sawbellies......

[biglaker]

After reading some posts some fisherman use sawbellies for bait, to catch lakers i am

curious to what they are, what they look like Thanks for any info

[ERABBIT]

http://seagrant.wisc.edu/greatlakesfish/alewife.html

[knothappy]

I'm showing my age here, but back in the 80 ties when NO. End Marina in Keuka would run a fishing tournament for three days, everybody would troll all day then at night we would by sawbellies from them, some people would hook them like a minnow but you would miss a lot of fish, the lakers would take them and run for a while befor takeing the hook, most people used a niddle to thread the hook just under the skin on the side, so the hook was by the head and fish them on a slip bobber, we did this on or near the bluff you cought some Lakers, but the best place was in Hammondsport the brown trout were active all night, the winning brown was taken there quite offton. the lakers would start hitting around 5:30 am until first light. then every body would start trolling again. hope this answers your question.

[FLXTroutman]

there is guy in the Canandaigua area who sells English hooks, it is painted on the side of his van, this is type of hook they thread the needle into, also a Suttons Hemlock spinner ( slow trolling) is similar as far as threading the hook shank into the sawbelly or alewife which is the more common name. If you are fishing the FLX, and see clouds of bait on your sonar they are either alewife or smelt. Purchasing the little buggers can be expensive, if the bait shop has them, and with the heat we have now, you will need a good sized cooler and cold water, and a bubbler or they die very easily.

[knothappy]

we used small coolers with aerator's that went inside the cooler but their scales would clog everyshing up and then as you said you had to keep them cold by adding ice, they were around $8.00 a dozen back then. sometimes when you got them they were already looking bad, but it was something we did, it was good fun, we ate a lot of wings and junk food during the night.

[perch predator]

a dead sawbelly is 2x better than a live shiner imho