Hi I hope there is someone out there that can help me.I have just started taking my four year boy to a local lake for a bit of tiddler bashing,but as the lake has a good head of carp we thought we would try to entice a few of the top.The first session was not to bad and we had two(but lost many more).We went again yesterday and where not so successful,the problem I have is with dog biscuits!The first session I pre soaked them but they where too soggy the next I tried superglueing them to the hook but they sunk(two biscuits on a size eight hook with about four foot to the bubble float).Any advice on how to soak them, or get them to float would be gratefully appreciated.

Have a look inthe tackle shop for Sonu Baits Oily Floaters. They come in a variety of sizes, 8mm, 11mm, and 16mm.

They're soft enough to stick a hook through yet will remain on your hook for maybe 15 minutes and a few casts in the water. If you use the larger size on the hook, get the smaller size (8mm) for loose feeding or put soem ordinary dog biscuits in around the main bait.

You can hair rig them or band them also.

Iuse the enterprise artificials. Saves all the messing.

Craiq ,Maybe a silly question , but what type/size biscuits where you useing ?

Thanks woody will have a look for them. Les Iam using pedigree chum mixer

hi craig, i've been surface fishing for the past few days and i have been using bait bands, you can get them in different sizes to suit the size of your bait and i've had quite good sucsess.

Flavours what you can put on dog biscuits, try Scopex or Tiger Nut. Only Put a small amount in your bait tub and give it a good old shake, leave to soak over night before you go fishing.
Hope this is helpful to you.....
Good Luck!!

Bye For Now

if your careful you should be able to hook them directly without them breaking up

I think I'm right in saying that Pedigree Chum biscuits are not floaters, they used to be but not now. I use Tesco's own which look the same and definitely float. Bread is still as good as any biscuit.

I use asda's float very well. Never add any flavour. Always work well.

Pedigree Chum were floaters last time I tried them, maybe I need to buy and try some again just to see - saves a lot of pellet pumping messing about if they do sink.

The reason I haven't used the Pedigree C lately is that the Coop version is a lot cheaper.... and definitely floats ! The Morrissons version is a good feeder variety, as they float really well but are slightly smaller than the PC / Coop offering, thereby (one hopes) causing a selective fish to home in on the larger specimens.

The other think I have used succesfully on the hook while feeding dog biccys is an enterprise baits artificial tiger nut hooked through the skin. Floats forever, never comes off, immune to fry attack and they work just fine. Maybe a glug to add some smell might help but it hasn't proved necessary so far....

Oh, and my patented method of softening pellets - which works well, hookable but not over-softened or soggy:

Boil a half inch of water in the bottom of an old pan that won't cause domestic ructions when used.

Add any colour or flavour if wished (I tend to use red and vanilla, red and almond or yellow and banana myself) to the water. Colours and flavours available in the home baking section of your local supermarket for 26p a go....

(Or you can pay fifty times that much at your friendly local angling bait additive suppliers shop. Just why do you think he's so bloody friendly ?????? :-( )

Get it up to a good solid rolling boil and then chuck in your biccys, couple of handfuls or so, not tooo many or you will reduce the temperature too much and it will go off the boil.

Shake around in the pan for literally one minute, no more, making sure all biccys are coated, then dump into a metal sieve (if you want to use your other half's plastic one then go right ahead.... I'll leave it to you to explain the newly dyed colour of the meshes), allow to drain for five or six seconds, then dump them all into a plastic sandwich / deep freeze bag. Compress the air out of the bag, but do not squeeze the biccys inside too much, twist around three or four times to make airtight and then tie shut. Leave alone for a half hour to an hour. Then, and this is fairly important, open the bag and scrunch the biccys around to separate them all into individuals again. If you don't do this then you will end up with just one big lump of biccys stuck together in the morning..... useable but a pain picking the individual biccys off the lump.

Then reseal and leave overnight in the plastic bags and take to the waterside. In this condition they will be soft enough to hook and will float, but not so soft as to be soggy and fall apart.

To make them sink I do the pellet pump bit at the waterside at the last minute before using. I know some people say to do this it in advance but the only result I have had from that is a series of bags of biccy smelling useless mush.

Enjoy..... !