CRACK THE BAIT CODE TO CATCH MORE
BAIT is arguably one of the most important, and fascinating, pieces of the angling jigsaw. It won’t matter how good your rig is, or whether you’ve bagged the hottest peg on the lake, if the fish in front of you aren’t at the very least intrigued by what you’ve put on your hook.
I’m sure most of us will have a favourite bait. One that we can always rely on to get a bite when we’re struggling or when our confidence levels are low.
My garage shelves are adorned with enough tubs of pop-ups and hookbaits to rival a tackle shop, but in reality there are only a few that I always take with me. Quite why I have all the others I’m not really sure!
On some sessions you need nothing more than a tin of sweetcorn, a pint of maggots or a bag of pellets to get bites all day long, whereas on other occasions you may require a loosefeed mix with the complexity of a Master Chef recipe to encourage the fish to feed with gusto.
With so many options available to us, it’s easy to see why so many people find bait choice a confusing subject at times.
Colour, flavour, texture and consistency all play a crucial part in how the fish will respond, and all these factors can change from one session to the next.
And, of course, we aren’t just limited to what we can buy in the tackle shop. Over the years we’ve received catch reports from anglers who have used all sorts of obscure offerings, from berries off bushes to sweets they bought in the supermarket. Our options are almost endless!
In this week’s issue we’ve compiled some of our favourite bait tips which will hopefully help to give you an advantage over your mate in the next peg.
But we’re sure that many of you will have your own little bait secrets and edges, so if you’ve got any that you’d be willing to share with other readers, please drop us a line.