[BT]

Just remember a few things when hooping. The bugs smell (I am not a scientist so I dont know EXACTLY how its done) their way to food. So you want a nice oily food item in there. I know guys that put cat food in their traps because of the oils in it. Never worked that great for me (tried it a few times), but it has worked for others. Buddy of mine also takes ground up fish parts (mostly trimmings that he gets from a restaurant), stuffs it in a pvc that has holes drilled all throughout it, caps the ends and freezes them till he is ready to use em. When you drop the PVC traps down, the oil slick it makes is amazing, but the one down fall is that if the bugs cant get a meal, they move on. We combined the PVC with a bait cage and seemed to do a bit better.

I have never used chicken, except when crabbing on the east coast off docks growing up. Dropped a cage next to a dock (structure) and played the waiting game just like we do out here for bugs.

My thought on it has always been to get em to the hoop, and try to keep em there. I always have extra bait on hand to top off the bait cages if they get hit to hard. If you got a couple of half eaten fish in your cage, and the bug smells it, but can’t eat it, its going to move on sooner or later.

One different thing I tried this year was duck. I had a buddy give me some old duck breasts he had, and I figured I would stuff it in the bait cage along with the usual mack and salmon heads.

The two hoops I put the duck pieces in (very small breast meat) were no more productive than the other hoops, but the bugs were always working the duck meat hard. My thought here was maybe because the duck meat is slightly more dense than a piece of fish, that it takes them a longer time to separate the duck meat than it would to rip a piece of mackerel or salmon meat. This may have kept them in the hoop longer, but who knows.

So the same may work with chicken. Mix it with some fish, and put the chicken towards the outside of the bait cage so they gotta work on it. Hell, I'll give it a try!

One thing to keep in mind is that it isn’t always the bait. I know guys who swear by one type of bait or another, but being in the right place at the right time (and who the hell knows when that is!?!?!) is most of it. If there are bugs by your nets, and you got bait they can smell and get to, they will, and hopefully you pull it up before they take off. If I had the money I would have a wireless underwater camera on each of my nets with a monitor on my yak so I knew when the bugs were in it!! LOL....hmmm.......