Choosing The Right Bait For The Conditions And The Fish You Are After Can
Mean
Catching Or Not. I Have Listed A Few Favourite Baits Below
Maggots
Natural whites and various colours including bronze, red, yellow with green and
blue a less common sight
Maggots can be used for most fishing methods such as Float, feeder and ledger
fishing. When fishing the
presentation of a maggot is very important, single maggots are best.
Hooked through the flap of skin at the blunt end this won't burst the bait and
allows it to continue wriggling
Mount double offerings by lightly hooking one
through the head and the other through the tail to prevent
them spinning up
light hook lengths on the retrieve. Clusters of maggots can be mounted on larger hooks?
to fool Barbel and Carp.Maggots also work well with hempseed, worms and various ground baits.
Overall this is first class bait that will catch every fish that swims
Sweetcorn.
This has to be one of the cheapest baits that one can use; you can buy it from
your local supermarket for less
than 30p a tin. Sweetcorn is great bait for
Tench and Bream, Also a number of very large Carp have fallen to
Sweetcorn, with
at least two Carp breaking the Carp Record. You can use it as hook bait or as
loose feed along
with Hemp Seed. Sweetcorn is a very clean bait and very easy
to use.
Hemp
Hemp is a very good bait to use as a feeder bait which you can mix with many
other baits, like casters maggot
and sweetcorn to name a few. You can use this
as a hook bait, but beware your bites will be lighten quick, Roach
love hemp.
Hemp works best for Roach when its fed little and often, while a big bed of Hemp
needs to be put
down to hold fish like Barbel, Chub, Tench and Carp. In flowing
water, hemp often has to be fed in a bait dropper
or feeder
You can buy this uncooked in bulk and cook it at home, this is the cheapest way
to buy Hemp, and you
can also buy it pre-cooked from your local Tackle dealer
How to Cook Hemp.
The best way to prepare Hemp is soak the seed overnight to soften the seed; it
is prepared by boiling and simmering
for 30 minutes. This turns the shell black
and small white shoot emerges. Take care when cooking Hemp, once it is
cooked it
remains very hot for a while afterwards. I cook a few pints at a time and put
them in my fishing freezer
until I require them. Please beware that if you cook
you hemp in doors it will cause an unpleasant smell. I cook mine
outside on the
Bar- B-Q (Gas).Allways get help from an adult when cooking hemp
Casters
After several days, maggots start to turn into chrysalis or casters. Initially,
these are white but quickly turn
light bronze, then a deeper brown ending up
almost black. In their lighter stages, they sink but as they
turn darker they
float When fishing with casters in clear water, it's best to almost bury the
hook inside,
leaving just a fraction of the point showing. In most other
conditions, casters can lightly hooked through
the blunt tail end, which is
slightly tougher than the pointed head. Double offerings on slightly larger
hooks,
sometimes deters fish, as will darker coloured casters. Dark floaters
also fool wary fish because they
counter the weight of the hook, making the hook
bait behave similar to loose feed. Hemp works very well
along side casters. I
rate casters very highly.
Worms
Reds are the smallest worms, followed by the medium sized dendrobaenas and
brandlings. The largest
variety is the lobworms. Fish tend to target the darker
coloured heads of most worms, so impale the hook
in this area, a little way back
from the tip. Larger worms can also be cut into shorter segments. Worms
are
readily accepted and equally on the Float, Ledger or Feeder tackle. This is a
truly all year round bait
and one that will catch fish well in coloured water.
Worms are good activators, particularly when chopped
up to release a strong
scent. Pole anglers often cup Reds, Lobs and Dendrobaenas in.
Worm is an
excellent cocktail bait that often pulls bonus bites when matched
with baits like red maggot and casters.
Pellets
Pellets are sold in 4, 8, 10, 12,14,16, 18 and 20mm sizes. The originals were
designed for rearing Trout,
Salmon and Halibut on fish farms, but they have
proved very effective for course fish, notably Carp.
Pellets can be float
fished, legered and combined with feeder tackle, particularly Method feeders.
These
are mainly bait for Carp venues but their use is spreading on canals and
Bream waters.
Pellets are a prime Carp and Bream bait but other species like Tench and silver
fish soon take a liking to
them. You can combine pellets with Bollies, Sweetcorn
and Hemp.
These baits are now out selling maggots
in many areas.I have been using pellets
for the last couple of years and I have caught some very nice fish.
You can buy
these in bulk, which is by far the cheapest way to by them.
