Review of Limpets as sea fishing bait

Ok, lets have a review of Limpets as sea fishing bait. A question I have asked myself many times is how well foraged baits from the shoreline would work. I have spent plenty of time researching (reading) and found nothing conclusive. Moreover it looks like a big case of ifs, buts and maybes, with little evidence to back it up. We all know prawn and worm baits work well but what about all the other critters.

The way I see it is this, the shoreline holds an abundance of life or food. We anglers catch fish on the shoreline as they come in search of food. If Limpets become dislodged, they should be as good a source of food as anything else the fish come across? Maybe.

To make this review as fair as possible I will keep it live so to speak. Each time I use Limpets as sea fishing bait I will update the post. We all know it’s called fishing and not catching so one session won’t cut it, as it’s possible to blank using any bait.

No one likes to blank or to waste a fishing session, especially me. Fishing will be with my usual 2 rod set up, one with Limpets as bait and the other will be whatever else I’m using (Lug, Wray, Mackerel etc). I wont focus on the others baits as they are tried, tested and known to work well. I will also try and remember to test them with mini species like Wrasse too.

Test one

Location- Cable Bay, Anglesey

Bait collected from – Porth Nobla. Basically the bay next to where I’m fishing. Picked the Limpets 15 minutes before I started fishing, can’t get fresher than that really.

As I said above 2 rods out but cheated a little, fished both rods with Limpets for the first 2 hours. Hopes were high, but starting to fade at the end of the 2nd hour. I popped some fresh Limpets on and cast it out, then baited the other rod with Mackerel. Really, I want to prove my own doubts as wrong, everything points to Limpets working as a decent bait.

After 10 minutes I had my first bite of what had been a fairly mundane session. Quickly I perked up as it looked a decent few twitches, joyed and dismayed at the same time. It’s the rod baited with Mackerel and it feels like a solid lump too. Turned out to be a double header of Dogfish, I fished on for another hour or so and called it a day. No more bites came to either bait used and the sea swell was picking up. Not the best start for Limpets but fishing was slow in general so really can’t make any assumptions from the session.

Test two

To be continued…..

Let’s call this foraging bait test one. I’ll do some follow up sessions testing different shoreline finds.