MASHED BREAD – THE EASY WAY

ONCE I have caught a chub, or if I’m setting up in a swim I’m confident that holds them, I like to feed a small ball of mashed bread about every three casts.

Mash is simple to make – place a few slices in your landing net, submerge it in the river until all the air bubbles have escaped, then lift it out and allow the excess water to drain off.

Transfer the wet bread to a bucket and squeeze the bread through your fingers to break it up and remove any remaining trapped air from the crusts to ensure the feed will sink.

Leave the mash to stand briefly and then pour off the excess water to leave mash that can be squeezed into a ball and fed by hand. A quick warning here, don’t try to catapult the bait out unless you want to get covered in it!

Mashed bread forms a lovely cloud with a mixture of sizes of bread particles within. This sinks steadily and gradually chub will lose caution, feed confidently and will find a piece of flake trotted along the same line irresistible.

Remove the middle from a few slices of white bread to use as flake. The rest will make up your mash.

Put the slices with the remaining crusts into a landing net and allow all air bubbles to escape.

Lift the net and drain off the excess water. The bread can now be mashed up in your hands.

It should end up looking like this. If it’s too wet, add a little dry groundbait to the mash.