The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

On my clubs lake today I caught my last rainbow before our season ends on Fri, it's only around the 1.5 lb mark and I'm considering using the head and tail and two mid sections as dead bait, float or ledgered , any experience of the effectiveness ? I should add it won't be used on a 'trout fishery' for PIke.
Tight lines
Dave

Trout is an excellent bait for trout. You can use the head and tail and cutlets from the mid section if its big enough. The high oil content makes it very attractive to pike. I've had decent pike off the Wye on little 4-5" trout, they soon sniff them out.

Trout livebait is very good - but deads for me are almost always sea fish! Had very little success with trout as deads in stillwaters - non trout ones.

Interesting one this one as I found trout as deadbaits next to useless on a lot of waters whilst catching fine on other baits. I did used to like them for wobbling and keeping on the move though as they are quite tough and stand more casting than most other deadbaits.

Then one day whilst fishing Rudyard I'd been using up those baits that kick around the freezer all year and eventually cast a dead trout out only to get a take immediately. I got the bait back and proceeded to catch half a dozen pike on the same one in quick succession on a day and a venue that had never really been all that kind to me in the past.

Future trips there and I found that trout were seemingly being picked out in preference to any other baits I offered. Why some of the gravel pit fish I fished for didn't seem to want to eat a dead trout but loved a mackerel I don't know.

I did find that a bit of trout made a great eel bait for what it's worth.

From my experience on gravel pits it's probably better to eat the trout yourself and buy some mackerel but as Shaun's experience shows you can never be sure!

Many thanks Chaps for the varied experiences, will let you know how I get on, will be having a crack on a small pool of around 5 acres which so i'm told has a reasonable head of fish into the mid teens.
Tight lines Dave

Ive caught pike to 21-02 on R trout deadbait.River fish from the stour!.My own preference for db would be Sardine,Mackerel tail,roach if frozen.Freshly killed roach would be no1 but i dont usually have time to catch any these days.

I thought about this recently and I concluded that in decades of pike fishing I have never caught one on Rainbow Trout; despite trying quite often. Confidence - waters - just one of those things ? Who knows ? Mackerel - Sprat - lure - my favourite three !