[John R]

Miles - I bet that got ya & you knew I'd reply [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Briguy, like many fish, many different types of bait are the most productive at different times. With striped bass it can varry like when the herring are running, it's the top bait, or the mullet run - same thing, big schools of menhaden, same thing, and in the sweltering days of late summer, baits like lobster (if they were legal) in the deeper, cooler waters would probably be top. The nice thing about the live "American Eel" is that it's probably the best overall bass bait in the sense that it's the most consitant bait, live, dead, or rigged dead. The eel is also great in the sense that it can be worked as a "live lure" which is the way I usually use it. About 70-80% of my fishing is done with live eels. I think all of my bass over 30 pounds (from shore) have been on live eels (I'll need to think about that now [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] ).

Some people, like the plug purists, think using eels is like cheating even though it is worked much like an artificial. Some bait dunkers think it's too much work. Most just think they are evil, bloodsucking, biting creatures and can't stand the thought of using them. They are actually very durable, easy to keep a live ( I can keep eels alive for a week with spraying a little mist on them before and after work in a bucket on a bed of ice). I have had days where I've caught several 20#ers on a single live eel and released the eel alive too. But basically, a lot of big bass have been taken with the eels from both boat and shore.

A lot of people feel that the bass simply hates the eel and would kill it just to kill it let alone for food. I was out in Sacramento, CA a few years back where they have a decent Striped Bass fishery (Stripers were introduced there in the late 1800s). I was talking to a fellow that grew up in Maine and had fished for bass with eels growing up. After a while of fishing in Cali without them he decided to bring some back west from Maine with him. Now these west coast stripers had never seen the "american eel" as it is only found in the Western/Eastern Atlantic (they spanw in the Sargasso Sea). So he was fishing this tournament and used live eels and the fish murdered those eels. He did it a couple more times and he said the same thing, the bass just hammered the day lights out of them.

They work great for other fish too. I would recommend some of you fishing other species to try drifting or three-waying one while you are fishing your regular methods to see if it's a trick bait where you are too.

Hope I wasn't too long winded here [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]