Doubling Down with Dead Bait

EDITOR'S NOTE: This week, we'll discuss how you can use wimpy tackle to take more snapper. Small, light-line tackle can and will produce more and bigger snapper than heavier tackle will. Let's look at what Pure Fishing learned in the summer of 2000 while fishing off Alabama's Gulf Coast with John Prochnow, new-products manager for Pure Fishing, on Captain George Pfeiffer's charter boat, the C.A.T., based in Orange Beach, Alabama.

Annette Hebert of Pascagoula, Mississippi, the regional sales manager for Killer Bee Baits, brought frozen cigar minnows and frozen squid to use during our saltwater fishing trip. Anglers traditionally have relied on frozen cigar minnows and squid to catch snapper and grouper and have caught numbers of both fish.

"We put a Berkley Inshore Power Tube on the hook and added either a whole cigar minnow or a whole squid to our hook," Hebert explained. "We found that the Power Tube added scent to our bait and stayed on our hooks, even after the snapper or grouper had eaten our dead bait. We found that we hooked and landed more snapper when we used both types of baits than when we used just the tube or just the dead bait."

The Berkley Power Tube is also a fish tattletale. You can tell what type of fish has bitten your bait if any of the tube is left on the hook when you bring the bait to the boat.

"One of the reasons we at Berkley developed the Power Tube is that we found many anglers aren't able to get dead baits down to the bottom before the triggerfish will eat the baits off the hook," Prochnow mentioned.

To solve this problem, Prochnow began experimenting with soft plastics -- the same type of soft plastics used in creating bass baits. However, instead of using an active ingredient designed to stimulate bass to bite, he experimented to discover the active ingredient that would stimulate saltwater fish to bite. Then he incorporated that active saltwater ingredient into the Berkley Power Tubes.

"We've learned that if the Power Tubes go through a school of triggerfish on their way to the bottom, the triggerfish may bite holes out of the tube, but more than likely, they won't eat the entire tube before it gets to the bottom because the soft plastic is so tough," Prochnow explained. "With the Power Tubes, we discovered that anglers could get their baits through a school of triggerfish holding high in the water and present a bait to the schools of snapper that held below the triggerfish unlike the anglers who fished with dead bait and ended up with empty hooks by the time their baits got through the triggerfish and to the snapper."

For more information locating Berkley's products, including the Inshore Power Tubes, Sparkles Nibbles and Sparkles Nuggets, call (800) BERKLEY, or check out their website at www.berkley-fishing.com.

For more information on fishing Alabama's Gulf Coast with Captain George Pfeiffer, call (888) 558-3889. Or, call the Alabama Gulf Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau to learn more about attractions, hotels, accommodations and restaurants in the Orange Beach area at (800) 745-SAND.

Tomorrow: How To Catch The Biggest Snapper On Any Spot