Thanks a bunch for maggot tip!

I LOVE the feature by the Guru Boys this week (pages 36/37).

It has some wonderful tips and innovations for the onset of cold weather and, worse still, clearing water this winter. The one I like best concerns improving the quality of bites by using natural baits. In as many words they acknowledge that many of the little pulls often described as ‘line bites’ are in fact aborted bites or dropped baits. The concept of using natural baits in a way rarely seen – bunches of maggots for example – is brilliant.

My approach is different: once I get bites, as distinct from genuine liners, I change to a waggler. I know it’s old fashioned but this long piece of peacock quill with a small body at the bottom – dotted down and fished as near to dead depth as possible, sometimes a couple of inches off bottom – has caught me fish when nothing else would.

Mind you, I hadn’t thought of banding a bunch of dead maggots!