The cost of pre-baiting £££?

[binka]

This is purely out of curiosity as I don’t generally pre-bait as a rule in this context, mainly because the type of fishing I do just doesn’t require it.

I’ve just been watching Paul Young (I know, don’t hold it against me I was desperate mg in Ireland and they pre-baited a swim for a bream session the following day… Now I know Ireland has a long history of huge bream and roach shoals especially on the Erne system where they were filming but I counted at least five bags of groundbait, what looked like around four pints of casters, maggots, a good half a kilo of dendras and some vanilla flavoured corn.

In other words the thick end of fifty quids worth of bait, if not a little more and there must have been nearly half as much again for use during the session the following day.

I will sometimes spend a little over twenty quid for a session and feel like I’ve blown my brains out when I leave the tackle shop, sometimes just the cost of a farmhouse loaf or tin of meat from the supermarket but those sorts of figures are way out of my league.

For the guys that pre-bait what do you reckon is the cost of what you’re chucking in?

 

[Titus]

You should read some of the carp mags where they talk of pre baiting with 20 or 30 kg of boilies and then topping up with another 10 kg after every fish. It's madness, I once won a trip to france for a week and went with two bags of red band pigeon conditioner.
I baited a couple of spots the first night with 1/2 a bucket in each one and went on to empty the lake, catching the biggest common and the biggest mirror within an hour of each other.

I spent the rest of the week touring the local area and visiting all the local bars and markets in the mornings, snoozing through the afternoon and fishing a few hours in the evening catching two or three fish a night. It was a brilliant week and all on £20 worth of bait.

 

[law]

I prebait with maize and pigeon conditioner.
They are around 15 quid for a 15kg sack and for carp, I'll do 5kg every day for a week to 10 days. The last 2 gos I'll add some boilies too.
So for that amount of time, around 40-50quid.
But I'll only prebait when I know it will be worth it. Where no-one is likely to jump on my spot and the fish are a good size.

 

[binka]

But I'll only prebait when I know it will be worth it. Where no-one is likely to jump on my spot and the fish are a good size.

Now that was one thing I did note during the programme, they said that a pre-baited swim could be booked for the following day ensuring that you managed to get in it.

Good idea I thought but obviously wouldn't work over a longer pre-baiting campaign although I dread to think of the cost of one of those with what they were chucking in.

 

[peter crabtree]

I remember seeing the episode with Paul Young in Ireland and the pre-baiting the day before. The locals told him that without piling in gallons of chopped worm etc he wouldn't catch.. They did of course get the swims they baited and and caught a fair few fish. Mainly skimmers and roach/bream hybrids.
To be fair, there would have been a production team with them and the bait etc would have been paid for by the company. I bet the locals ( who incidentally battered him the next day) were laughing their arses off...

 

[law]

You should read some of the carp mags where they talk of pre baiting with 20 or 30 kg of boilies and then topping up with another 10 kg after every fish.

Thats not really that much.
I managed to find genuine Mainline for 60 quid for a 10kg sack. That was just from asking around. So I'm sure with some real legwork, or being a field tester (which isn't that hard), you'd get it even cheaper. And Mainline is damn expensive anyway.
Or even rolling your own. You could make 40 kilos for around 50 quid.

I'd do it if the fish were worth catching. No chance for 20s or 30s, you can catch them easily enough without.

As for topping up with 10kioos after each fish. That's way too much if you ask me. I'll do a kilo of boilies per fish if I'm filling it in, or 10 spombs of particle. You need the fish to keep moving and have a chance of picking up the hook bait!

I love pre baiting. Seeing your spots fizzing away the few days before you fish is ace.

 

[Tee-Cee]

law...........Not to pry, but on average, what do you spend per month in winter, which, I assume, then increases in summer ?? A rough figure will do.

I ask, as my wife is always amazed at what I spend on bait. I may be wrong, but what you spend /month is what I might spend in six !

No wonder I don't catch.........................

ps I'm not a carp fisherman per se, so the difference is always going to be mega anyway !

 

[law]

I only fish singles,with a small pva bag of crushed boilies, or maggot ring with a pva bag of a handfull of maggots in the winter. So minimal money really.
But tbh, most of my winter fishing is for pike

In the summer, it really varies. It depends. I really only pre bait with particle as I can't afford boilies!
Saying that, one of my lakes I spent 3 weeks pre baiting with particle. I did well. Saw 3 20s and several mid doubles. But nothing huge. Still a great trip.
The next time there, No pre bait, but I spent an hour finding the fish and had the lake biggun at 30lb12 within 15 mins of the rod being in the water then another 20 shortly after that.

That was where I learnt that it's not beneficial to pre bait every lake


Edit....price wise, in the winter, so when the frosts starts to when they finish, I can do 20quid.
In the summer, it can be anything from a tenner a session upwards.

Edit x2....you don't ways need lots of bait. Find the fish. I've spent 3-4 hours looking for them before. I'll set up for a long session, the. See fish moving at the other end of the lake then move straight away. There is no point fishing for fish if they aren't there!

