DAY OF THE LIVING DEADBAIT

Fishing Authority: Green animals came stalking death, slithering snakelike through green water, past green cabbage, in a green light—a primal chiaroscuro. Smelling death, pike tracked it to our feet, leaving a grisly scene on the lake’s floor at day’s end.

Messy creatures, pike. When quick-strike hook-sets rip deadbaits free, they tumble and flutter to the lake’s floor. At day’s end, a dozen or more big baits in bright colors punctuated the bottom around the bite zone, as seen on our camera monitors. But by morning, the baits were gone—devoured by living, deadbait-eating pike.

That was two years ago on Lake of the Woods, under record amounts of snow. Last winter was different. David “Shoggie” Shogren, Rick Hammer, and I walked out onto five inches of clear ice on a local lake, armed with tip-ups, big decoy suckers, and a bag full of deadbaits that included smelt and ciscoes—some colored with Pautzke High Octane Fire Dye. Some were treated with new dyeenhanced Pautzke Fire Brine, and some were left in their natural deadbait zombie state.

Shogren opted for the live sucke rs and he was first to hook up. “Is it big?” I asked. When he said it was I dropped what I was doing and raced over. The show was about to begin. Looking through a stone-age lens of thin ice, we could see every gyration of that 40-inch-class pike under glass as it sped beneath our feet. Even Blue Earth on the big screen pales.

Shogren went on to catch every pike that day—all on live sucke rs—while I tried every variety of deadbait at every level, from right on bottom to halfway up, while Hammer caught panfish until his arms ached. I placed deadbaits on homemade thin wire leaders and heavy fluorocarbon leaders. I experimented with colors that worked in that lake—deadbaits dyed purple or green. I tried naturals with no added scent, salt, or color.

Nothing dead worked. I could recount several similar episodes involving various angling notables using deadbaits or livebaits with someone exclaiming, “Aha!” or “Eureka!” and none of it made sense until some snow cover arrived and the tables turned.

Deadbait Time
“1 use deadbaits after a heavy snow,” says deep-woods pike guru, Jonny Petrowske, known as the nefarious Jonny P. “When it gets really dark down there I drop frozen smelt, ciscoes, or salted shiners. As long as it smells, it doesn’t have to be big. Big fish, big bait? The best big pike technique on the lake in summer is a white crappie jig on a Snoopy rod. Everybody knows that. Sometimes a dead shiner snack is better than a giant live sucker.”

>) Livebait was key for Guide David Shogren on this occasion, but deadhalt shines at times, too.

Petrowkse lives outside the rules on the fringe of civilization. “When the water’s really dark under deep snow, I unbalance the tip-up with wooden dowels,” he says. “1 ducttape 3-inch chucks of 1-inch-diameter dowel under the tip-up to unbalance it. Then I put duct tape on the flag so it catches more wind, helping it to rock back and forth.” He knows it’s weird. “1 could use an HT Enterprises Windlass tip-up, but that’s the trouble with tip-up fishing. You’re sitting there waiting with too much time to think.”

Not so weird when you think about it. Writing for In-Fisherman in 1989, famous English angler John Wilson penned this beginning to the article Active or Wobbled Dead- bait Takes More Pike: “Deadbaiting for predators like pike . . . falls into two categories: (1) Strive to make a dead fish behave like the real thing by bouncing it through rough water beneath a float.. . or (2) Play a truly static deadbait laying perfectly still on the bottom where it belongs and, perhaps more importantly, where pike, particularly those larger, but lethargic old female lunkers of 20 pounds or more, expect to find it.”

> Coloring Deadbait
Using a brine solution to preserve and prepare baits for coloring is a good idea, even when using simpLe food coioring. Toughens baits up. With Pautzke Fire Brine or Pro-Cure Brine N’ Brite Bait, piace deadbaits in a freezer bag and cover with liquid. Soak baits for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator, remove from the bag, place on paper towels on a scrap piece of lumber, and blot away the excess dye.

