When should I use a window feeder?

“There are two ways to load a window feeder, both of them easy”

WINDOW feeders can cause confusion, and when they first burst on to the scene I was more than a little sceptical.

My opinion changed once I started fishing in Ireland, because window feeders probably get more use there than anywhere else. It was soon apparent that window feeders were something that I needed to add to my armoury!

What is a window feeder?

Imagine a maggot feeder with a chunk cut out of the side. In fact, from what I understand this is exactly how the early window feeders were made.

The lead on a window feeder is situated at the base, so it casts like a bullet even in the poorest of conditions.

You can get them in a range of sizes. For roach I tend to use the mini and small sizes of feeder, whereas for bigger fish such as bream and hybrids

I’ll normally opt for medium and large.

There are several different makes of window feeder on the market but my favourites are without a doubt the Guru Window Feeders with the X-Change lead system.

This makes them very versatile, in that I can switch over feeder weights in seconds should conditions change.

I also think the size of these Guru window feeders for both ease of loading bait and fishing is spot-on.

Loading the feeder

There are two ways you can do this, both of them easy. I prefer to load them just like a standard feeder, adding my chosen particles to the groundbait and single scooping the contents to give me a particle and groundbait mix inside.

This isn’t the way they were designed to be used, though, as the original concept was to introduce a large amount of just particles with a window.

Step one is then to add your chosen particles to the feeder, be that casters or even neat chopped worm. To close the window I just add a smear of groundbait to cover the hole.

When loading a window in this way I find it best to have the groundbait slightly overwetted. It sticks to the feeder that little bit better on the cast.

With the groundbait added I compress it into place before tidying things up so the feeder keeps its aerodynamic shape.

Make sure the groundbait is firmly in place, so the contents don’t fall out on the cast.

I should add that although the second way isn’t my preferred method, that doesn’t mean I don’t use it. In fact, I have won several matches on bream venues by filling a big window with chopped worms and just sealing feeder with groundbait.

If you need to get a lot of chopped worm into the swim, then there is no other feeder as good as a window for doing just that.

Why are they so good?

Why is a window feeder so effective? I think it’s because it pins the fish to the bottom.

Quite often I find myself switching between a window and a cage feeder. I have this saying – “use a cage feeder to attract them and a window feeder to catch them.”

Sometimes with a cage feeder it can be tricky to keep the fish on the bottom, particularly in deep water.

Because a cage feeder gives off a bit of bait as it falls through the water it will pull fish into the peg early on. If catching them proves tricky I will switch to a window feeder, because I believe that a window gives very little bait off until the feeder hits the bottom. If the fish want to feed, they have to follow the feeder down to the bottom to do so.

A brilliant example of this was a match I fished at Bough Beech Reservoir. This is a really deep venue and I was pegged over on the dam wall with 25ft-plus of water where I was casting.

What worked was making four casts on a cage to catch maybe one fish, then two casts on a window for two more.

Interestingly, I had to switch back to the cage to pull the fish back into the peg, but without a doubt once the fish were there the window feeder was the way to catch them.

It works in shallow water!

That’s not to say a window is just for deep water, as it most definitely isn’t. It can be brilliant in shallow water when fished with sloppy groundbait, and when I say “sloppy” I mean exactly that. On last year’s World Club Feeder fish-off at Arrow Valley Lake, our team plan was to fish mini Guru Window Feeders and cast regularly every 90 seconds.

Arrow Valley is a very shallow venue and cloud was the key to keeping bites coming – a window feeder was perfect for delivering this.