Being as Sardines are frequently hard or impossible to find and the ubiquitous Safeway always has some smelly seafood for sale, has anybody had success lashing something other than Sardines to their Kwikfish?

I am thinking of trying Prawns and squid this weekend. TIA, I will report on what I find after this weekend.

Snap',

Any good bait the fish like can be cut up or fileted to use as a good Kwikfish/Flatfish wrap. Real fresh squid is a sleeper that is very productive. Herring filets work also. I like to soak my sardine or herring filets in the redish drained off egg cured juice for a while to use for wrapping Kwikies the night before - deadly! Well dried egg clusters work great; although won't last as long as sardine. I like fresh sandshrimp better than using prawns for a wrap; but they will work, as will crawfish tails.

A popular trick is to use a small patch of the pronged side of velcro strips to stick on the back or belly of the Kwikies and rub too hard or too soft of sardine/herring meat that still smells good into it. This also works very well.

Another thing that I do is put a tapered piece of foam (for neutral buoyancy) over the shank of a large treble hook and attach it to a 4 bead chain swivel and onto the belly eyeloop via split rings. Remove the other back hook. You can now put a quality baitoil into the foam piece for a slow milkout, and also land a higher percent of fish that hit it.

RT

[ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: RT i ]

Snapset
ANother good alternative is to use tuna balls. Use oil packed tuna in the nylon mess bags like they use for loose eggs. Then just wrap that on your Kwikfish and you will catch fish.

[ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: ReiterRat ]

On my last trip to Canada we forgot to bring baits suitable for wraps. All we brought were eggs. So we cut up a peice of our bait towel and popped some loose eggs on it and loaded it with my secret sauce. This produced very well wrapped to the K-fish.

Snap,
Due tothe huge sardine fishery in the Pacific this year, there should be oodles of the little buggers on the bait market this year. Some of the shops in Chinnok and Ilwaco were vaccume packing tons of them in late Sept. Astoria and Westport will also have a good supply. Try Westport seafoods Exchange.

Ditto chuck n duck,
good quality Sardenes are not hard to find if you know where to look. The freezers in the Astoria area are full of them, Try:

Sturgeon Pauls whole and fillets available. I have seen these and they are #1 quality.
Free Willie's
The Sea Hag in Hammond
sorry, I don't have numbers but should not be too hard to find.

IF you must have an altertinative, hearing is OK, shrimp butter is also OK.

Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate your generosity. I changed my mind and bought a second season elk tag so I won't be fishing this weekend, but I will experiment some over the holiday and post results.