CRAB KEBAB FOR BASS
Given the choice all my rough ground bass  fishing with bait is at night or in coloured water with a good onshore wind  blowing. Bass hunting in these conditions rely on their sense of smell to  locate their food, which is invariably soft or peeler crab washed out of their  hidey holes by the waves. When we build a crab bait intended for bass, we need  to focus on that sense of smell and create baits that literally ooze a constant  powerful trail of juices out in to the tide.

You have the choice of using either a  two-hook pennel rig with the hooks in line one behind the other, or rely on  just one big hook. I tend to use the two-hook pennel system as it gives a  better hook up ratio, especially with the bigger fish that can be cagey even in  surf conditions.

I begin by peeling the shell and legs from  a biggish 2-inch across crab, or peel a couple of smaller ones. Don’t discard  the legs, especially the claws. Keep those back.

Cut the body of the crab in to four equal  quarters, or the smaller bodies in to halves. Now thread the individual  sections over the hook point and up the shank of the hook on to the line above.  Keep shoving the crab sections up the lower hook until you have a length of  bait about 3-inches long. This length of bait is ideal for average sized fish,  but if you want the very big bass over 7lbs, then make the baits 6-inches long.

Using fine bait elastic, not the thick  stuff, bind it upwards from the hook point end in fairly tight but wide turns,  then come all the way back again and lock the elastic off before snapping it.  The tight turns bind the crab together for casting, though for really long  range fishing add another run of elastic back towards the top to fully secure  it before snapping the thread free. Now pull the upper hook down and position  it in the top end of the bait.

It also works well with smaller soft crab  that can be fed up the hook in halves, then bound up with elastic, but then  gently squeezed in the fingers to really get the juice flooding out. With just  peeled jelly softies, use the peeler crab claws and legs you kept as splints  down each side of the soft crab to act as splints before binding the bait up.  This adds a little more strength to the bait without affecting the scent  levels.

By using the multi sectional approach in  building this bait, you can see that the juice from the crab will literally  pour out putting a massive scent lane in to the water that no nearby bass can  miss. 

TIPS AND TRICKS
A simple, quick and effective stop knot to  stop bait blowing back up a hook trace when casting can be made from small  diameter silicone tubing.

Cut off a section of 2mm tubing about 1cm  long. Pass the hook trace line through the tubing and out through the other  end.  Bring the end of the trace line  back to the top of the tubing and pass it down through the same initial end a  second time to basically form a loop with the tubing on one side. Now pull the  line tight and you’ll see the silicone pulls up tightly in to a blob.

The tubing will slide up and down for  adjustment on the line, but is lightweight for use with smaller baits. If you  use coloured trace line and different coloured tubing, then you also include  some fish attraction qualities that in particular appeal to flatfish like  flounder. 

TACTICS FOR FINICKY BOAT TOPE
Boat fishing for tope over sandy ground in  depths up to 50-feet during daylight can see the tope, even when they’re in  packs, become finicky and indecisive. This manifests itself best by their  tendency to pick up baits, run with them a few feet, then drop them.

This is infuriating as you see line peeling  off the reel fast, then just as you’re going to strike the fish, the bait gets  dropped. Early strikes will miss these fish every time. They are literally just  holding the bait in the edges of their mouths and then letting go.

You can increase you chances by checking  several things. If you’re using heavy 200lb mono traces, change to 2-feet of  thinner less obtrusive 50lb wire in front of 5-feet of 60lb clear mono  connected by a size 4 rolling swivel. Heavy 200lb mono I dislike for tope  anyway, but its okay in deep semi coloured water when the tope are feeding  purely by smell. In clearish water they can see it and it definitely puts them  off.

Use the minimum of lead weight required to  just hold bottom. Even with a running ledger, tope will feel the weight of the  lead as the run line off and again this increases the likelihood of them  dropping the bait. If you can get away with no lead at all, do so. Minimum drag  gives the tope more confidence and increases your chances of a hook up.

If you need plenty of lead to hold bottom,  then release about 10-feet of free line. This gives the tope chance to get some  speed up when they move away from the rest of the tope around them and makes  them more likely to at least get the bait someway in to their mouth. Hit these  fish immediately you fell the line tighten to avoid deep hooking.

Lastly, if a tope does pick up a drop,  instantly twitch the bait back towards you. This can often trigger a more  confident take and get you a hook up. Have the clutch set very light for this  tactic, as they will instantly scream off and too tight a clutch can result in  a line breakage.