The larger fish are headed, cleaned and pickled, sold mostly as refrigerated product. Some anchovy sales are as live or fresh bait. These are extremely popular on the West coast. Probably this is the real excuse for this topic, but using any live or fresh bait isn't exactly rocket science. Your bait shop can tell you exactly how to use anchovies for sport fishing.
Anchovies have a distinct, strong, tangy flavor, usually a love or hate situation.
Those who like the flavor may crave it in pastas or on pizza, but anchovy haters abound. A common pizzeria offering is the EBA- everything but anchovies. Fanciers may opt for traditional Italian dishes such as pasta sauced with only garlic and anchovies. As a pizza topping, anchovies compete well with the intense flavors present, but add additional salt and oil to a dish which contains tons of both. Needless to say, they can be a truly unpleasant surprise to those not anticipating a fishy-salt feast.