There are many occasions where buying your bait from a tackle shop is the most efficient way of collecting them, but if you want to save a little extra money or if your local tackle shop is out of stock, there’s no reason not to catch your own. With the current COVID-19 outbreak, many tackle shops have closed down, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still find your favorite baits readily available.
Take Asian shore crabs for example, an invasive species that have come to inhabit our northern waters. Native to the eastern shores across Asia in the Pacific, these little crustaceans now plague our rocky beaches. Heading to the beach at low tide and flipping rocks are a great way to harvest them and in the right spot you could get enough crabs for a day’s worth of fishing in under an hour. They are a great bait for tautog when green crabs in the tackle shops are unavailable, while reducing their numbers helps protect our natural environment. In Massachusetts you need an additional permit, separate from a fishing license, in order to harvest green crabs while asian shore crabs are permitted for harvest without regulation.
If Tautog aren’t your target species, perhaps hitting the jetties in search of American eels is a better way to spend your time. A classic method for catching large striped bass, live rigging american eels generates a presentation that can never be perfectly mimicked by artificial baits. When the tide fills the cracks in the jetty, drop a #10 size hook with a small piece of bristle worm or squid as bait into the crevices. You can use a light rod and reel to retrieve your bait after a strike but handlining is just as manageable. For Massachusetts, they are included in your standard saltwater fishing license and must be at least nine inches in length and you limit out at twenty-five eels.
Say you don’t enjoy using eels as bait for striped bass, which I understand due to their extremely slimy nature, perhaps using chunks of mackerel would suit you better. Or maybe you're preparing for an upcoming tuna trip and plan on using live mackerel as bait. Regardless of which purpose they’ll serve, mackerel are a fantastic bait for either scenario. I use sabiki rigs with multiple tube teasers on 1/0 hooks, weighted by three ounce sinkers, and jig this rig up through the water column when I mark a school on my fish finder. Pulling up a stringer full of mackerel is definitely one of the more satisfying and entertaining moments of catching bait.
Another versatile bait to use is menhaden, which can also be used as either cut or live bait. These fish are incredibly oily and are fished commercially to make most chum bricks. As a recreational fisherman, cast-netting them in the shallow sections of back bays or snagging them on large weighted treble hooks in open water are the two methods I use. To become efficient at throwing an eight to ten foot diameter cast net will certainly require some practice, the pay off is well worth it when you collect enough bait for the entire trip on one throw. If you don’t want to use a cast net or if you can’t find menhaden schools in shallow enough water, there are large treble hooks with extra lead poured in the center that are made to snag menhaden. When you spot a school on the surface, cast the hook over the school and retrieve as quickly as you can. Similarly if a school appears on your sonar, drop the snag hook to the bottom and reel back up through them. The only negatives to this method is that you are not guaranteed to snag one every cast and the puncture wound the hook inflicts often kills them quicker. That being said, menhaden in any form (cut or live) are a great way to catch a large variety of inshore and offshore species.
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