Come fishing in Devon, Enjoy Devon fishing holidays, stay in stunning holiday cottages and fishing, selfcatering cottages and fishing, fishing holidays Devon.
Bait Basics
There are a lot of different styles of bait, here are some basics, we will expand on them all as time goes on.
We have given an idea of the fish for the bait, but experiment, all places are different, different ecosystems, different tastes, if something doesn't work, try something else. If someone is catching fish, ask them what they are using, any decent angler will tell you.
There are some simple catapult and throwing etiquettes. Don't be a nuisance to your fellow anglers, we have all come to enjoy ourselves. If you wouldn't want someone firing bait into your fishing area, although why you wouldn't want someone encouraging fish onto your bait or hook I don't know, don't do it to them.
All baits can be ground baits, but some bait costs can be prohibitive to liberally throw into the water to attract your fish. Any ground bait that encourages your fish to investigate your fishing area is great, don't forget presentation. Remember how much fun you had with your Christmas present wrapping.
Ground bait
Sometimes a mixture of powdered ingredients, brown breadcrumbs are a favourite, precise recipes are a closely guarded secret with some anglers, these can be mixed with some water, and compressed into balls, these can be shot from a catapult to wherever you wish to encourage the fish, when they hit the water, they break up and disperse into a fine curtain of bait particles which move through the water, attracting the fish to your bait and hook.
Add a mixture of your hook bait, maggots, caster and the like.
Put your dry ground bait in a bowl and add lake water to it, you don't want foreign, peculiar water, it can put the fish off. Whilst mixing it all together, be careful, it's easy to add too much and end up with a mixture you can't mould.
Tench quite like it if you prebait your swim at regular intervals prior to the day you are going to fish.
Luncheon Meat
Readily available, chop it up and use it for ground bait or hook bait, find your favourite brand, smelly oils can make all the difference, Carp, Chub or Barbel, but actually lots of different fish.
Cheese
There are such a variety of cheeses, you can experiment for ages, Stilton and Roquefort mmmmmm, with olives perhaps, sorry got carried away. Be careful though, the cheese can harden when left in water for a while, you need to know that the hook will penetrate through when you strike.
Dog Biscuits
Pedigree Chum Mixers, to be precise, one of the most popular methods of catching carp, especially in the summer when the fish stay up near the surface.
Get yourself equipped with a catapult and a big bag of dog biscuits, load the catapult with four or five dog biscuits and then shoot them out into the centre of the lake.
Maggots
The supreme bait, the most widely used in coarse fishing, several different types, the main one being the larvae of the blow fly, used mainly as a hook bait.
Pinkies, a maggot which is the larvae of the Green bottle.
Smaller than the maggot they can be used as loose feed in conjunction with maggot as the main hook bait or are excellent as a hook bait in their own right. Because they are smaller you can use them on smaller hook sizes for the shy biting fish.
They make an excellent addition to ground bait balls.
Squatts are more commonly known in some quarters as feeders and they are the larvae of the housefly. They are the smallest of the larvae used for fishing and are consequently used mainly for feeding. They can be used when "balling-up" with ground bait to provide an irresistible carpet of feed. They can be fished with as a hook bait but require tiny hooks and are somewhat fiddly.
The Gozzer maggot
Some anglers like to breed their own maggots and the most popular home bred maggot is the gozzer, a super soft pure white maggot that is excellent for Bream fishing.
To breed gozzers take a pigs heart and a lions heart, the pigs heart to breed the maggots and a lions heart for you to do it.Make some cuts in the heart, then place it on clean bran in a biscuit tin or box, make a hole in the lid for the fly to enter and place in a dark spot away from the light.
Depending on weather temperatures you will get a blow (a cluster of tiny white eggs) in one or two days, after you notice the blow place the heart in fresh newspaper and cover with bran to keep the smell down and place away from the house in a dry place, in 6 to 7 days you will have perfect gozzers ready for riddling and placing in fresh bran in a bait box for fishing.Riddling is putting the result of your efforts in a sieve or riddle and cleaning up the result, getting rid of casters and debris.
Wasp Grubs
Well recommended for Chub, but great for other species, however you will need to strike up a relationship with your local pest controller if you want a regular supply.
