Surfcasting - using pichards for bait

I first thought of this bait a good few years ago whilst a member of the Pania Surfcasting Club. At the time I was running neck and neck for the annual Champion Angler title with a particularly knowledgeable and cunning surfcaster by the name of Roy Frost.

Roy and I were well ahead of the rest of the club members and the final field day was fast approaching. Only a few points were going to determine just who was top dog and who was going to be runner-up. I just had to come up with something new or Roy would leave me floundering in his wake!

I initially thought of butterflying a pilchard bait, but quickly realised that this would be far too soft to cast any distance, even if well and truly wrapped with bait-elastic. All this head scratching was just leaving me with splinters in my fingers!

Then, while sitting on the beach studying the pilchard fillets, the penny dropped! I’d already been turning skipjack baits inside out for years, so why not pilchard fillets?

Placing the two fillets with their skin sides facing each other, I bound them together and then threaded the hook through them as if this was a standard half-pilchard bait. A little extra binding, and hey presto, the inside-out bait was born. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t tried this before.

I’m certainly not claiming to be the first person in the world to ever think of this – chances are that someone, somewhere, has done so before. I was, however, the first one to think of it in my own sphere of fishing acquaintances.

Presented in this manner, the inside-out bait allows the natural blood and oils from the flesh to leach out into the water far more easily, thus forming its own little ‘come here fishy’ berley trail. Taking this just one step further, a bait done this way absorbs added fish oils better, too.
From this point on it was only a short time before I had a number of these baits all traced up and dangling in a jar of Brucie’s highly secret fish oil concoction. Looking at the results, my imagination was filled with visions of fish-attracting berley trails that would soon be under the water attracting monster fish to my hook! Bring it on!

I used the inside-out bait a lot over the next five years, and not only did it help me clinch the Champion Angler title at the time, it also helped me win two more, along with runner-up and third placings. The hardest part was trying to keep these baits away from prying eyes!
A good mate and I were using this bait during a club fishing trip to Mohaka Beach one Sunday.

We had added a strip of foam between the two fillets to improve buoyancy and make the bait move about a bit. We hadn’t been fishing long when we were sprung by another club member. This character liked the idea so much he made some up, too – and they were on sale the very next day in a tackle shop he worked for. To rub salt into the wound, he had his name on them as if they were his own idea! They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery...

While the inside-out bait works well with pilchards, it’s just as effective with any other types of small baitfish. I’ve used mackerel, yelloweyed mullet, anchovies, piper, spotties and sanma as inside-out baits. Some work a little better than others, but this is mainly due to varying degrees of toughness.

Larger fish cut in strip-bait form also do the trick. Try skipjack tuna, trevally, grey mullet and kahawai; they work best when soaked for some time in your favourite fish oil attractant. And try adding a little Glo Bait to the mix – this makes the bait a lot more visual and, therefore, even more effective (whoops – there goes another secret!).