Thursday 9 September 2010

On The Turn

I've been trying to replicate an accidental success with turning casters that I had a couple of months ago. I left some out in the yard by accident, forgot about them and then it rained heavily, filling the bait tin with water. When I found them, all the maggots had turned into perfect sinking casters that stayed sinkers as they turned dark. Quite what happened I don't rightly know as my latest attempt ended with half floaters, half sinkers.


I had a pint of maggots on the turn and loaded the lot into a square black plastic basket contraption that I pulled out of the canal, about the same size as a bait tin, with holes just the right size for maggots to crawl through without casters being able to fall through, too. Every four hours or so all the maggots would have passed right through the square mesh and the casters left up top were consigned to a bait tin and covered with water in the bait fridge. The experiment was only partially successful - perhaps the maggots have to be wet before they turn?



When I'd eventually turned the lot, I went fishing with them, to a favourite winter peg on the local canal, as it is now that time of year when specimen roach fishing comes into the foreground after the summer doldrums. I sat there for a couple of hours feeding hemp and casters (casters to both fish and ducks) with just a few tiny nudges of the float to show for it and finally as a crescendo, a couple of half hearted true bites, that were missed. Sorely.

I was told that hemp and caster was the killer method...

So far as I am concerned there is only the one 'killer method' for big roach on the local cut. I have tried everything and the only bait that works with them consistently, is whole lobworms.

I wouldn't mind so much, but the roach out front were making a mockery of me! Roach in the pound plus range were porpoising all around and through my peg, and nowhere else, up or down. To see so many large roach topping on the canal is a very rare event indeed and usually means sure fire success if you land up in the middle of the activity (so much so that if I am fishing in winter and I see just the one fish top all day long, I will invariably up sticks and move to it) and this was happening in one of my only certain specimen roach hotspots (and top secret) that has furnished me with numerous pound plus fish, so I was expecting at least a couple of takers.

So much for hemp and casters...

And, were the fish topping before I arrived on the scene or did my feed stimulate them into action? I had to go before dusk - would they turn on to feed properly just after I'd left for home? Or, am I just fishing the caster in wrong headed fashion?

I don't know...

I am prepared to give the method one more try before I abandon it as just not fit for purpose.

But I think that it might be high time to get out with the garden fork and fill my wormery with big fat lobs.

1 comment:

  1. Caster/hemp fishing is a funny one. I often think that the success of both baits are due to them being mistaken for small snails (crunchie outside and soft centres) but in a canal were there is very little weed which snails feed on there will be a very small amount of snails, therefore casters/hemp may actually look very suspicious as a food source. as you know one pound roach are in no way as green as there 2 oz relations so they have probly seen it all. I think you should go with what you know and get the lob's ready to go or try red squatts/red maggots and try to mimic blood worm or joker.

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