Pellets advice

[Another Dave]

Never tried pellets before but i picked up some 8mm ones to try in my ongoing battle to catch something larger than the little rudd in my local pond. We're not looking at monsters, hopefully modest tench or some of the better crucians which i imagine live there.

I've built up a variety of hooks and hooks-to-nylon over the last year and a bit, some of them have those pellet bands on a hair which so far i've only used for prawns. Hoping to have a crack at this on Wednesday morning. Would a 16 with a band be about right or would you hook them directly?

 

[David Rogers 3]

Good luck with getting past the rudd - in my experience, the little perishers can demolish any bait, up to and including 15mm boilies...

 

[peter crabtree]

16 with a band is ok for 8mm but better with a 14 or 12.

 

[S-Kippy]

Soft hookers you can hook directly. Its the hard pellets you need a band for. I agree with Simon....a 14 would be better for an 8mm pellet. A 16 for 6mm.

 

[peter crabtree]

Those pellets aren't that soft, quite tricky to hook without interfering with hooking effectiveness.

 

[peterjg]

Can someone recommend a pellet for roach fishing. Roach generally prefer soft baits (except hemp!), I am looking for a softish pellet which can be both floatfished or legered without disintegrating. I would prefer it not to be an expander so that I can just take them with me without bothering with any preparation in advance. Any ideas?

 

[daniel121]

Good luck with getting past the rudd - in my experience, the little perishers can demolish any bait, up to and including 15mm boilies...

Golden rudd yes, the natural stain are much more wary

 

[daniel121]

Unfortunately I've never had much sucess on those shop brought Hook pellets. In answer to the OP I'd use a size 14 so a 16 is in the right ball park.

Targeting roach I'd always try natural baits over fishmeal even in commercial still waters

 

[Another Dave]

Golden rudd yes, the natural stain are much more wary

Not where i'm fishing Daniel, they are ravenous!

 

[David Rogers 3]

Not where i'm fishing Daniel, they are ravenous!

Once a water becomes over-run by huge shoals of 4-6 inch rudd it becomes very difficult to catch anything else. The only answer is to either fish somewhere else (!) or try using hardened boilies (they can still batter them off the hook or hair, though) and fishing after dark (if allowed) when the rudd might be a bit less active (possibly).

Or try arma-mesh!

 

[Another Dave]

The thing is David, this place is free and only 15 mins walk from my door. I simply don't have the time to go fishing for the whole day, which makes loading up the car etc and paying for a day ticket all a bit inefficient. Plus all the commercials near me seem to be 'great white hunter' venues, whereas this pond is natural and probably carp free, and usually angler-free. There are no other farm ponds left in my area.

It's become a bit of an obsession; I used to fish here in my youth, when the pond was a silted up mess covered in several inches depth of fairy moss. When i rediscovered it i was delighted to see it had been restored beautifully. There's nothing similar in my area, an even if i don't catch i enjoy seeing the snakes, terrapins and kingfishers trying to put a dent in the rudd numbers.

My plan is to put a sleeper rod out with a pellet on while i try floatfishing corn with a rod or whip to try the matchman's method of getting the fish frenzied enough to attract the better stamp - an attempt to fish through the small ones. If the pellet gets pestered on the ledger i'll switch it up to half or whole lobworm. If the float only gets me tiddlers then i'll try pellet on the float, laid on hard. Some of the tiddlers are 3 to 4oz crucians though, so i fancy a few of those.

I have some chicken feed made of a seed mixture containing hemp, wheat and many other types of seed as well as dried shrimps. If i simmered that for an hour would it be ok to use as loose feed do you think?

 

[David Rogers 3]

I'll be interested to hear how you get on - Having experienced a water like yours in the past (it was a good place to fish until the rudd population exploded), I'm not optimistic for you, though. Pike and perch were introduced into the water I used to fish, in an attempt to reduce the rudd numbers, but had only a limited impact. Your pond sounds a nice place to fish, though, so long as you don't mind catching lots of small rudd!

 

[Keith M]

Never tried pellets before but i picked up some 8mm ones to try in my ongoing battle to catch something larger than the little rudd in my local pond. We're not looking at monsters, hopefully modest tench or some of the better crucians which i imagine live there.

I've built up a variety of hooks and hooks-to-nylon over the last year and a bit, some of them have those pellet bands on a hair which so far i've only used for prawns. Hoping to have a crack at this on Wednesday morning. Would a 16 with a band be about right or would you hook them directly?

View attachment 5814

If the pellets shown are not too soft; I much prefer using hooks with Quickstop’s on the hair rather than using bands. I find them a lot quicker and easier to use and a little less protuberant; you just push the quickstop through the pellet using the Quickstop needle.

You can also mount other baits like worms etc. using Quickstops.

Keith

 

[daniel121]

Not where i'm fishing Daniel, they are ravenous!

That's the magic of fishing, the fish are forever changing the rules

 

[Philip]

Can someone recommend a pellet for roach fishing. Roach generally prefer soft baits (except hemp!), I am looking for a softish pellet which can be both floatfished or legered without disintegrating. I would prefer it not to be an expander so that I can just take them with me without bothering with any preparation in advance. Any ideas?

How about bits of bolies Peter...Mainlines Grange used to catch everything including Roach ..

 

[rayner]

Can someone recommend a pellet for roach fishing. Roach generally prefer soft baits (except hemp!), I am looking for a softish pellet which can be both floatfished or legered without disintegrating. I would prefer it not to be an expander so that I can just take them with me without bothering with any preparation in advance. Any ideas?

Sonu baits pro expanders need no preparation apart from covering with water, they need no pumping. Roach love 4mm
Small pieces of luncheon meat is a bait roach can't resist

 

[Another Dave]

I'll be interested to hear how you get on - Having experienced a water like yours in the past (it was a good place to fish until the rudd population exploded), I'm not optimistic for you, though. Pike and perch were introduced into the water I used to fish, in an attempt to reduce the rudd numbers, but had only a limited impact. Your pond sounds a nice place to fish, though, so long as you don't mind catching lots of small rudd!

Here you go David How did you get on?

 

[David Rogers 3]

Here you go David How did you get on?

Well done!

 

[Another Dave]

I definitely felt i was getting a better stamp of fish, although that may just be because the water has cooled down since the summer. The other thing that seemed to work was a sticky ball of groundbait around a piece of corn, i think the fish were already hitting the mini-balls of groundbait on their way down, and if i didn't get a take straight away at least i knew it was going in the right place.

 

[108831]

Roach eat hard pellet during the summer,pellet becomes less effective as temperatures fall,on virtually every venue,rivers included.