Friday 22 March 2013

Bait Box Blues

It's occurred to me lately that I tend to use very few baits for my fishing sticking with those that I know and trust will catch the fish I'm after, so for roach it's bread and sometimes worms, pike and zander slices of roach and trout, barbel would be meat most of the year and corn in high summer, and so on and so forth. With utter confidence in the bait I'll happily sit there till the inevitable happens without chopping and changing to attract bites if they aren't coming. If it worked then — it'll work now, is my motto.

This leads to a blinkered view of what other baits are capable of though. Fishing bread isn't always the best way to catch roach for instance, and that was clear on the Itchen last summer when the river was high. Bread gained the most infuriating bites and hours later I turned to my box of maggots for an answer. I wanted to conserve my two pint stocks for trotting next day when I'd need every last one just to maintain the swim but filled a maggot feeder anyhow and cast out...

Bang! The tip arched over violently and a roach was hooked. Again — whack — another. I don't remember ever having such bites. They were unmissable! The humble grub transformed my fortunes, bread was abandoned, and to my relief I found that feeding wasn't necessary — on the day maggot was king.



What I didn't appreciate at the time was that the stretch I fished that Saturday morning would be fed with gallons of maggots by the end of the weekend, that being the local method — feed and feed and feed whilst trotting through at breakneck speed. What I'd also failed to apprehend was how many maggots I'd need next day just to stay in the game — Simon Daley, my guide for those sessions, didn't have a measly two pints, he'd a bucketload by his side both days and used the lot...

Maggots were their staple diet!

Simon pulls a bulging net of roach caught by feeding a bucket of maggots
Of course I've found the reverse to be true so many times, bread outclassing maggots by a huge margin and bringing the largest specimens, that often I won't take a change bait along thinking such insurance unnecessary. The same can be said for many target species — canal tench adore sweetcorn and everywhere I've fished for them I've found crucians love prawns — so I don't bother overmuch with alternative baits.

Marsh Farm: a bucket full of various baits but only the prawns worked
But perhaps I should in future because the only way I found that crucians have a taste for prawn was when fishing for tench with caster in a swim fizzing with bubbles. Having a hard time despite the obvious activity out front I grabbed a prawn out of my sandwich and tried that in desperation. I didn't catch any tench though — crucians occupying the same swim that I hadn't a clue were there before I stuck a prawn on the hook ate my sandwich filling in less than an hour!

Remembering that episode and the following spring when Marsh Farm crucians & tench both took prawn baits with gusto but ignored every other I'd taken along, it occurred to me that I really should experiment more than I do. Like I used to in fact before I got entrenched in what have been good, but might now be stale habits.




I decided to make a chart of my bait usage down the years with estimates in shades of blue of the quantities of fish caught on those I've used including a few that I've tried once or twice but never persisted with — shellfish for instance, or the fly. It makes it plain that certain baits reign supreme even though I use them far less than others, maggots of course catching the most species and the most fish. Conversely, bread, because I use it so very often, has caught more species than it probably should have considering I use it only for roach and silver bream, everything else being a by-catch, including pike!

Would small pieces of fish catch roach? I don't know. Would hemp catch Silver bream? Haven't a clue. Can I catch pike on sweetcorn? If it catches trout and salmon, then why ever not?

There's everything to gain by it and nothing to lose. I think I might even discover something new. So for the season ahead I'm going to break the mould, try out different baits and attempt to turn the whole chart blue!




10 comments:

  1. Jeff, save yourself any of this thought mate and just fish a pellet for everything ;)

    Also I thought this article was going to be guidance to help me stop losing about ten bait boxes a season when I saw the title... Helpful nonetheless :)

    Still haven't used prawns for anything, so need to give them a go at some point. But you won't find me sharing my sandwiches!

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    1. It'd have been more useful if I hadn't cut off the list of baits along the top of the chart!

      Fixed it now.

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  2. The one bait I'd love to give a go Jeff, is stewed wheat? Have you ever used it?

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    1. No haven't though I've read about it in old books on roach fishing. Must be a very cheap bait I'd have thought? I'll give it a go along with a trial of elderberries this summer, not at the same you understand!

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  3. A bait chart.......you sad man!

    thanks for the visit Jeff, stray comment deleted. You won't believe how much spam I get. The virtual kind that is, not the barbel, carp, chub and occasionally tench attracting kind!

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    1. I know, it's the snow cooping me up!

      Today's piking trip cancelled, don't know what to do with myself.

      I don't get any spam here, maybe it's a Wordpress thing? However, Wordpress makes very good looking blogs very easily — blogger cannot compete on that score I'm afraid...

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  4. Thought provoking jeff, reminded that me Stewed pearl barley is an excellent bait for roach, my uncle used to bag up on it.I have noticed this year that on the river Itchen whilst trotting for roachI have snagged branches absolutely covered in green caddis, so my plan is to use green maggots this year the roach must feast on these tasty morsels the river is full of them.

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    1. I'll put them on my 'to use' list Simon. My little local stream has loads of those free roaming green caddis in it, probably why the few roach it contains grow so large for its size. Collecting enough though? How could you do that in the Itchen?

      You could probably do it in a smaller shallower stream down your way. That small chalk stream than runs past the back of River Farm Fishery between Southampton and Fareham. That'll have loads in it. I reckon.

      As for green maggots. Now that's a great idea! A pint of whites and a few drops of green food colour should do the trick, don't you think?

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  5. I did think of harvesting some of the little critters.Funny you should mention river farm im going this weekend for my roach fix, albeit bolt rigs and maggot feeders which is apparently the going method, I think ill tuck my float rod in the holdall just incase.

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    1. I had no luck there with either approach, just lots of small roach on the float but not a touch on the bolt rig. Apparently if you don't fish the right spots you won't get anything much — a matter of casting about and finding the big fish. Always the way with roach though. You gotta find them because they won't come to you...

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