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Using freshwater fish as burley


James  Clain

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Do fish like carp and Redfin (noxious pests) work as burley in saltwater or even as salted baits? Are you allowed to kill them and use as bait in saltwater? These species are plentiful and It would be good to have an alternate purpose as a burley or bait than can be easily acquired. 

Does anyone have any experience in doing this previously with any positive or negative results.

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In SA, Carp are regularly used as crab bait.  I 'intend' to fish for then to use as snapper burley... but they will be lubricated with tuna oil.

 

Havent heard of them being used as fish bait though.

 

As for redfin... good eating if from clean water.

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I have used carp as bait for snapper/flatties etc some years ago with success. I wouldn't say that it was the best bait I have ever used, but certainly caught its share of fish. I used to freeze it in fillets as I had to travel 2 hours to the coast. As you would no doubt know, it is a very boney fish, but stayed on the hook reasonably well. Never used it as burley, but wouldn't see why it wouldn't be ok mashed up in the burley bucket/pot.

I have no reason to think that you couldn't legally use it as bait for salt water, but will stand corrected! Never did it, but maybe soaking in tuna oil or the like maybe be worth trying too.

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17 minutes ago, noelm said:

Be a real bugger if they were used as burley/bait and a few eggs survived and hatched, adapting to salt water.

Yes it would. But it has not happened in the millions of years that European/Asian rivers holding carp have been naturally emptying into seas and oceans. 
cheers Zoran 

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Yeah, I was just kind of "what if" not really suggesting it will happen, but lots of things we do can have huge effect on fishing, using supermarket/eating quality imported prawns for bait comes to mind, it's innocent enough...but!

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Yup... too true.  We definitely run the risk of virus/disease contamination with the types of imports you describe. That is slightly different to the "evolution" that would need to happen for a carp to exist in salt. The carp were also imported into our waters a decade ago, so its fair to assume that whatever diseases they brought at that time are already here. 

By saying all this I am in no way making a case that we can be lax about importation - just have a look at what is happening to the US waterways with the introduction of the Snakehead.

Cheers Zoran

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