One of the most popular ice fishing live baits and also one of the cheapest are Spikes or Euro Larva. Spikes are nothing more than your common every day maggot. When you see them listed as “euro larva” that only means that the spikes had been fed a dye to change their color. You can get Spikes in a lot of colors: White, Red, Blue, Green, Orange, Pink and every shade in between these. Every year on the ice I see people putting them on the hook wrong and killing them and basically letting all the juice out of them before it even gets down to the fish. Spikes will catch everything out there from the smallest sunfish all the way up the biggest pike (I have done it).

The key to getting the most out of these little baits is to rig them right. So below I am going to try to explain it and give you pictures and a video of how it looks when you do it right.

Next take the spike into your fingers if you roll them a little they will plump up, if they are health and active spikes. After you have done that squeeze them lightly. You do not want to

squeeze the insides out of them. What will happen is you see a little knob poke out of the “head”. That knob area is the toughest part of the spike. When hooked through that area it will stay on the hook for many fish, I have caught up to 30 gills on the same spike before. Also, hooking it through there will not kill the spike and will let the juices and oils inside slowly leach out as you fish it which forms a scent cloud in the water at your jig.

This is what the spike should look like on the hook when rigged right.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKRvzAsikFw&w=480&h=390]

Also when you have a tough bite where it seems that you only get a bite when you first put the jig down, change the spikes out after every fish or two. Sometimes the fish really just want fresh bait and sometimes it doesn’t matter.

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