One off baits.

[Derek Gibson]

Whilst searching through some old photographs yesterday, I came across several which had been long forgotten. These were from the mid sixties and showed a catch of Pike which were taken on nothing more than the silver paper taken from a cigarette packet and folded around a treble hook. This was due to the fact that my supply of wobbled baits had run out earlier that day. I suppose that here was the classic case of, '''Necessity being the mother of invention''.
I recall other examples of this, Barbel being one when after sitting biteless for several hours using the traditional baits. On a suggestion by the local bailiff that I tried grasshopper for bait which he supplied I went on to catch several good Barbel before calling it a day.
Has anyone else experienced novel days like this?

 

[markcw]

Derek, reading about putting foil around treble hook made me think of what a few unscrupulous anglers did in matches around here when jack pike were allowed to be weighed in, A larger hook would be used, say a size 8 or 10 with a small twist of cig packet foil on it like a tail, the hook would be baited as normal, but "twitched" more than usually done , to impart some movement and attraction, this work both ways, if no pike present the bait would attract fish, if pike present the flash of foil would attract the pike, Another trick was to reel in say a 3oz roach as if it was a 10ib carp in the hope of a pike, As for unusual baits for me are mini marshmallows, milk bottle sweets, cut the top off and use like a pellet, after a while they start to leak of a "milky cloud", Maltezers and Haribo have been other baits, A word of advice never use these if taking children or grandchildren, you could end up baitless, and have to rely on conventional baits,

 

[no-one in particular]

Silver paper round hooks often improvised for mackerel traces, in fact bare silver hooks will do.
Sure I have read of grasshoppers being used in some of the old angling books which made me think of wood lice, an excellent bait for roach I found. Does make me wonder if these all natural baits are in fact better than all the concocted ones we use these days but we just don't bother with them.
I have often used my snacks for bait. Bread and butter pudding was good for carp and tench, nice spicy smell may have had something to do with it; actually it was more than good, excellent.
I tried tiny bits of apple once on a canal and got loads of bites but few fish for some reason, roach and rudd if I remember rightly.
I just tried to look up grasshoppers in an old 1933 book and could only find Greaves but not grasshoppers and Issac's book but, it does not have an index although I am sure grasshoppers are in there somewhere.
One tip I had once for sea fishing was pasta tubes cooked till soft then filled with sardines from the tin, must give off a nice oily fishy scent but never got round to trying it but who knows, pike, perch, carp! What could they be filled with for coarse fishing? How about maggots with the ends plugged but tiny holes so the maggots could filter out like a mini feeder, barbel, tench and carp might love that.
I have heard of sea fish being caught on boilies, halibut ones, a lady friend of mine had a decent bass on them, maybe the future.

 

[jasonbean1]

many years ago I once watched a pike attacking a floating coca cola can...I couldn't work out how to get it on the hook though

 

[stillwater blue]

I stalked and caught a pike on a chunk of chorizo when I had no other bait.

 

[mikench]

I tried the pasta shells idea but did not precook them! I simply drilled a hole in the shell and attached to the hair with a baitstop! I filled the shell with paste. This was not my idea I hasten to add but one I read about! I caught nowt! Not a nibble!

I still have loads of the drilled shells( I must have been feeling optimistic) so will try it again maybe with sardine or fish paste!

 

[The Runner]

Have caught roach before on centipedes, woodlice and bits from the inside of a mars bar.

Can't beat the record of my old travelling partner Steve Johnstone though, who once won a match on the Thames at Buscot by catching chub (five of them I think) on waggler and craneflies

 

[SteveM]

I don't know about one offs, but I've caught lots of carp on a piece of banana.
It doesn't cast so well but it's perfect on the pole.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

A good few years ago a group of 4 of us were fishing the Glomma in Norway and were literally bagging up on some superb Grayling all around a kilo in weight.

Typically we were running out of maggots when one of the group wrapped the gold foil from his ciggie packet around the hook and went on to catch well . . . . . .

We all tried it and continued to catch.

I never resorted to the trick again as after that 3 of us started to import maggots from the UK so never ever ran short after that.