 

[Titus]

Thats not really that much.
I managed to find genuine Mainline for 60 quid for a 10kg sack. That was just from asking around. So I'm sure with some real legwork, or being a field tester (which isn't that hard), you'd get it even cheaper. And Mainline is damn expensive anyway.
Or even rolling your own. You could make 40 kilos for around 50 quid.

I'm glad you can afford to throw that much money at your fishing Law, from a personal point of view I think it is madness and probably not beneficial to the health of the fish or the lakes; but who am I to criticise, my pb is only 38Lb so I'm not really qualified.

 

[thecrow]

Read some interesting comments from Fred Wilton not so long ago, he maintained that with a good quality HNV bait minimal or no prebaiting at all was needed for the fish to search that bait out. His results would seem to bear this out.

Whenever I have pre baited it always resulted in every species in the lake/river turning up and as I was only fishing for one species I decided I could do without the disturbance caused in the swim by the other species.

I do think that pre baiting is sometimes used as a method of getting the fish into areas the angler wants them to be that they normally wouldn't be in rather than putting the work in to find the fish.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

When we were fishing those large matches in Norway, Denmark and Sweden it was nothing to bait with 10 kilos of continental mixes liberally laced with a gallon of maggot, a kilo of chopped worms and 4 pints of casters.

The shoals were so large that to be competitive you simply had to indulge to that extent.

Those were the days when for the first time I saw ground bait mixing machines and drills being used with mixer blades on them.

It would still take up to an hour or two to prepare your baits before the matches . . . . . . . . . . and by the end of a 3 or 4 day festival you would be absolutely exhausted. We would often spend a recovery day doing nothing at all after the matches before taking the long drive back to Oslo.

 

[nicepix]

PJ's experience mirrors those used in Ireland in the heydays of the 1960-70's when anglers went over there for a week or fortnight during the English Close Season. Typically we would use a stone bag of breadcrumbs each (14lb) with at least two or three pints of maggots every couple of hours just to hold the bream shoals. The cost of bait was more than the travel and accommodation. It was a similar story on the Welland and Witham on match days as anglers had to hold the shoal in their swim or lose them altogether.

But these days my motto is "Location, location, location" as I rarely have any competition and the fish aren't actively seeking angler's baits in the same way they do on commercials and other well fished venues. I mainly use hemp seeds, milled hemp, milled maize, maize flour, wheat and chicken pellets in varying combinations as my ground bait with some sweetcorn or crushed boilies as loose feed. Doesn't cost a lot.

 

[pf0x]

Must admit the whole subject of pre-baiting for carp completely confuses me. Everything I read says "don't feed too much", "big beds of baits can spook carp" on commercial waters.

Then you read that so-and-so caught "The Big Mirror" over 20 kg of Cell

Judging by my own lakes there is definitely not a shortage of food for the carp. They're busy waters with a high turnover of anglers. Most are spodding/spombing etc. There is no way the carp are eating everything that goes in.

I can understand long term pre-baiting if you're fishing big waters with low stocks of fish but most waters are the opposite.

 

[Titus]

I can fish a whole season on the Dove with about 50 baits, I never feed, not even tiny bags of crumb, as everyone else does that for me and I often start a session using the same bait that was on at the end of the last one.
On the stretch I fish you are only fishing for about 15 fish, if that, and they have seen everything. The hot pegs are contested and fished every night through the summer with everyone putting their bait in an attempt to get the fish onto it. I know of one 'baiting team' who were filling it in when they left hoping to stitch it up until they came back, to the best of my knowledge they are still trying to catch the big girls.
In those circumstances a washed out bait imo will outfish a fresh every time.

I've not been able to fish it for a couple of seasons now as it involves a half mile walk and I have been quite ill but the last couple of seasons I did fish it I managed to match and surpass the results of many people who were spending a lot more time and money than I was. I will be renewing my ticket this coming season after having a couple of stents inserted in my heart and look forward to empting the place.
I might even buy a new bag of boilies to celebrate.

 

[law]

I'm glad you can afford to throw that much money at your fishing Law, .

I cant. As my above post states.

 

[Titus]

You edited your original post after I posted mate so don't try and make an issue of it. I get it; OK?

 

[law]

You edited your original post after I posted mate so don't try and make an issue of it. I get it; OK?

You really are strange.

My original post that you quoted was posted at 30-01-2015, 22:29 and hasn't been edited. Don't forget it sais if its been edited or not in the bottom corner

My following post was indeed edited

" Last edited by law; Yesterday at 00:48. " (which was 18minutes after I posted it)


Your post

"Yesterday, 02:48 "


Ah yes, I have a time travelling machine

 

[thecrow]

I just read your post timed at 10.06, trouble is its now 09.37 on the same morning, the time on here has been all over the place for ages.

 

[law]

It's strange for sure. But it still works in chronological order.

 

[thecrow]

Pre baiting on a river could just be having an effect on fish that the angler might not want, everyone knows that rivers are having problems with predation, what pre baiting does is concentrate the fish ready for predators to take advantage of.