Maggots

Whatever happened to those big juicy maggots you used to get in the tackle shops; the ones with the 3/16 inch food spot or sometimes two food spots, double yolkers we used to call them. The ones which used to push your fingers apart if you held them in a closed fist.

The ones we get today are what we used to call feed maggots, old stock or fish fed maggots.
IMO the quality started to drop off with the BSE epidemic which made it difficult for the breeders to get the offal and farm casualties they had traditionally used in the breeding houses and the start of the poultry and fish fed poor examples we have today.

I'm thinking of breeding a few gozzers just to remind myself what a proper maggot looks like.

I find that many tackle shops simply don't appear to know how to look after maggots any more. Despite it being fairly expensive, I stick to my local because I know that his maggots are good quality. I know that the bulk of them won't be turning in less than an hour or two of being taken out of the fridge.
I don't know how some places have the brass neck to sell the rubbish bait that they do.

Yes, our local tackle shop sells maggots that are almost always complete rubbish.

Loads of dead ones mixed in along with bits of grit and sticks, sweating and foul smelling. I always have to riddle them as soon as I get home to clean them up a bit. I don't know how they aren't ashamed to sell them like that. They're the worst I've known from any shop.

The best maggots around here are at Fat Phil's Angling Centre in Oxford - clean, big, fat and juicy. Trouble is - that shop's a 20 mile round drive, which obviously adds to the cost considerably.

I`m quite lucky, I get good quality maggots at £2 a pint and no matter whether I buy 1/2pt or 2 pts I know there will be more there than I`m paying for.

Funny thing is I don`t buy my maggots from a dedicated tackle shop, it`s a pet shop that sells tackle and bait alongside their regular stock. The nearest proper tackle shop to me is a good 5-6 mile walk.

Fortunate to have a local t/s that produce fresh maggots and casters on board - none of that flat-pack rubbish....................and if you want to ask for gentels they know exactly what you mean
Jerry
PS now where's my aluminium bait tin:wh

I havent seen pinkies, squatts or gozzers for ages. I've also had the odd blank look asking for bronze maggot, never mind yellows, in recent years.

I only buy from Reid's Tackle in Downton, superb quality maggots and Caster and providing you order in advance Pinkies are never a probel to source.

Reckon for gozzers you'll have to breed your own these days - another casualty of the boilie/pellet era I'm afraid.

A little tip re maggots.....take enough for your hook baits, put them in a bait box, put a cut in a few lob worms and place in bait box.

You'll be amazed at the size of the maggots next morning.

I'm also lucky.

Fresh maggots, reds, whites, bronze and mixed. Excellent casters always available, squats and pinkies, dendros, lobs.

I think aprt of the problem is that there is less demand for maggots than there used to be. When the match lads fished the rivers regularly, good bait was paramount. Matchman Supplies in Nottingham used to sell fabulous bait. Locally, Terry Dorman's maggots used to be known as 'Dorman's Donkeys', and would reputedly struggle to squeeze/wriggle through a standard riddle.

Luckily, my local sells good bait. I don't fish often enough to make a run to any bait farms worth the while/expense.

ravey said:

Locally, Terry Dorman's maggots used to be known as 'Dorman's Donkeys', and would reputedly struggle to squeeze/wriggle through a standard riddle.

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I remember reading about them in Frank Barlow's column in the Angling Times.

Those are the sort of beasts I'm talking about, modern maggots are like the nerdy second cousin to those bad boys.

Terry Dorman's maggots were simply marvellous,when i match fished,i used to fish the Trent a few times a year and always bought a gallon,three weeks later they were still better than my local bait.

There is an aspect of maggots that is similar to beer.

The more north you get, the better the quality becomes. Where I live you can always get quality maggots, superb casters too.

Ron The Hat Clay said:

similar to beer. The more north you get, the better the quality becomes

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Up north you call Tetleys a beer, down sarf we call it tea.

sagalout said:

Up north you call Tetleys a beer, down sarf we call it tea.

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Barely see Tetleys up north. Don't know about the north midlands though. However, I do know that Tetleys is brewed in Northampton.

And so it is. Personally I like our local real ales brewed by a couple of local micro-breweries,

And for years the price of a pint of maggots is the same as a pint of ale.

It's still about the same - £2.25.

Stay on topic please Ron, this is supposed to be about how the quality of maggots has fallen since the onset of BSE in the 80's and 90's.

It's got nowt to do with mistaken belief that everything which comes from The Northern Wasteland, as Yorkshire is known to the inhabitants of the rest of the British Isles, (including the Sweaty Socks), is bigger, better, tastier, etc, etc, than similar products or people from the rest of the country.

For a bloke who's travelled you are very parochial in your views.

The fact is the majority of maggots used in this country come from three or four major producer/wholesalers, the largest of which is Eurobait in Nottingham who supply most of the maggots used in the north of England and the Midlands. Check out their website http://www.eurobait-maggots.com/about-eurobait-maggots.html and notice the dead maggots in the first picture you see, this should give you some indication of the poor quality we are having foist upon us.
The days of the local producer in every major town were finished as soon as bse was discovered and all farm casualties and slaughter bi-products were incinerated instead of going to local petfood producers or the maggot farms.
At the same time new legislation concerning the control of the fumes, or the stink to you and I, was brought in involving massive investment in air purification plant and the writing was on the wall for the industry.

This all meant that the small producers who were interested in producing a quality product for a local market were buried in legislation and went out of business leaving a vacuum.
The same thing then happened as happened in the brewing industry when the big boys moved in in the 70's. Production was controlled by the bean counters, quality went down, profit's went up and the poor old consumer was left with Watneys Red Barrel or Double Diamond.
And that's where the maggot industry is now, Time for a resurgence of the micro-breeder I would suggest.

Trouble is with gozzers,quantity,its ok for hookers,but i like the idea of chopping lobs up to up the quality.

Titus said:

The fact is the majority of maggots used in this country come from three or four major producer/wholesalers, the largest of which is Eurobait in Nottingham who supply most of the maggots used in the north of England and the Midlands.

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Which is probably why us mugs dahn Sarf end up paying 3.40 odd for maggot and £4 a pint for casters. When I told my cousin in Lincoln this he nearly had a seizure. There was a maggot farm down here I believe but it got closed due to complaints over the smell and it made no difference to the price of a pint as I recall. I used to love a day on the block end for barbel but at £28-30 a gallon I haven't done that for years.

Titus said:

The fact is the majority of maggots used in this country come from three or four major producer/wholesalers, the largest of which is Eurobait in Nottingham who supply most of the maggots used in the north of England and the Midlands.

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S-Kippy said:

Which is probably why us mugs dahn Sarf end up paying 3.40 odd for maggot and £4 a pint for casters. When I told my cousin in Lincoln this he nearly had a seizure. There was a maggot farm down here I believe but it got closed due to complaints over the smell and it made no difference to the price of a pint as I recall. I used to love a day on the block end for barbel but at £28-30 a gallon I haven't done that for years.

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My local is supplied by a bait farm somewhere around South or West Yorkshire, perhaps Doncaster.

If it's any consolation to you, S-Kippy, it's £3 for maggot and £3.50 for casters.