There is a view, amongst some, that veteran pilots cannot be baited. This is not a universal truth; a lot of people are bored and gung ho enough to take bait they know is bait, which leaves people unable to figure out what is bait as the other type who do take bait. Veterans who don't take bait are just cowards.
However, there's a few pointers about how you deploy bait.
Firstly, your bait ship is dead. So if you're going to deploy bait, deploying a screen of alts into literally every adjoining system (wormhole or otherwise) is pretty dumb. Well, it's smart if you are a fraidypants coward unable to even countenance the potential loss of your ship, but let's put it this way; if you expend 4 alts in Asteros, Cheetahs and Helii to jump through every single one of your connections, that's 4 derpy RR alts or ECM alts you've disposed of just to see if you can handle the shit you're baiting.
Secondly, if you're going to deploy pickets to give you advanced warning that what you're baiting might be enough to kill your bait ship, don't use someone from the same corp as your bait. Especially not if you're, hypothetically, from Exit Strategy, and your deploy your Exit Strategy alt to Roniko, a shithole end of nowhere system with an hourly average of about 0 pilots in it. If anyone is going to come at you from Roniko, in this scenario, you will see them, yes. But they have already been stalking your Raven and will see the sole person in Roniko, and use toddler level maths to put 2 &2 together and say "Hurr durr."
Thirdly, make your bait believable. Raven running anoms in a C2? Believable. Good bait because you get to fit a grappler and scram. Not so great if you're using RHML's. No one rats with RHML's, and it's a PVP weapon. Plus you're from Exit Strategy and every single one of your kills is 8 vs 1 (plus those 4 alts to ensure it's 8 vs 1 and not 8 vs 8).
Fourthly, if you are yours are so fond of alt abuse you deploy half your fleet in cloaky eyes, why can't you rat for a few days and sink skill injectors into an out of corp alt? I mean, you're all living from a third party alt corp Fortizar in a C4, you surely can work out how to run a bait alt who only dies and doesn't get too many kills in WH's associated with you. Quareschlager was great at this, and we took many a QS bait.
As bait taker, you often want to just get point and maybe put enough DPS on field to threaten the bait, and see what jumps to its aid. Staged escalation of definite bait, it's a thing. learn to do it. Maybe you small-blob a genuine ratter, and a few people miss the killmail. But you never go full retard, because it means the rescue fleet goes all in. Better to escalate with a small gang, get a small gang response, then fully escalate.
Finally, as bait-taker, you have a responsibility to actually take the bait. But even with the most YOLO and Derring Do attitude, you do require your bait to have commitment. 20 minutes before down time, you're happy to dump 4 nano cruisers and a ceptor onto bait Raven. I mean, it's a Raven, you don't take Raven bait hard, you come in at range maybe with a Maulus Navy to deal with Coward Drive, and you trigger that bait knowing that it's a 'pro1337' WH PVP group and they'll be bringing 4 DPS and 3 Guards and you just waltz away and maybe smack a Sabre.
And this is TF's Bait Making and Bait Taking 101. In short, cowardice, KB efficiency angst, and lack of balls denied everyone a bit of fun just before down time. In the BUGRY days, we'd have had a shitty alt (or a Nereus) schlepping about completely solo, chain un-scouted, with 4 mains in gank Moas and 4 alts in Scythes and Blackbirds, or similar, and would just deal with whatever came.
And we would get kills. And the odd Nereus would die when it was clear it was being blobbed to fuckery. Zero fucks were given.
