LUSTY LEECHES: Part One: LEECH ID

In the Upper Midwest, fishermen lust after leeches that catch walleye, bass, trout, panfish and other species like teenagers after cheerleaders. You can buy or catch leeches everywhere, and, from time to time, various sporting types prate of "outlawing" leeches that, in the hands of a growing school of experts "endanger" smallmouth.

In the rest of the country leeches seem as popular as quiche in cowboy bars. So if you want to use what many experts consider the finest warm water bait for most gamefish, you need to catch your own leeches. With limits in sight, it's easy ward off the slings and arrows of caustic comments about blood suckers and Dracula's baby. Fortunately, no live bait is as easy to catch, and keep, as the lusty leach.

With their conspicuous double suckers -- one at each end -- leeches are present in most still or slow moving waters, and common is spots as farm ponds or ditches without many gamefish. amounts of leeches, therefore, show an absence of gamefish. Most of the time leeches stay anchored with their pedal sucker and wait for targets of opportunity with their mouth end. Leeches do swim too. When they do they look a bit like sidewinder rattlesnakes.

Leeches haven't had much respect since one variety, the so-called medical leech, a species of the larger class of bloodsuckers, dropped out of medical treatment when doctors gave up blood letting for bigger bills. Leeches, medical an otherwise, deserve better. At their best leeches offer a lively wiggle, a tough texture and total attraction for most gamefish.

You can't ask for a better summer bait, for leeches survive warm, even downright hot, water. In fact they only work well at temperatures above 50 degrees. When it's colder than that you should switch to minnows or worms as leeches will ball up on the hook in an attempt, one supposes, to conserve body heat.

Leeches keep well too. Those collected early in spring easily survive a summer's starvation in your bait container that would turn minnows belly up. About the only way you can lose a leech is by cooking it in direct sunlight. Or if when a nice smallmouth smacks it!

The only drawback of this fine bait, besides their reputation, is what one teenager called their "yucky" appearance and the dubious joys of hooking a squirming leech if you don't know the sand trick. Of course, you do want to avoid "blood sucking" leeches when you wade in shorts and tennis shoes. To do this, and insure the best baits, you need to know the differences between leech types.

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