 

[mikench]

Another bait recommended to me which I fancy trying is punched banana skin! I think this was recommended by Markcw of Lymm on this forum so credit to him. I often take a banana with me for sustenance and so this will be free!

I have a Drennen flake punch and will try this on the skin!

 

[Derek Gibson]

One chap of my acquaintance gained something of a reputation as the captor of a number of large Carp, some of which were taken by employing raisins as hook bait.
And since the subject of banana has arisen, another early Carper made angling headlines catching several huge Carp in the late fifties early sixties using banana pieces as hook bait on a notoriously hard water. Some anglers questioned his choice of hook bait, I for one didn't having discussed the issue with him on several occasions. These anglers thought outside the box, and for the time the two examples would qualify as one off baits, as they were not in common use at the time.

 

[no-one in particular]

There's a park lake I stop by often, full of carp that come round a platform when bread is thrown in. I tried some pieces of banana a couple of months ago and one carp about 10lb immediately swam in and had it before it hit the bottom. Then I threw some more pieces in and they were ignored, they settled on the bottom and the carp just left them. Of course these are tame carp, no fishing on the lake but I don't know what to make of that. No carp there now, the cold weather has seen them disappear.

I made some banana paste once mixed with flour. I baked half of it to make it a bit stiffer (formed a bit of a crust like bread) and took the other half as it was. This half had turned black by the time I got to the river. The fish much preferred the black stuff, no carp but mainly roach and bream although there are some carp in the river but rarely seen or caught. However after lots of bites and a few fish the eels moved in and they loved the black stuff as well but that was it for me; hate eels and went on to bread. Never tried it again as I was only fishing rivers at the time and did not want more eel fishing so it was a one off bait.

However, might be an interesting take on banana on a carp lake, mixed with flour till stiff and left till it turns black. It tended to be a bit soft so could be baked a little bit after it turned black to make it a bit harder maybe. never tried that with the black paste (I only noticed it when I got to the river a couple hours after making it), the bit I did bake was harder and stayed white, the heat killed the bacteria that turns black but could be done after the blacking process I would have thought..
I guess the mouldy black stuff had a different scent to the fresh stuff which fish found more attractive. A bit more trial and error than I gave it maybe but definitely a plus on the day I used it over the plain white banana paste...

 

[markcw]

The "Go to" bait a few months ago at Dunham Fisheries was Macaroni Cheese straight from the tin, rather messy but it worked, it was winning quite a few matches on there. A commercial water I fish now and then responds well in the margins to meat fished over vegetable soup ( the one with Pearl Barley in it)
I had a flask of it and threw some out of my cup into the margin because it had gone cold, a few minutes later there were swirls on the surface, no bait ha been put down there prior to this, so I put an 8mm cube of meat on and within a minute had a carp, so every now and then a little soup went in as well as two or three cubes of meat, caught steadily, I am going to try this in the summer when I wont be as cold and fancy a bit of soup, will pour a few tins into a click n lock food container to take with me, that way only one container instead of a number of tins to carry take there and bring back empty, also some waters do not allow tins on the banks, Has anyone tried Baked Beans ?

 

[no-one in particular]

Has anyone tried Baked Beans ?

On the river, found them messy and difficult to put on the hook and no bites that I can remember. And made into a paste also and tried on commercial once or twice back sometime ago but I don't remember anything significant; not worth trying any further for me. In that supermarket realm I found those paste jars best, salmon & shrimp mixed with flour were probably the best and the meat ones.

 

[108831]

I've caught fish on freshly swatted sedge flies,wotsits and other bits and pieces given to me and continued to catch,a mate had a break from fishing on a lake near Ely as he'd been struggling and ate a tangerine,he put a piece of peel on the hook and caught a perch about a pound straight away,over a period of time he caught many decent perch on tangerine skin to over 3lbs.

 

[soft plastic]

I can remember fishing a pond many years ago, in the summer. I hadn't had a bite on either bread or maggots. Idly looking around my swim I saw that some nearby rushes had dozens of large yellow and black caterpillars on them. As I had nothing to lose I put one on the hook. Almost immediately the float went under and I had a bream. Ended up with a big bag of fish, amazing!

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