shutup, I used to have the same dilemma as you. The best bait for houdies is live-bait. You can throw jigs out there that mimic live bait fish and that are very erratic. The hounds will go up to them and "test bite" and if you set the hook at the right time you will get a houndie. If your an experienced angler, just hook on a dead sardine and jig and move your pole in the best motion so it mimics a live bait. You can get a few hookups that way.
How to catch Houndies aka needle nose
I am going to florida this summer and I need some tips on how to catch houndies, also know as needle nose fish. The reason I want to catch these is to use as baracuda bate. It worked great last year. We would catch the houndies and then put a treble hook on each end, rig it onto our big poles and drop in off the pier. With luck the fish would swim the right way and we would catch a HUGE cuda. We used steel leaders with a bobber 6 feet away from the bait. It is the coolest thing bobber fishing for cuda. Somtimes it would be hard to catch the needle nose fish though. I was using a bass pole with a 2 foot steel leader and live bait fish caught off a biki rig. They did not want to bite any thing other than live bait fish. Also when I tried to set the hook it would get wanked right out of thier mouth. I had to wait for them to swallow the bait before I set the hook. Can you guys give me some tips on how to catch these fish without using live bait fish? What kind of rigs and techniques do I need to know about? Thanks for you help. And as you guys would say "tight lines"
