Deadsticking for trout?

[BCice]

copy and paste to your address bar.

I know all about copy and paste but for some reason this site refuses to recognize a link I leave to another site. I can make a direct link for others to follow on any other site but this one, so I'm assuming it's the site configuration. I've heard other people on here say the same thing about Apples & this site. Maybe I can get the boot camp program to run Windows on here but for $80 I'll just cope with it, I guess.

[jflood]

i caught ..actually my brother caught a nice 14' brown on a hellgramite yesterday

[MUNICH]

Caught my first dead stick fish yesterday. Nice rainbow through the ice dead sticking a #10 Neon Moon Glow from Jammin Jigs tipped with a few spikes. It was in about 9 feet of water with about 4-3 feet of weed on the bottom, on had the bait sitting a foot or so over the weeds when in got crushed, so about 4-5 feet under the ice. I have a question though, after catching the first fish, I saw another hit actually pretty hard but just once and dropped. I had the bail closed and it worked fine for the first fish as he hooked himself. What do you guys who dead stick do closed bail or some other technique.

[jflood]

closed bail, with tons of drag and stay close to the hand held so it doesn't get dragged down the hole or the fish gets off

[pooley]

closed bail, and medium drag.

[MUNICH]

Thanks guys, I was thinking of loosening the bail but I didn't think they would keep the jig in their mouth the hole time then I would have to reset the drag before setting the hook.

[dabluz]

When dead sticking for brook trout (only allowed one line in my region) I use a high quality light wire octopus hook in size 10 or 8 on the end of 2 to 4 lb mono.  I don't add anything else to the line except maybe a very small splitshot about 2 feet above the bait.

For bait, I use the head of a nightcrawler.  The first 1/3 of a big fat nightcrawler.  I thread the hook through the skin of the nightcrawler 3 or 4 times until I get about 1/2 of the way to the tip of the head then I push the nightcrawler up the hook and over the knot at the eye of the hook.  I expose the hook point.  I end up with a grub that constantly moves and is not shaped like a "J".

I open the bail on the reel and slip the line under an elastic band on the handle of the rod just in front of the reel.  When the fish bites, he can move away with bait without feeling any resistance.

The only problem with this technique....the hook does get hooked deep in the fish's throat so, it's not a catch and release kind of thing.  But that's no problem where I live, the limit is 20 brook trout of any size.