Prawns?

[Dave]

A recent trip to Lidl got me thinking about trying prawns as a bait, I noticed that they sell big bags of raw Tiger Prawns. I heard of them being used for Wrasse before alright but what about other species, has anyone any experience of using them and more importantly how do you rate them as a bait?

[tomi]

I'm using small cold water prawns. U can buy a bag of frozen prawns. Handy bait, and what is more important they works. Wrasse, coilies, small polacks loves them. Hook it as U doing with lug. Also U can get most of small species on them.

[fishermannum1]

got myself a tray of large ones out of asda, for under a quid, have got dogs/mackerel/scad/ pollock/coalies and even ray on them, when useing them on the bottom i tip them off with a bit of squid.
i use them by them selfs on the float, and they are lethal..

[seanie35]

ive had some success with prawns fishing in youghal, coalies love them as well as the odd whiting , but best of all they take the odd big cod. last year i got 2 cod to 8 lb as well as plenty of smaller ones, dont think they outfish crab or lug and best conditions seem to be when the waters clear... .best i got were the dunnes stores jumbo prawn, handy freezer bait

[nobuzz]

I've used cooked & peeled King Prawns from Tescos with a fair bit of success for wrasse & pollack.

I'm heading out tomorrow with some smaller cooked & peeled prawns (cheaper!) and some raw King Prawns (all from Tescos).

I forgot to arrange any ragworm so its prawns & frozen mackeral for me this weekend.

[RockHunter]

Seanie - thats a fine cod.

Some of the cod I caught in Youghal last winter had small prawns in their stomachs - but I never used prawns as bait as I reckoned the crabs would get to it first.

A couple of weeks ago I was making room in the freezer for mackerel and I found a bag of Lidl prawns that I had forgotten about - I must remember to take some of them with me tomorrow and see how they work. I also dug a bunch of rag today so it will be interesting to see how they compare. Not sure yet where I will be fishing but most likely it will be somewhere in West Cork.

[Tomaszek]

Nice kitchen buddy

I tried prawns myself, several times. Just ordinary ones you can get in mall. They worked well. Caught myself a shoelace conger on’em

[nobuzz]

My new prawns didn't really produce the goods on Sunday.

The small cooked & peeled jobs were too easy to nick off the hook.

The big raw Tiger Prawns didn't get much interest.

When I was finished I dumped my left-over small prawns in a big rockpool. Within minutes the crabs and small rock fish had taken all of them.

On balance I'd say that the cooked & peeled King Prawns which I normally use are better. They seem to be tougher so stay on the hook better.

[tom1]

Again like seanie35 i use them in youghal as well for making cocktails for cod and they
work fairly well.

[Dave]

On balance I'd say that the cooked & peeled King Prawns which I normally use are better. They seem to be tougher so stay on the hook better.

Thats interesting I would have assumed that the raw ones would have been better. I still havent had a chance to get out myself and try them yet.

Btw nice cod Seanie, I wouldn't have thought of them as a cod bait but I guess they obviously work.

[seanie35]

I heard also that cod take a shine to white objects, ie big cod with bits of polystyrene cups in their bellys and their well known liking of white feathers(gulls beware) so I'm guessing it might be the colour more than the flavour of the prawns, I stick about 4 to 5 jumbo prawns on a 4.0 hook, def works better in clearer water. That cod in picture broke my line as I tried to pull it up the carpets in youghal 2years ago and I caught it again 20 minutes later with my old hook and lead still hanging out of it, lucky or what

[nobuzz]

I'm going to persevere with the raw prawns.

Logic would dictate that they are bound to be better.

Thinking back to when I was a kid fishing in Ardglass all the locals used prawns (I think they were cooked).

[drewk]

I'm going to persevere with the raw prawns.

Logic would dictate that they are bound to be better.

Thinking back to when I was a kid fishing in Ardglass all the locals used prawns (I think they were cooked).

I used to fish Ardglass. I would buy raw prawns from the local supermarket (big bag for about £2) and float fish of the pier. Raw peeled prawns where a killer but didn't last long. Must try it again sometime.

[JRHartley]

Just come back from Fishing on shell Island in North Wales. Started off on frozen sandeel but kept getting poor takes with the bait being stripped so I switched to the only thing I had to hand which was half a bag of cooked prawns [ decided to give them a go after reading this thread last week]. They stayed on the hook well despite being thumped some distance out from the surf. Got more bites on the prawn than the sandeel but I found that the cooked prawns retained thier curved shape too readily and caused the bait to spin wildly on the retrieve putting a twist in the line.[ Running ledger with no swivel] Problem was sorted by breaking the prawn and swapping the tail through 180'. [couldn't be arist to fanny about with swapping rigs about] Got more bites but had to drop hook sizes. I think the ball shape of the cooked prawn was just too big and rubbery tough for the flatties to take in one bite.

Overall I think prawns gave me more bites but I would try raw prawns for a more natural 'pliability'. Definitley try them again and might investigate he possibility of using a cooked prawn as a 'spinner' on its own.

[nobuzz]

They're certainly bulky.

I do something similar to yourself except that I cut the prawn into 4 pieces and then thread them on to the hook.

This straightens out the presentation and also means that wrasse have 4 goes before they strip the hook (ie 4 chances to get hooked).

I'm going to try a few different baits this weekend; Mussel, raw prawn, cooked prawn, sandeel, mackeral & rag.

I took a few mussels home with me last weekend and tried a couple of different methods of preparing them. I'm keen to build up a selection of "supermarket baits" to fall back-on during the winter.

[Kraken]

Fruit biscuits for coalies in Youghal..................................

nuff said..

you know who you are

[dan]

i've had some luck on lidls prawns. i get the the small tubs in brine. i've had:-
pollack- portaferry
coalies- portaferry
wrasse- portaferry
rockling- ballyhalbert
cod- millisle and portaferry
sea scorpians- millisle
and even a couple of flatties- millisle
on them.
they do not out fish lug, rag, mack or earthworm.