A Question of Baits

He is President of the Lure Angling Society, and President of the National Association of Specialist Anglers.
With the winter pike fishing now open, I’ll deal at intervals with some of the questions that I am asked most frequently. The first is about bait, the deadbaits (mackerel, etc) that pike anglers use. For some reason, anglers find the subject of baits a bit of a minefield, but it’s really very simple as long as you avoid some of the myths that are around.

First of all, you need a variety of fish for bait. Quite often you will hear that at a particular water the pike will not look at, say, mackerel deadbaits. Not once have I found this to be true. Indeed, if I hear such a rumour, then mackerel would be my first choice of bait, simply because most people will be avoiding it!

So, as each season approaches, I buy myself a selection of very fresh fish from the Cambridge market, take them home immediately, and then freeze them. This is my backup supply because, having set up a nice batch in my freezer, I then buy weekly, a day or two before fishing, and use these baits in preference to the deep-frozen ones. I treat them rather differently, simply popping them in the deep freeze for an hour or so, just to crisp them up, then they go in the fridge itself until I need them. That way I begin fishing with fresh fish that are not unmanageably hard.

But what baits? Well, to give you an idea, I would not be happy unless I had a good back-up supply of the following: mackerel, sardine, herring, smelt, sprat, kipper, eel, lamprey, octopus, squid, big prawns, horse mackerel, bass, trout, sandeel and some freshwater fish such as roach and rudd. You do not need large quantities of any of these because you can replenish supplies as the season progresses.

Pike are selective feeders in an unusual way. On some days they will take any deadbait on offer; on other days they will select only one of the kinds on offer. The next day they will ignore that baitcompletely, and select only one of the others.

No one understands why this is so, and you simply have to find out by swapping and changing baits. Of course, if you do not have much variety with you then you may fail completely, even though the pike are feeding actively. It is interesting, of course, that pike do seem to prefer sea fish (which in some cases they will never have seen before) and that zander are less keen on them, preferring freshwater species (especially eels). As we have plenty of pike and zander in Cambridgeshire, it is as well to go prepared for both.

Having said all that, I find that this year I may not have to buy quite so much bait because, quite out of the blue, a bait company offered to sponsor me! Of course, the last two winters saw very spectacular results to my rod, and, as angling is governed by the laws of Lord Murphy, I may well have a bad season and the sponsorship withdrawn.

At the moment, though, all is very rosy and I sit here waiting for another delivery of a variety of deep-frozen baits.