Bait up for success by Craig McGill

The quality of the bait determines whether or not your hook is going into the fish's mouth.

If the fish rejects the bait, your rig will just lie on the bottom and it doesn't matter how expensive or high-tech the rest of the outfit is, there will be no fish on the line.

A bait might get taken for a number of reasons. Smell or taste is one, another is movement. For example, does a flathead take a prawn bait on the drift because it's moving or because it smells like food? A flathead will take a lure bounced along the bottom and it has no smell or taste. Therefore a natural bait's presentation must be taken into consideration when concluding why a fish has taken it...