Pinhead Anchovy Bait Balls As Bait

  Large masses of small 1.5 – 2 inch anchovies are currently thick along the Santa Cruz coast line from 25 – 50 FOW. On Friday I concentrated a considerable amount of time fishing in and around these bait balls instead heading out to deeper water. I tried small epoxy jigs roughly the size of the baitfish, 4 inch swim baits and 6 inch Kalins twisty tails.  I caught Blacks and Lings from these areas but no Halibut. There were no Halibut caught anywhere that I saw or heard. The bait size is not ideal but there must be game fish working these bait balls right?
Do you invest the time to work these bait balls of Pinheads? Do you ever use that as bait?

Hi Matt, speaking for myself, no on the pinheads. Best way to get em' (for us) is to string up some fine treble hooks and do a fast ripping retrieve.  Probably good for rockfish, attached to the hook by the head on a two-hook stringer.

Hi Matt, speaking for myself, no on the pinheads.. Probably good for rockfish..

That's kinda what I was thinking. Find better sized bait.

If they are isolated schools, I might work them.  But there was SO MUCH bait in the water yesterday, my thought was that if there was anything feeding on them, they were likely stuffed.  But what do I know?  One time I hit a bait school slow trolling (it was hard to miss them as they were everywhere) and I immediately started getting attacked by kingfish, so many that I picked up and moved.  And I did keep a few rockfish for dinner later in the morning, some from a bait school, and what do you know, all of the rockfish were stuffed with larger baits (couldn't tell what kind as they were too digested).  Go figure!

-Allen

Funny thing is when I read the thread title, I had imagined that you got a bunch of pinheads, wrapped them up in a bait wrap like you would for a Tuna Ball or roe sac and had used that as bait...So my imagination was not as satisfied by your real thread