Piling the bait in

[Rob Swindells]

Hi mike
I understand what your saying and agree also. What I'm trying to get across is that to make an out right statement of "piling bait in is wrong" or to say anything in nature/angling is black and white can lead to confusion. In general I myself dont pile bait in on a regular occasion(I have nowt to do with Yorkshire) but there are possible times where I love to fish over large baited areas. For me its all down to what I want,where I'm fishing and the style or approach of my fishing.
Hope my wording comes across ok

[Keith Speer]

A few years ago I watched a chap on The Kennet put in about a gallon of Hemp, he was going to fish but was on call for his work and suddenly the pager went off and off he went.

About an hour later I went to his swim and peered over the bank to see 40+ Barbel feeding big time.

I had a gallon or so of Hemp and about 4 pints of maggots so I thought I would be able to keep the fish interested, to my surprise they started to thin out, so I droppered some bait in to see if they would feed again.
The upshot was these fish were so on the feed that no matter how much I put in I could not keep them, I simply did not have enough bait!
I made hay while the bait lasted and had 21 Barbel.

When I ran out mid afternoon, I started to fish single baits with no feed, the bites dried up.

Come evening and a mate turned up, so we piled in his bait, we had another 14 fish between us, when the bait dried up so did the fish.

OK it was in September, we were having an Indian summer and the fish fed for no particular reason that I could see, I do know that they fed again the next day and for several days after that.



A few years ago Mike Wilson and I under took a baiting campaign on The Thames we put in measured amounts every other day for about six weeks prior to the start of the season, once the season started ,every evening we fished, we would dropper out half to three quarters of a gallon of Hemp followed by two pints or so of maggot, we would then cast out a maggot feeder every 2-3 minuets to start with, slowing down a bit after an hour!
To say that we bagged up was an understatement for about a month we had between 3 and 11 Barbel each per session, granted we baited up accurately and fished accurately, but the effort we put in was well worth it, although the old bank balance suffered a bit!

As I wrote in a previous post, last week I fished a swim where I used less than half a pint of Maggots for 4 Barbel.

So the answer is??



Well I don’t know!! I’m still finding out how to do this stuff, it’s a matter of judgment isn’t it, after a failure or a success I will talk to Mike and others of the WBC as to the what, and the where, and slowly we learn to do this just a little bit better!

Problem is, there is no quick fix, no easy answer, what works today is sure to fail in the future, experience tells me that several Kgs of bait into water of 39`F is, in the main, a waste of time but sometimes people just have to do it, to learn it.

The trick is to learn it and not forget it!

[Mike Hodgkiss]

Originally Posted by Rob Swindells

Hi mike
I understand what your saying and agree also. What I'm trying to get across is that to make an out right statement of "piling bait in is wrong" or to say anything in nature/angling is black and white can lead to confusion. In general I myself dont pile bait in on a regular occasion(I have nowt to do with Yorkshire) but there are possible times where I love to fish over large baited areas. For me its all down to what I want,where I'm fishing and the style or approach of my fishing.
Hope my wording comes across ok

I understand where you are coming from Rob . You are right ,there is nothing black and white with nature and trying to catch wild creatures . I sometimes imagine the fish rubbing there pecs with glee when some chap swans along and legs in a ton of food .
As regards maggots / hemp ,I think balling in loads of this has less potential to mess things up as they are nothing like as filling as a few kilos of boilies , they keep the fish interested , grubbing furiously , and losing caution as they become pre occupied , thus in theory increasing our chances of catching the blighters .

[Mark Thompson]

testing

[Albert Watkinson]

spot on graham.this pile in on small rivers is overated and not sensible at all.dare i say it.i have had some very nice fish on the single bait method.mind you i only do 4hrs max in daylight.
albert

[Graham Elliott]

Some very interesting views.

I did make a separation between particles and more substantial baits. Certainly some days the maggs and hemp etc. can keep the fish going practically all day when the conditions are right.

Certainly on some of the bigger rivers, a lot of substantial bait stuff seems to work very well in attracting the fish, although often feeding sessions are shorter from what I have seen as a general rule.

More concerned personally if it's loaded in, nothing happens, and when they do start feeding chances for any anglers then in situ are diminished. Even more concerned on the smaller rivers when it's practiced.

The bait gurus seem to make no distinction on this. Are they right?

[Fred Bonney]

I've been trying to find the exact wording to me from a bait company boss.

He said, words to the effect that barbel anglers use about 5 kilos of bait a month where as carp anglers use that in a session.

5 kilos a month? More like 24months!

[Simon Haggis]

I probably use 3-4 kilos of boilies a season for barbel and that includes me crushing up loads of it to use as loose feed.

[Andy Hunter]

Bait application is dependant on several factors; size of river, fish population (including the undesired smaller species), type of bait & angling pressure.In can be advantageous depositing several pints of particles in a swim in order to feed of the hordes of ravenous smaller species & allow the target species an oppotunity to get their heads down (not appicable in the colder months).However the same approach with larger baits or high protein baits, boilies & pellets, can in my opinion be counter-productive. This is particularly relevant on sparesly stocked, heavily fished smaller waters (unfortunately the ones i frequent).
Then there is the issue of fishing etiquette (or in some incidences,the lack of it).It can be extremely frustrating & annoying watching a fellow angler depositing several kilos of boilies/pellets in the adjancent swim & then waving the white flag after a couple of hours of inactivity.Anyway i'm off to liquidise several loaves of bread for a quick chubbing session on my small sparsely stocked river.

Regards

Andy

[Rob Swindells]

Andys post sums it up well I think, horses for courses. Many times a single PVA bag cast in is uselss and other times it can be perfect! The biggest thought really as mentioned is consideration of others on the bank and in particular with baiting programmes.