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I've used a lot of different baits but I think Tilapia is my favorite. It is the easiest to rig and store until your ready to use.

If you can find lung it works great. Some slauter houses will give them to you but you have to get them when they have them. Lung will float real good and the gators seem to swallow it with ease. With all the baits the ideal thing is to rig it on a short rope before it gets to nasty. We use fish also and you can find them even at walmart. They must float on the surface to work well.

I just have'nt had any luck with baiting. I've only tried chicken, and thought this year I might try picking up some road kill along the way there. But, lets face it, that can be nasty. I like the talapia idea. I will have to try that. Good luck to all this year. I'm hunting Lake Poinsette. So far managed to get 2 , 10 foot plus out of there.

I use to just use whole chicken, which worked good for large gator but smaller gators less than 8ft would mash or tear up the chicken getting it off the line. So I started trying Tilapia, the gators seemed to swallow it faster plus it held together better. I would also get them ahead of time, prepare them with a peg and short line, bag each one individually and store in the freezer until needed.
When using bait, if we had a skittish gator that would let us close enough for snatch hooking we would drop the bait in the gator's area and back off several hundred feet. The bait must float and by Florida rules it has be attached to the boat by line.

So when you rig the fish do you put a line to a dowel and place the dowel inside? I already know about the line to the boat deal. It actually makes me mad when I see bait attached to floats.

When we rig up fish we do a couple of things. First we use a piece of coat hanger and push it through the mouth and out the end of the tail. We then attach the bait rope and pull it back through the fish. The peg is actually outside of the fish. If we get the fish at a Walmart they are gutted and we put a little bubble rap in the cavity and sew it up so it will foat well. They can then be stored until you are getting close to hunt time. We will pull them out a day early and leave in a bucket with lid. They will start to smell which will help the gator find it. We will do the same kind of thing with lung. Road kill tends to be messy and smelly from the start. If there is flow to the water you can put it upstream from where you expect the gator to be. If there is a wind put it upwind. We do not put out bait all the time but on some lakes the big gators are real skittish. After chasing them around we will put out the bait and take a nap. We usually wake up to the spool bouncing around the bottom of the boat.

Thanks for the tip. I will give it try.