Originally Posted by
deathb4disco
I agree with a lot of what you're saying but, even if we abandoned live bait, how much money is to be made with artificial bluegill baits? Trout magnets, which have been my standard artificial bait for the last few years, cost almost nothing compared with a lot of bass lures. For $25 (the cost of ONE of those really nice Japanese crankbaits), I can buy enough bluegill baits to last months.
OTOH, live bait methods in Europe are light years beyond ours, and those guys spend a TON on tackle. (An Englishman once told me, "Americans talk about how little their tackle costs. Europeans talk about how much theirs cost.") I have used the Euro methods for years and would love to see it be more popular here in the US. I'm not sure that will happen, though. We're too much of a "boat culture". The Euros don't care about boats.