bait during the day

[kstonich]

I use to use bluegill allot for bait in the Delta. The stripers loved them. I've tried them at Cumberland several times with no luck. But that could have just been I was fishing where there were no actively feeding fish.

[cghuntcms]

I routinely use these little panfish up to 5 inches. I think they work just fine. I'll use them along with other baitfish as a choice for the striper. I did learn early on to NOT use a treble hook with them. As stripers inhale the bait most of the time & you wind up with a gut hooked fish. I use a wide-gapped hook (any brand) from a four up to a one depending upon the size of the sunfish. Only once in 4 years have I gut hooked a striper using this technique. If your rod tip isn't jumping around, your sunfish released itself & you need to check your bait. Shiners/shad apparently are not as active & it's harder to tell if you've still got a live bait.

[Shellkat]

If sunfish /bluegill work good then I have a unlimited supply. I live on Elk horn creek and you can take some wax worms and catch a boat full in a hurry. What size is a good for trolling for striper. New to the trolling game take it easy on me

[TroyRalph502]

I have used bluegill for striper bait. It works, but the size of fish is smaller and I didn't get as many hits as with shad. I almost prefer to jig for them over trolling a bluegill.

[cghuntcms]

My wife, my father, & I were trolling between the dam & Indian Creek 3 summers ago with shiners at most all depths with no luck. No wind, water was flat, & the sun was scorching hot. There was only one other couple trolling as well in their pontoon boat. It was quite apparent they were catching fish from all the excitement on their boat. Very late in the morning the pontoon pulls up close to us & announces they've got their fish & would we like their leftover bait. Out of curiosity as to what they were using, I said yes. Normally I'm too proud to admit failure, but I must be mellowing with age. It was several dozen small sunfish & bluegills. I got the new baitfish & the instructions to use treble hooks.

We returned the next day & trolled across the face of the dam & my Dad had two fish in the boat in the first pass & announced he was limited out & we could go home........ I caught my second fish about 3 hours later & I was ready to leave. Sunfish work well for me, but I don't like using treble hooks. The wide-gapped hooks almost always catch the fish in the lip, enhancing the chance for undersized fish to survive catch & release.

I generally do better using sunfish when marking fish below 50 feet, but last Labor Day week things were so slow, I tried them on the surface & they worked when shiners didn't.

I always carry a short, ultra-light rod to add a few sunfish to my livewell.