Can anyone reccommend an otter lure? Limited to submerged bodygrippers and a couple Leg Holds

Any tips for otter are greatly appreciated. Either we don't have lots of otter or we are doing something wrong.

We have a couple baited hole sets with 160 conibears and a rib cage off fish tucked in the hole.

Anything we can do to make our set more appealing?

I'll have pictures tomorrow of the set.

I am not an otter expert but I have caught a few. Bottom Edge / Blind sets are the way to go.

Yes, you can catch them at toilets and baited sets but you have to be patient because they have a large circuit that they travel. That said up your game with lots of traps.

Brian

280 is a much better tool than a 160.

330's inder ice/ water in choir points.

Below minor lower beaver dams

220's in trails overland in cattail swamps .

Bait sets for otter are low production sets and 160's are a poor choice of trap. I would go 220 as minimum size trap for otter with 280 being the best all around otter trap for most situations. For fast moving otter’s a 330-size trap quite often closes on them to far back resulting in poor hip catches that don’t dispatch them quickly. My experience with the 280 is that it closes faster and results in fewer, if any, poor catches. The 280 will also capture more of the incidental mink and muskrats that often trigger 330 beaver and otter sets without getting caught. Thus, it is the ultimate otter trap IMO. The 220 also has its place in those narrow pinch points.

No fish oils no lures etc?

A 220 in a slide with the trigger on the bottom caught otters for me in the past.

Otter are effectively taken in what I loosely call blind sets. Leads into feeder streams with 280’s. You can funnel them, but don’t be belligerent about it. 280’s and footholds on their trails. The footholds need to be set with blocking for stepping. They don’t fart around when running ground, and they cover a lot of dry ground, so you need to alter their stride to land the foot on the pan.
I have only used visuals on otter a couple times for nuisance removal. It doesn’t work as well as you would like to think. I would never put any lure out hoping for them to be somewhere they wouldn’t be without.
Crossovers are a gimmy. Stomp an area on each side near the water to land transition, put your trap on a drowning rig, I like rods. You could use a rotating jaw trap on the waters edge, but the foothold will produce better. They tend to be playful in these areas.
Best advice I can give is use their travels against them. They will blindly run into/through a rotating jaw trap. If you foothold them they are one of the meanest critters ever to deal with, on dry land. Better off drowning them.

They hunt along shore lines and work undercut banks, fence these areas with dive poles and where they are leaving the water for a toilet, they came from the left or right to get there or leave there. Build a barrier with a dive pole with a nice place to get through a 330 with the trigger on the bottom. Set the trigger in the center with it not to wide, you will still catch them if the pick any of the corners and the center is a given. Hide the trap with sticks and brush so it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb. My wife got her two otters in one 330 in a ditch feeding into a river that was deep enough for a 330 submerged with a dive pole and fencing and some brush for camo. It took her 5 days with that one set to get her season limit of 2. Make some good sets where you see sign and wait for them to come through.

No...just blind sets

Every one of these blind sets have produced otter. The fourth one down from the top also had foot trap at waters edge.

Otter are like anything else, you can only catch them if you are on location. I don't know your regulations or.weather but I find travel ways and blind set there. I use 330s be ause that is what I have.
I caught 2 so far in this same.set. I changed the trigger wires a bit to try to get a better catch on the next one through. I have the benefit of snow to see where they are. I also will set otter toilet with a foothold on a drowned rod if water is open.
Good luck and have fun. They travel in about a 7 day cycle here. It may be different there. Be patient. By the way, I only have 2 otter specific sets out now and caught the 2 there in a week's time.

All I have to do to catch otter is to set a beaver trap. Theres more otter than beaver here yet we don't have a season

Old beaver bank dens are good spots for otter.