Less common baits

[ian g]

Interesting thread , I used black slugs a lot on the Dane , years back . Chub loved them ,

 

[no-one in particular]

Bread Pudding cubes, deadly for carp on one or two commercials I used to fish.
Shrimp or salmon supermarket pastes mixed with flour to form a stiff paste, also good for carp on commercials.
Small pieces of apple on a 14 hook got me a few roach once.
Same as Barbelo, wood lice, deadly for roach on a park lake when I tried them.
Same as Ian, big black slugs as well, great for chub on one river.
Not good were baked beans, messy and difficult to hook and no bites and those dried meal worms you get for bird food, not easy to hook and got no bites with them.

 

[John Aston]

The curious thing is that from the perspective of some younger anglers I've met , using worms for barbel and bread for carp appears daring. One bait I loved using when it was legal was crayfish - this was pre signal ,when indigenous crayfish were often common. Deadly for chub , and heroically savage bites. It still works , even though my crayfish are now plastic imitations .

 

[@Clive]

The curious thing is that from the perspective of some younger anglers I've met , using worms for barbel and bread for carp appears daring. One bait I loved using when it was legal was crayfish - this was pre signal ,when indigenous crayfish were often common. Deadly for chub , and heroically savage bites. It still works , even though my crayfish are now plastic imitations .

Prawns are a fair imitation of crayfish tails.

Looking back at the early anglers, worms featured highly in their fishing along with an early hnv paste made from bean flour and pulverised rabbit meat, both of which are higher in protein than similar ingredients. Interestingly this paste was infused with cat hair to give it body and enable it to stay on the hook longer.

Walton used tender young mice taken from a nest and Lawson takes this one step further in recommending a whelpling, i.e. puppy as a pike bait.

In France we get small wasp nests tucked away in garages, greenhouses and basements. They can be the size of a tangerine and there are usually only 6 or 7 adults that are not particularly aggressive. I put the nests in the freezer to kill off any life inside then take them fishing. There might be a dozen grubs suitable for hook baits and the rest of the nest is broken up and fished on a large hook. Fun size wasp grub cake.

 

[mikench]

I’ll give that a miss Clive.. I do not get on with wasps and hornets dead or alive.

 

[@Clive]

I’ll give that a miss Clive.. I do not get on with wasps and hornets dead or alive.

People like you pay people like me to remove what is basically my fishing bait

 

[no-one in particular]

On worms, I used to have a bit of waste ground near me that had basically an orange clay in the ground and I used to go and dig some huge orange coloured lob worms from there, big fat and orange they were. They were brilliant as bait, caught all sort of fish on them. Maybe one day I will get some lob worms and dye them with some orange food dye or maybe even red.

 

[Mark Wintle]

Elderberries and tares are not so much used these days but still great baits for both roach and dace.

I use tares extensively from the start of the season in June - better from July onwards - until mid October, and I've been surprised how effective they are on the Hants. Avon; I first used them on the Thames in 1975 and caught many bags of roach to 2lbs (on the Stour) on them but it was from 2011 that I've really learnt how to get the best out of them. I have never tried them on the Frome but should have back in the days when the roach were more prolific. Although I've done very well on one Dorset still water years ago for roach and carp it was only this season that I realised how well they'd work on another Dorset still water that I've been fishing since 1970.

Although I've done well with elderberries the season is very short - mid August to mid September and finding them not always easy. In 2020 the crop failed completely locally. Had to laugh at an Angling Times start of season article a couple of years ago advocating using the berry at the start of the season - good luck with finding any in June!

 

[nottskev]

Seed baits like hemp and tares used to be spoken of as summer, warm water options. Our idea of the "season" for them has changed a lot. Hemp works all year round and hemp on the hook catches roach all year on the local canal. Tares are a brilliant roach bait through winter and back end on the Trent marina I fish, used over groundbait hemp and casters. Often, the only reason I put casters on the hook is that you miss out on the good perch if you just fish tares. Roach in a local stillwater were straight onto them when I defrosted some tares and tried them on a cold day in February. I wish I could get wheat to work - a tub of wheat must be the prettiest bait.

 

[Philip]

Surprised no ones mentioned Groats.

They take flavours very well and have the advantage of being one of the few particles that only need a soak not a boil to prepare so are ideal for travelling anglers & preparation at the lakeside.

Probably the most unusual bait I ever used was a cod liver oil capsule. I remeber the occasion really well. It was a boxing day and I was on the Kennet at Aldermaston mill. I was sat in the prime top end swim right on dusk. This was in the era when that swim was well known to be the holding spot for a Chub that was very close to the British record of the time. It had been out a few times very close to the record and was always around those top few swims so they were literally never ever free. However being boxing day there were very few other anglers there and right on dusk I got into the prime swim.
Being a popular day ticket fishery with an especially large fish in it the fish there as you can imagine were absolutly hammered & had seen it all before.
I knew I didnt have long before closing time & they kicked us off the fishery so I was racking my brain as to what I could do. Rummaging around in my tackle bag I found a tub of Cod liver oil capsules and thought I bet no ones ever used those ! ...so I carefully threaded one on the hook and cast it out. You can imagine how keyed up I was...right on dusk, sitting in a prime swim with a potential BR fish maybe somewhere out there inches from my super duper new killer bait.

I would love to say there was a happy ending to it ...but I didnt get a twitch and it was a complete failure ! No Chub & I never got in or anyhwere near that swim again.

Oh well. Thats fishing