Prawns

[Colin Payne]

When fishing with prawns do you just buy the usual Tesco/Sainsbury variety, frozen/non-frozen or uncooked from a fishmonger?

[Elton]

Somebody please answer this......I was thinking the same

[ayjay]

I've used both,Chub will certainly eat them complete with legs and all the other bits,and I've caught barbel and chub on peeled ones as well.

 

The biggest problem is not eating them yourself.

 

Salmon anglers use them complete as well.

[Elton]

ajp:

I've used both,Chub will certainly eat them complete with legs and all the other bits,and I've caught barbel and chub on peeled ones as well.

 

The biggest problem is not eating them yourself.          

 

Salmon anglers use them complete as well.

Cooked, or non-cooked?

 

 

Elton

[Guest sslatter]

An uncooked prawn is often used to catch salmon, fished on a little gizmo called a "prawn pin", which is basically a hook that's been straightened out, and which gets threaded on the hooked line and then pushed down the centre of the prawn, the hook then being attached to the bait. A good tackle dealer will sell shrink-wrapped uncooked prawns, preserved with salt(?) in single packets.They're usually smaller than the fishmonger/supermarket variety.

I've often thought they'd make a good bait for coarse fish, and mullet perhaps, after once catching a 6-pound-plus chub on a prawn while trying for salmon in a weirpool.

[Vagabond]

Raw dead prawns mounted whole on a pin will catch salmon, barbel, chub and perch. They can either be drifted under a float, freelined, legered, or mounted with a little vane so as to spin when retrieved.

 

Bits of prawn, raw or cooked, will also catch tench, roach, rudd and carp.

 

Live prawns are deadly for bass.

 

Shellfish in general are pretty good freshwater baits - for example how many of you have used cockles? They can be good bait for tench and many silver fish.

 

I have even caught chub on pieces of razor fish - taken along for my own lunch. ajp is right, though, I couldn't catch more than two chub because I had eaten the rest of the bait

[Bruno Broughton]

It's easiest to use the peeled, frozen prawns that are sold in supermarkets. Simply defrost a few and pop 'em straight on the hook. They defrost really quickly, so you could take a bag of frozen ones fishing and thaw them as required.

 

Check out the offer prices - Safeways seem to sell bags (of about 1lb) at a discounted £2.49 every other week.

 

When the Trent was one big chub swim, float-fished prawn was a cracking bait. Even caught when NO freebies had been added. (Float-fished, dead bleak was also a great ruse, but the bait had to be hooked amidships, near the dorsal; a head or tail-hooked fish would usually be taken from the unhooked end, and a strike would fail to hook the fish... although you got the hooked end back!)

 

[ 31. May 2003, 12:11 AM: Message edited by: Bruno Broughton ]

[Newt]

I wonder if a hook like this one would do for prawns (and other softer baits)? Designed for US channel catfishing where you want to use guts, chicken liver, or similar very difficult-to-hook baits without treating them to toughen them.

 

[PeterJC]

No need for medaeval ironmongery to hook a prawn!

Take a size 6 and lay it next to a cooked peeled prawn from a supermarket, notice? They are about the same shape and size, simply put the point of the hook into the blunt end of the prawn and slide the hook as far through the body of the prawn as you can, following the curve of the prawn with the bend of the hook. Result - firmly hooked prawn with very little hook showing, the softness of the prawn is no obstacle to effective striking.

Don't forget, prawns take a colour beautifully!

Peter

[corydoras]

Colin Payne:

When fishing with prawns do you just buy the usual Tesco/Sainsbury variety, frozen/non-frozen or uncooked from a fishmonger?

Colin

 

What do you want to catch?