FEEDING AND BAIT

Casters are the only bait worth considering and I’d take three pints unless the lake was absolutely black with roach and I was going to pile the bait in.

Normally, though, this doesn’t happen and my feeding regime is to catapult or – if I can fish closer in – throw in by hand around a dozen casters every drop-in.

Don’t get too excited and throw bait in every few seconds. I find that the more regularly you feed, the greater the chance there is of sending the roach back down to the bottom. I would recommend feeding, lowering the float in and then waiting for a bite.

If it’s going to happen, the float will bury within 20 seconds or so of it settling, but leaving the rig in for up to a minute can still catch, so don’t be in too much of a hurry to reposition the float.

Hookbait is a single caster, nicked on to the hook like a maggot unless the fishing is very hard, in which case I’ll try to bury the hook.

It can also be worth using a single red maggot on the hook in this instance but on the flip side, if a lot of roach plus the odd skimmer was about, I’d definitely also try double caster.

A caster is the usual hookbait.