The Perfect Bait

The Perfect Bait

 

 

          Every fisherman has their ‘secret weapon’ in their tackle box that they break out in desperate times to put beautiful green fish on their stringer. Others have that one live bait; crickets, night crawlers, minner’s or as the city folk say, minnow’s. I have heard all kinds of homemade baits that folks have concocted to bring them in by the herds as if an underwater dinner bell was rung for them. There is a guy from my town that uses strawberry gelatin and corn flakes to make a dough bait to catch carp, which does work, and another that swears that if you use hemorrhoid cream you will catch catfish. If you have used the last item as bait, leave me a comment and let me know how you did, though you will not hear me admit to trying it. Sometimes I wonder if my fellow fishermen tell us these stories just so they have a funny story to tell their buddies the next time they are on the lake.

“Hey Merle!”

“Yeea?”

“I had that stupid Reed boy believing I use my ‘roid medicine to catch these here whisker fish!”

“Do ya?”

“Shoot no! I ain’t wastin’ it on whisker fish! I need it for my ‘roids!”

          I had decided to create my own stink bait a couple years ago in hopes of catching a few channel catfish with something I had created. I did research online; what information I could find was vague, most fishermen wanting me to pay to read their long passed down family recipes. I of course refused to pay the 5 easy payments of $4.99 and chose rather to create my own bait that would soon be stocked on the shelves of every fisherman’s favorite bait and tackle store. As the days passed, the idea’s grew in my head, along with the dreams of catching 300lb catfish and tossing them back knowing that a bigger one was about to bite on my Catfish Dynamite! When I would sleep I could see contracts being thrown at me from Bass Pro Shops, Cabelas, Strike King, and any other place that could want a new catfish bait. I finally decided what I was going to do.

          Just like conventional bait that was already on the market, I planned on having a blood flavor and possibly a cheese but if I was going to catch the big ones I needed to think outside the box. So I decided I would mix some flavors; night crawlers, grasshoppers, and hotdogs. To mix these tasty delights I would have to use a blender and we just happened to have one in our kitchen. My sneakiness was not quite as sneaky as I thought I was because the wife stopped me at the front door with the blender hidden behind my back.

“What are you doing with the blender?”

“What blender?”

“Babe?”

“Oooh, this blender?” I said finally sliding it from behind my back. “I uh, heard it was squeaking the other day and thought I would fix it.” Not only was this a lie but it was a lie the wife seen right thru.

“You know you will go to Hell for telling lies?”

“I ain’t lying. I am fibbing. There is a difference.”

“Either way, you ain’t using my blinder to make your stinking catfish bait!”

Crap.

She knew.

Defeated I lowered my head and put the blender back in the kitchen like a five year old that was told to put the cookie back in the cookie jar. Back to the drawing board. Apparently the wife did not have the faith that I did that I was on the verge of creating bait that would have my name written in every fishing magazine in North America. It was ok, when the paychecks came rolling in we would see if she got the new fish finder she wanted…ok that is a fib not a lie, I was the one who wanted a new fish finder.

          So without a blender to use I decided to let nature do my blending for me. I knew from experience of walking up on dead things that the longer they sit in the sun, the more stinky they got as well as the elements of nature broke them down. Eureka! I took four empty glass salsa jars and filled them half full with chicken liver and garlic salt, and one I put maple syrup.(I had abandoned the idea of mixing night crawlers, grasshoppers, and hotdogs for the time being) I know what you’re thinking, maple syrup? But like I said, I had to think outside the box to get my bait in the spotlight of the fishing world. I took these four jars, twisted the lids on them as tight as I could get them, and set them on the tin roof of my shed, where they could brew for two weeks in the Missouri summer sun. As the days went by I could hardly wait to use this bait! Then a thought hit me. How in the world am I going to be able to put rotten chicken livers on a hook?

Crap.

          It was ok, I could figure this out. Cotton balls? No… add flour to make a paste?...No, didn’t want to touch the stuff…HOTDOGS! I decided to cut up hotdogs and put them in my new devil’s brew. I figured the hotdog would soak up those tasty juices and when it hit the water that aroma would float down the river right to that 500lb catfish and bring him running. So I cut up two packages of hotdogs and walked out to my shed, retrieved my hot jars, and stepped into the shade of my shop. I tried to unscrew the first jar but the lid was on too tight. I must have been eating my Wheaties the day I put them on there. Then I remembered a little trick I learned where you tap the sides of the lid on a hard surface and it helps to loosen the lid. So I tapped and then tapped again.

POW!

          The jar of rotting chicken livers and garlic salt exploded in my hands like a hand grenade, sending slimy grey livers across the floor and on my shop table. Then the smell hit me. I am sure that if a vulture was circling over head looking for a meal, he may have gotten a whiff of that concoction and keeled over dead; after he puked of course. I began gagging and running back and forth in my shop trying to figure out what had happened. I finally got all the pieces of glass picked up and the shop doors opened up so that it could air out and moved my operation outside. The second jar I opened I was a bit more careful. With a bit of muscle I got the lid to budge which was a relief being that this jar did not explode on me. Slowly I turned the lid and…

SPRISH!! “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?”

          What I had not realized when the first jar exploded was that all those rotting things build up A LOT of gases in a little glass bottle. So when I opened the second one all of those gases tried to escape and brought stinking liver pieces with them, shooting all over my pants, shirt, and hands. Once again I danced around as if I was trying to bring the rain and puked in my yard. Quickly I started shoving hotdog slices into the jar and screwed the lid back on, which is a hard task to accomplish when your eyes are tearing up and vomit is shooting from your mouth. The next two containers yielded the same consequences but I got those hotdogs in the juices to simmer.

 

          A week later my brother and I went fishing and gave me a chance to try out the new bait. I had ‘borrowed’ a few pairs of rubber gloves from work so that I would not get the rotten livers on me (my last encounter with the rotten bait almost got me divorced when I walked into the house but I smoothed it over by reminding her that at least it wasn’t in her blender) and placed a nice hotdog chunk on my hook. A few feet down from me my brother was gagging and fanning the air away from him. “Jiminy Crickets what the crap is that smell?!”

“Stink bait I made. Don’t smell too bad now.”

He gagged again and put a rag over his nose. “Do I smell a hint of maple syrup?” He said laughing.

“Yep! Gotta think outside the box to outsmart these fish.”

 “I don’t think a catfish is going to touch that stuff. And, if they would, I don’t think I would eat the fish that would eat that nasty stuff.”

I smiled and said, “You say that now, but when you see me haulin’ all the big ones in you will change your mind.”

I sent the chunk of putrid hotdog flying thru the air and to the center of the lake, got myself good and comfy in my lawn chair and put a big pinch of chewing tobacco in my mouth and immediately began spitting it back out. I had forgotten to take the rubber gloves off my hands and now had rotten chicken liver mixed with my chew in my mouth. As I was hunched over puking, my brother was laughing until tears rolled out of his eyes. “I can’ breath...” He giggled as I fought to remove the foul taste from my mouth.

          Needless to say, my magic bait never caught a fish. Sad, yes, I know. All that hard work and sacrifice and not one stinking fish. I did find that if I tied a rope to the jar, poked small holes in the lid, and pitched it where I was fishing it worked well as a chum that I could retrieve later, but other than that, it was an utter failure. It was ok; it just meant that I would appreciate it more when I created bait that actually did work.