Casters
An old maggot, Pupa, the stage before a maggot becomes a fly, no not something you wheel your TV around on. Especially liked by Roach, Bream and Perch, used often as ground bait.
Worms
Common garden worms can be stored fresh in your garden larder, someone else's garden, ask permission first, or alternatively buy them from your tackle shop.
Brandling, fish love them, however they are not user friendly, they emit a pungent yellow liquid when you push the hook in.
Repworm, Perch bait amongst others, can be found around rotting biomass, you can attract them with wet sacking or leaf mould, your garden can be a heaving mass of bait.
Lobworm, go out on a warm night, on the grass you will see them , keep them in damp moss or newspaper, they are a big fish bait.
Bread
As you can see fish cannot live by bread alone, but they love it, soft bread, moistened and rolled into balls, on the hook for Chub of Roach or ground bait wherever you want it, by throwing or catapult, dissolves and disperses in the water, fresh id best. Use the crust for catching Carp off the surface although it is just as comfortable floating just of the bottom.
Sweet Corn
An awesome bait, chuck it, catapult it, put it on the hook, Tench and Carp amongst others.
Precooked tinned variety can be expensive, but hugely convenient, especially if you are using it as ground bait or loose feed. You can buy loose maize and use that for your loose feed and use the tinned variety for hook bait.
Hemp Seed
Not for that Hamlet moment. In their raw form they need to be soaked in water for 24 hrs then boiled, until it splits, you can buy them from your tackle shop ready made.
Should the swim be used to hemp seed, it is a great bait, if not, it can sometimes take a while for the fish to get used to it
Boilies
Boiled bait mixtures, rolled into balls. These are great, the recipes are endless, originally made to be a carp bait, but equally suitable for other fish, oily and smelly, a paste ball with a firm shell. In all the colours and all the sizes and all the flavours, I fully expect someone to bring out a 99, Boilie with chocolate flake in it mmmmm.
What do you reckon to these flavours.
Strawberry, White Chocolate, Maple, Monster Crab, Peach, Banana, Cherry, Squid Liver Plus, Maple Squid Plus, Bling, Whisky.
Bling, does that mean it looks good or tastes good?
Carp Pellets
To encourage Carp and other fish into your swim, sometimes known as Trout pellet.
Potato
New potatoes are the best, boiled until soft, but firm enough to stay on the hook, if it helps you can pull the line through the potato with a baiting needle, tie the hook on the end of the line and pull it back into the potato until it is hidden, again the potato must not be to firm that it stops the movement of the hook when you strike.
Whilst this bait is mainly popular for Carp, you can mash it up and use it for many other species, mix it with other hook bait and use if for ground bait.
Elderberry
Especially useful if there are elderberry bushes shedding fruit into your waters, they work well for Roach or Dace but will also catch Chub or Barbel, loose feed four or so berries into the water with every cast
Most anglers will take a range of baits with them to try and induce the fish to feed. Fish can change their bait preferences from day to day, so it pays to be prepared.
Take mostly small feed baits, such as hemp, maggots and casters. Introduce a small pinch of these baits every few minutes to draw fish into the swim.
Large baits, such as worms, sweetcorn and luncheon meat fill fish up quickly, so should be introduced in only small quantities.
The contents of one tin of meat, or corn will be more than enough for a great day's sport.
Live bait such as maggots, Pupa and worms, can be kept successfully for several day, or even weeks if stored correctly, or until a non fishing person discovers them. Keep them in a ventilated bait box, which allows air in, but not bait out. Keep maggots in maize meal, worms in damp moss, keep them cool, in a dark cellar or garage, or fridge, best of all a bait fridge where they can't be discovered by a non fishing person, next to Cathedral cheese.
Why do you need different baits?
Match the size of your hook to the bait being used. Using the correctly sized hook will not only help keep the bait on during the cast, but will also mean that you hit more bites. Use too big a hook though and the bait will behave unnaturally and be refused by the fish.
For small baits, such as maggots and casters, use a size 16-20 hook. For worms and sweetcorn a size 10-14 is better. For really big baits, such as boilies and luncheon meat, a size 6-10 hook is required.
Come fishing in Devon, Enjoy Devon fishing holidays, stay in stunning holiday cottages and fishing, selfcatering cottages and fishing, fishing holidays Devon.