Fire Brine comes in seven colors, but Pautzke High Octane Fire Dyes and Vicious Bait Dyes can be added to clear brines to color baits, Wear rubber kitchen gloves to handle baits or hands are stained for days. (Take the rubber gloves fishing, too.) Let baits dry out a bit on paper—several hours, turning them occasionally—before putting them in a new baggie and storing in the freezer or heading out on the ice. That allows the natural juices and scents to permeate the skin once again. Baits keep in the freezer for years, and won’t “go bad” even after many trips. Pro-Cure Bad Azz dyes can be added out on the ice if baits have been treated for 24 hours with a clear brine solution.

Pike eat dead stuff. Sometimes they seem to want to be tricked into thinking it’s alive to satisfy predat ory pride. But baitfish killed by temp erature stress fall to bottom and predatory pride or no, pike eat it— especially in winter, and especially when suspended baits are “wobb led.” Another method we use to wobble deadbaits on ice involves the new HT Wind Jigger Rod Holder, which allows using rods and reels with a light drag setting. Even a slight breeze bobs the rod up and down.

Wilson also wrote about dying deadbaits in a rainbow of colors: “For added attraction, especially on waters that get overfished, colouri ng deadbaits can produce interesti ng results. This caught on in Britain in a big way. . . and there is no doubt that in certain water conditions, baits colored in red, gold, blue, yellow, or even green show up well, and pike in particular often show a preference for a certain color.”

He colored his baits with food coloring or powdered dyes used to add hue to boilies and other carp baits. Pautzke’s Fire Brine, a recent innovat ion, both colors and preserves bait. With dead suckers, herring, ciscoes, shiners, smelt—any deadbait—pat it dry, place it in a resealable plastic bag, and pour in just enough Fire Brine to cover the bait. Drain, retain the excess for the next batch, and refrigerate.

As Wilson indicates, “in certain conditions,” colored baits excel. In stained or cloudy water, and in darkn ess under heavy snow and thick ice, added color can make a difference. Petrowske, who hadn’t considered coloring baits, wanted to know if the dyes included glow colors. Not yet, but I could see a light bulb blink on. “1 use hair hooks to add color,” he says. “1 clamp the trebles in a fly- tying vice and tie Flashabou or marabou to the shank—just a sparse amount extending maybe an inch or less past the bend of the hooks, using the same amount of material I might use to tie a dry fly for trout.

 
“I generally use natural colors like white, blue, green—things you find in the pike’s world up here,” he says. “Sometimes they like holog raphic versions that give off a variety of colors. No deer hair. I want something that flutters a little. I’ve seen it a thousand times. Pike slide right up to a deadbait, stop, and stare. I think that puffy motion of the hair is the trigger with deadbait from early to mid-winter.”

The puffy motion he ment ions is supplied by the unbalanced tip-up. Or renewable energy. “1 place the dowels on the bottom of the tip-up so a gust tips it and, when the gust stops, it rocks back again,” Petrowske says. “1 throw some snow around the hole so the tip-up doesn’t freeze down. No wind, no worries. The nearby movement of a pike makes the hair move. They actually trigger themselves to strike sometimes.”

Quick-Strike Rigs
Petrowske doesn’t think most pre-tied rigs are stealthy enough for pressured pike in heavily fished waters, so he ties his own using two grades of fluorocarbon extending at least 5 feet above the bait. “1 don’t want to scare pike off with something that looks hokey,” he says. “When things get tough and pike are pressured, that light, fluttering drop when the bait is rocking pushes their button.”

The rig starts with about 5 feet of 80-pound fluorocarbon. “The braided line on my tip-up terminates with a barrel swivel,” he says. “That’s where I tie on the 80-pound fluoro. I’m fishing in 10 feet of water or less a lot, so the swivel is out of the water in most cases. I melt the other end of the fluoro with a Zippo lighter then mash it up against the lighter to create a mushroom-shaped knob on the end of the line.”

He then ties on two 5-inch lengths of 40-pound fluorocarbon above the knob, each termin ating in a treble hook. “1 use nail knots, just like tying a leader onto fly line,” he says. “It’s a tough knot to tie. Once you get it down, the rig is locked in with the nail knots. I could use crimps, but I don’t want any metal down there. Trilene knots secure the hooks to the leaders. Minnesota requires an attractor on this kind of rig and I sometimes put the tiniest blades I can find on the leaders
or I just use hair hooks. With small #6 trebles, I tie the 40-pound to split rings, then run the hooks on. Smaller hooks let the bait flutter with less energy applied.”

