Best bait for tench

[rich66]

I do better on mussels than I do worm, also stops small perch scoffing a worm twice it’s size and matching hook. Which then is a b to get out. But a lot depends on the water
Sweetcorn has been my best for tench when I find them.

 

[108831]

Casters,maggots and worms,if small fish are a nuisance then rubber casters or maggots work,better on the lead mind,which stops me using them more often than not...

 

[seth49]

Might be that they like mussels here because the water is full of swan mussels.
I pulled a bank stick out a few weeks ago, and it had gone through someone’s discarded groundbait bag, the bag was covered in small swan mussels, so I replaced it back in the water.

 

[The fishing coach]

Caught on mussels fished on a long hair with a quickstop. Part of a bag of seven taken using the lift method, biggest went 6lb 12oz.

 

[rayner]

My favourite bait was mentioned by whitty, casters, they're my best bait for Tench, bread flake a close second and Lobworm.

 

[peterjg]

Mikench, can I suggest that you try red worms for tench. I now rarely deliberately fish for them but many times I have switched the bait to red worms and have soon caught tench. I have caught a lot of 7s and a few 8s accidentally on homemade boilies meant for carp - I once made a load of 14mm boilies flavoured with mint and all I caught was tench!

 

[ian g]

Might be that they like mussels here because the water is full of swan mussels.
I pulled a bank stick out a few weeks ago, and it had gone through someone’s discarded groundbait bag, the bag was covered in small swan mussels, so I replaced it back in the water.

That was definitely the case at the pool I used to fish . I'd never bothered before but they worked great

 

[Stalker]

Red maggots, worms, sweetcorn and, sorry to say, boilies, in that order, with a lot of groundbait high in attractant but low in actual food.

Unfortunately everything else likes maggots, worms and sweetcorn as well, of course, so places where there's a large number of silvers is where the boilies come in.

I've also had good success with snails in the past and the tiddlers seem less interested, but they're incredibly difficult keeping on the hook or hair as they're so fragile and break apart the minute you look at them, so I've not really tried them lately. They're also quite expensive these days (dirt cheap when I was using them over 20 years ago), so unless you live somewhere where you can get some "from the wild", they're not really an option.

I've never actually tried mussels. As far as I know only one of the places I fish for tench actually has mussels in it, and I have heard that mussels are the type of bait that only work in places where it's already a naturally occurring food source (as alluded to by seth49). That may be apocryphal, though.

 

[John Keane]

Half a lobworm or casters for me!

 

[Another Dave]

I've also had good success with snails in the past and the tiddlers seem less interested, but they're incredibly difficult keeping on the hook or hair as they're so fragile and break apart the minute you look at them, so I've not really tried them lately. They're also quite expensive these days (dirt cheap when I was using them over 20 years ago), so unless you live somewhere where you can get some "from the wild", they're not really an option.

Snails as in garden snails?

 

[S-Kippy]

Casters,red maggot,corn and cockles for me. I used to be a big bread fan but I rarely use it for tench nowadays. Depends on the water but I've had a couple of really good days recently on articial casters.

 

[Stalker]

Snails as in garden snails?

Yep.

Most of my tench fishing back in the 90s was with snails and maggots, although I tended to buy big bags of snails already dead from pet food and farm shops (as in shops that sold farm supply goods, as opposed to the rural expensive grocery shops now) rather than getting them from the garden, as you had to either boil them (horrible stink - worse than 100 pots of hemp bubbling away) or break their shells without damaging the snail, which is incredibly difficult and time consuming when you need to do it lots of times.

Back then I could get a bag of 100+ dead snails for a quid or so. Can't seem to find them as pet food now (at least in the shops) and, of course, bait suppliers have cottoned onto it so you've got the likes of Dynamite Baits charging several quid for a small can of hemp which has about 20 snails in it.

 

[steve2]

On my only fishing session so far this year all my Tench, best 7lbs, fell to float fished live red maggot. This time last year it was artificial red maggot and corn on a feeder rig.
So what is the best bait for Tench on my lake? There isn’t one.