Can you help me choose the right hook bait (feeder fishing)?

[sylvanillo]

Good afternoon,

I wonder if some kind soul would help me choose the right bait to use, this is mainly for bream and roach. The good soul(s) could well get a tasty belgian beer on my return to Uk

Over the last months as a total beginner with feeder fishing, I've been trying a variety of baits, either on the hook itself or on a hair rig. The hair rig with a quickstop is quite cool for me, as the needle is long enough so I don't "mix my fingers" which sometimes happen. Hey noone's perfect.

Since a warmer weather has settled (frequently over 30 here since May), the number of bites for me has really decreased which I've found very surprising? I suspect I'm doing something very wrong. My two last sessions, one early morning, one late evening, gave me each a total blank. My little one would say "Oh noooo, not that again!!!"

Mainly I've tried 3 families of hookbaits:

- Cheese, either a cube of cheddar, or a fake worm covered with home-made cheese paste. On 2 occasions at the end of the winter and beginning of spring, I probably had about 100 takes in one session. The thing is, later it stopped working!

- Durable Hook soft pellets (Dynamite Baits)

The white amino 8 mm lasts super long, it's a bit harder than the red krill one.
They have also F1 sweet (yellow) and Betaine (green), that I haven't tried yet.

- Swim stim match mini boilies (Dynamite Baits)

They're smaller, harder, brighter, and need a band on the hair.

I had two carp on Mini boilie pink + White amino 8 mm.

The species that I target are the easy ones at my level for now, bream and roach.
What would you advise, something I can buy from a tackle shop but I'm also happy to try anything from the food store!

Now in terms of ground mix, if you wonder, I simply do this one from the Goldfish experience channel. When the water is deep, I add mixed Frolic. (Hmmm what a smell!!)

Thank you in advance.

 

[stillwater blue]

Where are you fishing?

I fish a couple of sections of river that see almost no angling pressure, pellets and boilies are massively outfished by more natural baits like maggots, hemp, corn, caster, worm etc.

I use frolic at up to 25% in GB when targeting chub and barbel.

 

[john step]

Providing there are roach and bream in the water you should get bites on real worm,sweetcorn(hair rigged) or maggots. Bream also love fishmeal pellets. Banded or hair rigged through those with a hole through them.
A real bream magnet is one of those 10mm SOFT halibut boilies that Dynamite do.

A bag of method mix groundbait and off you go. No need to get complicated for those two species.

Not sure if feeder fishing is the the most satisfying/enjoyable way for roach though.

 

[sylvanillo]

At the moment it's on the canals in belgium. The fishing pressure is very low and species are all natural.

Back in oxford, it will be normally natural venues, river Thames and all its backstreams (a lot of waters!), and the little canal. I plan to also try on commercial lakes but probably later in the season.

It's quite right I've never tried hemp on the hook. I did try corn a bit, some large hard ones, but it wasn't especially better than cheese.

I will definitely try worms, hemp and those halibut soft boilies then.

Thank you very much.

 

[john step]

Try pre baiting for a few days on the canal for the bream. Cooked/stewed wheat is the most cost effective way. Failing that , pearl barley.
It works in Ireland so there is no reason it wont in Belgium.

 

[John Keane]

Banded hard Pellet will catch almost anything that swims

 

[sylvanillo]

Thanks very much for the respective advice.

Not sure if feeder fishing is the the most satisfying/enjoyable way for roach though.

I shall say I'm using "bream" and "roach" to cover several species. Those canals contain a mixture of common bream, silver bream, roach and rudd. That's 4 species already, but the interesting thing is there are many crosses.

Now when a group of small fish has found the bait it seems a quiver tip is getting a bit crazy... and me too!