Petrowske calls it The Y. “It’s all fluoro and presumably everything is invisible,” he says. “No swivels or sleeves for pike to be leery of. I susp end deadbaits halfway down the water column, unless I’m marking a lot of activity at a certain depth. I have a jig rod going and I’m watchi ng. I think the smell of oily dead- baits dials pike into an area without any help, but I cut the belly open sometimes and let the goodies hang out to release more scent into the curr ents under the ice. We undere stimate their ability to smell. If pike smell deadbait they start looking for that silhoue tte, that shadow. Now they’re hunting.

Grateful Deadbaits
I tie my own rigs, too. Sometimes with 40- to 60-pound Seaguar Blue Label or Premier fluorocarbons, which are more resilient to pike teeth than others I’ve tried. And sometimes I use 10- or 15-pound Cortland Toothy Critter Tie-Able Stainless because it’s green. With tieable wires, cut a segment about 14 inches long, slide both ends through a metal sleeve, slide it up to form a half-inch ioop above the sleeve, crimp it tight, and tie a treble to each tag end. Don’t forget to slide an attractor onto the wire before tying hooks on, if wanted or needed.

Petrowske and I might be a tad eccentric about stealth, but you can’t go wrong by overestimating your quarry. Underestimating wild animals tends to be a bigger mistake. Maybe Shogren caught all the fish that day because he was using tiny Jann’s Netcraft Propeller Blades instead of the clunkier, flashier Colo rado blades I chose. This year at first ice it’s time to try some sparsely tied hair trebles under a Windlass, ala Jonny P, because the color thing is intriguing and that’s a quick, easy way to play with it.

Wilson had little to say about matching colors to conditions: “For coloured water, yellow takes some beating, whilst in clear water bright red scores well.” That was about it.

>>Late season often calls for deadbaits set right on bottom.

One thing that stands out after fishing with colored baits for any length of time is that lakes can have pet colors. Some colors seem to interest no pike at all, ever, in one lake, yet catch pike like crazy in another. More often, colors seem to be affected by conditions. As Petrowske notes, deadbaits and bright colors often work best when it gets dark down there. At one extreme—bright, sunny days on thin ice over clear water—deadbaits and colored baits take a back seat. Naturally colored livebait takes center stage. At the other extreme—dark days on thick ice with heavy snow cover on stained lakes—brightly colored deadbaits take even neutral and overly cautious pike.

In most conditions, colored deadbaits work under the ice, with a caveat or two. Deadbaits tend to produce increasingly better results as winter wears on. Suspended baits catch pike all winter, but when pike move shallow late in the season, setting baits right on bottom with a classic quick-strike rig often entices more strikes, probably because that’s where pike expect to find dead fish at that point and they may actually be sniffing around with eyes looki ng down. Pautzke makes Fire Brine in seven colors: green, blue, yellow, red, chartreuse, orange, and purple. An eighth option is natural, for pres erving the bait but leaving the color unchanged. I use them, but Pautzke isn’t the only company making bait- fish dyes.

Pro-Cure has liquid Bad Azz Bait Dyes for baits already preserved with Brine N’ Brite Bait. Use the liquid version to spray on the color of choice the same day. The liquid version is available in six shades. Pro-Cure also offers powder cures for adding to brine solutions in metallic blue, chartreuse/lime, fire orange, pink, deep purple, and brilliant red.

Vicious makes three liquid baitfish dyes (Pretty ‘N Pink, Predatory Purple, and 14K Gold). Treat these pretty much the same as Pautzke Fire Brine— immerse baits for 24 hours or so, pat dry, air them out in a cool place, repackage and use or freeze.

Some dangle deadbaits tail up or head up, and it works. Petrowske and I prefer to hang them horizontally with dual- lead quick-strike rigs as he described. I place one hook through the eye socket on one side of the head, and the other hook somewhere between the dors al fin and caudal peduncle on the opposite side of the bait. Or I do whatever it takes to make the dead offering hang horizontally, where a “wobbling” technique makes the best impression. Fishing deadbaits on rod-and-reel is fun, too, using the same rigs.

As far as bait goes, when green predators come calling in green water through green weeds, baits are grateful to be dead (any resemb lance to rock bands past or present is purely coincidental

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DAY OF THE LIVING DEADBAIT

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