What's the most horrendous mess

At times, through our fishing lives, we have experimented with groundbaits. From rancid pigs blood, to vile 6 weeks old caster mash, I've done the lot.

However the worst,(or best, depends which way you look at it) was when I realised that Vaal River Yellowfish were turned on by big fat black crickets - about 3 inches long.

These are easy enough to catch. You lay a large wet sack on your lawn in the late evening and stuff about a loaf of mashed bread, with some cheese,under it.

Next morning you get a container and throw away the sack and start grabbing what is underneith. Watch out for brown ones with little raised tails. If you have several sacks on your lawn you can get a couple of hundred of these lovely shiny black chirpers in a night.

The next thing is to mush them up with about 10 kg of fermenting maize mash. They make a lovely colour combination of black green and yellow slime.

And the stench in the hot sun can be vile.

Bait your swim and within minutes, the yellows are in.

It's a pity there are not big black crickets in England. If there were, those Trent barbel had better look out.

Whats the nastiest and most effective you have ever concocted?

my current particle mix is getting pretty nasty at the moment actually.......i had some visitors the other day who kept "sniffing"....
To smell it's vile...starting off as a kind of HAM smell, going a bit beer like...and now it's at the RANCID CHEESE stage.....
FANTASTIC........cant wait to get hot pan going and boil it all off!!! just so i can freeze it and start trying to get people to visit again!!! hahaaha

Ron,what a useless bit of info about black cricket`s,up to your normal standard.

[Rob Croskery]

Freeze it. Stick it on eBay and watch the money roll in.

[Peter Jacobs]

Ron,

I used to regularly fish a match on a lake in Sweden, just over the border from Norway, but nonetheless a good 5 hour drive to get there from my home in Oslo.

The lake held a massive head of Bream with an average size of about 4 pounds, and match weights of 30 kilos were pretty 'everage' for the venue for a 4 hour match.

The "locals" used to swear by the use of Vodka in their ground bait, which also included caster, corn, and chopped worm, and you need masses of the stuff for a decent result.

The first time I used the 'vodka trick' I pre-made about 12 kilos of the stuff a few days in advance and put it in the back of my Pajero. The whole mix had time enough to start to ferment and the pong in my car was almost unbearable. I am sure that I was way over the legal limit to drive by the time I arrived at the lake.

However, I took 36 kilos on the day for a section win and third overall in the match, so I continued to use the 'voddie' mix for several years after that.

I wonder if liquidised slug might be a good additive for a chub groundbait?

Liquidised slug? YUM... I like the sound of the voddie mix, though. I remeber reading an article about tench fishing by John Watson some years ago in which he advocated using alcoholic baits. I suppose it makes sense. Most fish are opportunistic scavengers and will home in on any interesting/fermenting/rotting smells.

rotten sweetcorn is pretty bad when it's been out in the sun for a couple of weeks in the middle of summer you can smell it about 30 yards away. and that's with the bait box lid on tight.
i've used it up to a week but couldn't bear it after that, had to throw it to the bottom of the garden to annoy the neighbours.

Les, if you think I am talking rubbish, think again. Anyone who has lived for long periods in Africa will know that crickets and cicadas and some locusts are the most common of all insects. You can here them chirping all night in summer.

Fish love them.

I miss the sound of the crickets at night, they lulled you to sleep.

back in the 80s i used to go flattie fishing on melton ponds near hull
ond used the cheapest catfood and tins of pilchards and pigs blood from the local butchers now that lot really did stink
but the flatties liked it

Ron......i think les was pointing out that we dont have giant black crickets HERE!....

The liquidized slug sounds interesting.....could be divorce inducing though!....hahahahah