The Coach Glug your maggots
THIS WEEK: Glug your maggots for a stand-out hookbait
IF you can make your hookbait different from what anglers around you may be using, and more appealing than the feed you are putting in, the fish will be more likely to pick it up.
You can do this by going for different-coloured baits, but often this isn’t enough.
Take maggots, for example. You can buy reds, whites, yellows and fluoros but I like to take things a step further and boost their appeal with a cheap and easy process that borrows from something big-carp anglers have been doing for ages – glugging.
GLUGGED MAGGOTS
The idea behind glugging is to saturate the maggots in a really smelly, colourful liquid that will help the fish find the bait in double-quick time.
To do it, I only need a bottle of Bait-Tech’s Predator Plus liquid, a pint of dead reds and a plastic food bag, but the preparation begins well before I reach the bank. A couple of days before is ideal, and by freezing the glugged maggots I can seal in the flavour and colour and make the liquid cling to each maggot for longer than if I soaked them just before I start fishing.
All I do is tip the maggots into the bag, give them a good soaking of Predator Plus, then grip the bag closed and shake it well to spread the liquid evenly. You could use the maggots at this point, but the liquid will wash off quickly. Popping them in the freezer for a day or two will make them so much more effective.
I take them out the night before fishing, defrost the maggots and they’re good to go. I can re-freeze any unused bait for another session, knowing they’ll be as good as new next time.
BIG HOOKBAITS
Alongside using a bait that will leak colour and flavour, I’ll stack the odds even more in my favour by using as big a hookbait as I can. When you look at the size of a carp’s mouth, it’s obvious that it will have no trouble sucking in a sizeable hookbait, so that means cramming lots of maggots on to the hook.
In high summer, this can be a dozen maggots but at this time of year, something a little more conservative but still substantial is better... around half-a-dozen maggots is fine. The more maggots you use, the more Predator Plus will be leaked off and the bigger the bait will be. This is especially the case in the margins.
FEEDING
I have a little trick for feeding that I reckon ‘steals’ fish from surrounding pegs. Rather than cupping in feed from a short distance above the water, I lift the pole up quite high before dropping in the contents of the cup.
Carp will still associate noise with food at this time of year, so this ‘clattering’ of the feed helps make enough din to get them interested.
I won’t feed dead maggots, as many people do in the margins, as I want the large hookbait to stand out... and that means pellets. To keep the feed in exactly the same spot I use 4mm Bait-Tech Sticky Method Pellets that will stay still on the bottom when big carp are in the peg and feeding.
Pellets will also make more noise when dropped in and by using Sticky Pellets, I can even make them into a ball by dampening them to help them go straight down before they break up.