Are these bait suppliers completely insane?

[plumbertom]

I tried to find sardines for bait.
Every place I looked carried the same bait, and they are asking over$5 for 5 smallish or 4 slightly larger 'dines.
Do people actually pay that kind of robbery?
I've bought huge scoops full of live sardines for $15 from the bait sellers in SoCal harbors.
Unless there's been a worldwide sardine population crash that I haven't heard about, these bait suppliers are simply ripping off fishermen.

 

[troutdude]

Sorry bro; but nothing is cheap anymore. For anything.

How much did you pay, the last time that you bought some? If it was around $4 per pack. A 20% increase since then, would be inline with how we have to now price stuff here where I work.

 

[plumbertom]

Last time I bought sardines, was in CA, and I paid about $4 for a bag that weighed a pound.
It wasn't 4- 2oz sardines for $5.50.

 

[infoPoint87]

Yeah, prices have definitely gone wild lately. Out of curiosity — have any of you tried freezing your own or using alternative baits that work just as well for the same species? Wondering if there’s a more cost-effective workaround people are using.

 

[plumbertom]

Been my experience that stripers will eat almost anything. I've caught them on chicken livers, and on various cut baits while catfishing in the Colorado River.
I'm not experienced at fishing for shad, the two times I've tried I've been unsuccessful.
I've never fished herring, so I'd have little clue as to how to go about catching them, either. Although I've never done so, it appears, after reading the regs, that cut trout would be a legal bait.
Sometimes when I keep badly hooked trout, they sit in the freezer for too long. I pretty much only eat trout when I smoke them, so using old trout for bait would probably work for stripers. It would be a better use for them than just throwing them out.