Sewing needle Vs bait Sewing hooks

[aziscohosaddict]

whats your take on which is better? i use a needle, feel i don't scare up the bait as much and you can put a treble hook on with three hooks. although i see a lot of people on here catching a lot of fish with the bait sewing hooks. pros and cons?        -AZ

[chrisminmaine]

I started using the sliding bait rigs last year.  Once I bought a package, I started making my own, since I tie flies anyway I had all the stuff.

The sliding rigs are pretty cheap to buy, cheaper to make, and easy to use.  And easy to adjust the bend in the bait to impart more or less action.

My two cents.

Good Luck!

[TightLines]

I think it's whatever your comfortable using. I was tought to sew with a needle and use a treble a long time ago. I was shown how to sew with a hook last year. The hook is much faster to sew but I seem to get more misses.

[Loves To Fish]

To me, it's just 2 different methods of fishing with bait. Both have pros and cons.
Sewing with a single hook is usually faster than sewing with a needle simply because you don't have to detach the leader from your line. You just sew and troll. Sewing with a needle you must remove the leader first, sew, then re-attach your leader. A good way to save time when using a needle is to sew up several leaders ahead. If I'm trolling for trout and salmon, I have 4 extra sewn smelts ahead, laying on ice in a cooler, at all times. When I'm trolling for white perch, I have 8 to 10 sewn smelts ahead.
One major down fall of sewing with single hooks is that you have a lot of misses. But the plus side is you get many more hits than misses, so a few misses doesn't bother me.
Finally, when using single hook sewn smelts, most often it makes a slow roll motion when trolled, which is deadly at ice-out because most lakes are experiencing their smelt spawning runs. It looks like a wounded fish and all fish, especially salmon, love it. When using sewing needles to sew smelts, the smelt does a side to side action / method, which is deadly for fishing the remainder of the year.

[ifishhi]

i have been wondering the same thing .

i find it is faster to tie with a hook but a big advantage to using a needle is your always re-tying  , i know i have had break offs from not re-tying after catching fish    i stitch the same way with either methods,  i find my bait has the same roll

[aziscohosaddict]

hm i use a needle with a loop at the end of my leader that never comes off and just loop the needle on sew, put the hook on then troll. maybe takes me 30 secs. when i catch a fish or a hit i just rip the smelt off, take the hook of put the needle on and sew put the hook back on and i am trolling again. i retie my loops every once in awhile, at least once a trip.     -AZ

[Nor Easter]

Azisco-horse,,
That sounds fantastic!   

Pick a leader length, tie a loop on BOTH ends, and sew your bait in the opposite direction. The loop gets slid back into the bait to be hidden so it looks normal.

Purrfect... 

Thank you!