zoom (tiny) brush hogs in watermelon/red 15 to a pack for about $4.00 each one will last you about 6-7fish . Fish them Texas rigged either with a tiny bullet weight if they are deep or weightless in shallow. I swear I have never struck out with this setup.

I've done pretty good with canned mussels as well.

Never have tried hot dogs.

During my vacation in Minnesota, the people I was staying with used kernels of corn to catch Sunfish by the dozen. They had a can of corn in the car at all times, just in case they got the hankering to fish.

As a kid we used cut-up pieces of hotdogs and bologna to fish for bream (or perch as my wife calls them) in the farm ponds near home. And worms too, of course.

I have also fished successfully for trout with cheese, corn kernels, and dough balls as others have described.

Never tried bacon, but know my parents used it for crawdads when they were young (bait to them).

I went to lake Kirby to Fish the dock, crappie weren't cooperating, broke out the hot dog sliced it up in small strips thread on a 1/32 pink jig, started to catch some real nice sunnies guy next asked me what kinda jig I was using, he couldn't believ it, I handed him some strips and he went to catchen, he said that would aLWAYS BE HIS BACK UP BAIT, turned a slow day into alot of fun.