[jorluivil]

One of the tricks that I learned from a great Halibut fisher(name rhymes with Meg Nephew) is to use a half dead bait or completely dead bait. The main reason for this is that if the bait (sardine) is lively it will swim forward faster than you are moving and will eventually wrap itself around the rest of the rig. Speaking from experience I can assure that shortly after the second time this happens you'll be cutting everything up and going back to some other setup.