BREAD – GREAT FOR SEARCHING YOUR SWIM
If I had to pick one bait that would tell me where the fish are in my swim it would have to be bread. Whether the fish are hungry or not they can’t resist a big, bright, soft hookbait they can just slurp down.
The hardest part of bread fishing is finding the level the carp are sat . Once you do, nine times out of 10 a bite will result.
The first job is to get the right bread for the job, and my favourite is Warburton’s Thick or Extra Thick – it needs to be fresh. I don’t microwave it as others do, preferring to lightly compress it before punching out my hookbait discs.
For big carp (6lb-10lb) I use three 10mm discs, while for smaller carp and F1s I find 8mm or even 6mm discs are a lot better. The thing to remember about bread is that once in the water it swells to virtually double its size.
As a guide, in 6ft of water I pop the hookbait up around 18ins, and if I don’t get bites after 20 minutes I’ll use a longer hooklength to pop it up higher in the water and search out the layers the fish are sitting in.
One problem you can get when fishing bread is that silverfish can ruin the bait very quickly, so on waters with a large head of silvers I will sandwich a slice of an 8mm white pop-up in between two bread discs. That way I know there’s always going to be a bait on, even when I leave the rig out for long spells.
I’ve also tried different coloured boilies in the ‘butty’ – yellow, pink or even orange all add a bit of pazazz and can help get you a bite on a hard day.