Fish scared of.... BREAD!!!!!

filmed some footage yesterday.. the usual Chub feeding hard over hemp and halibut pellets. Ground up a few crusts of bread to produce a course 'crumb' - fed it into the swim and there was an instantaneous response... Sheer panic!

Sure, the odd fish did venture in over time and lifted the odd piece here and there......

I guess the problem with a shoal of fish, if one has reason to be fearful about something, it shares this with the rest of the shoal. In any given population I often ponder if there are bold individuals, really cautious, fearful fish, quick learners and chancers.

Its not uncommon for someone to write words to the effect 'Chub will eat ANYTHING'..... mmm, Chub will eat anything, but also chub might learn through association with negative experience to not eat SOMETHING.

I do suspect that older, more experienced Chub do learn to avoid certain baits or presentations.... either that..... or exert such caution that makes waiting for a bite impractical.

I have seen a similar effect with white bread.... chub fleeing from the sight of the stuff, or drifting towards it, circling and then letting it drift down stream. A switch to brown bread? Its game on!

It does influence my approach.....which is why I am happy to explore the possibilities with flavouring Cheese paste with Banana etc...... and certainly being very critical about my methodology on presenting baits.

In a nut shell:

Summer: Shoal fish respond best to particles, singular fish respond well to natural baits, surface fished bread can be devastating if you throw in the odd googly here and there

Here is the footage..... you can compare and contrast.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLEYUpGsbPk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_Kkd6wyxsg

Certainly food for thought whilst watching a static quiver tip...........

The man who taught me a lot of my early coarse fishing, a marvellous mix of successful West London light-tackle matchman and "Stick on a big lob / matchbox-sized paste or bread bait on a size 2 to 6 Model Perfect" Walker-era early specimen fisher, had three bread baits for Thames chub: all home-made pastes that he would bring to the river as three at the very least cricket-ball-sized, damp muslin cotton wrapped lumps: honking ("Put it in the airing cupboard in a plastic bag for a night or so...") blue cheese paste; honey paste; mashed banana and bread paste. All caught a lot of chub and very occasionally a then rare lower-middle Thames barbel. His bag was never without tins of brandlings dug from the compost / muck heaps that he kept as a local council groundsman and plenty of ruddy great lawn-picked lobs. It ain't neurosurgery.

Interesting upload thanks

Got to agree with Chav on the change of colour of bread. When the surface feeding carp are wary of white just try using the half and half variety of bread sold in supermarkets. A big lump used as flake slowly sinking amongst the free offerings on the surface is good. The difference can be amazing.

Yup. Familarity and bitter experience breeding fear and contempt.

Seen in two other areas of angling: 1) White groundbait. Paint the stuff brown or black. 2) Beadheads on sinking nymphs. When they first appeared ex Austria and western-central Europe in the early 1980s (for those over here who were given an early nod), the gold beads took fish - trout, grayling and some coarse fish - by the ton. Laughably easy. Then, by the mid-late 1990s, when gold beadhead flies had been tied, bought and presented by the million, the fish thought "No thank you very much.".

So it was over to silver, copper, then finally dark, dull, metallic grey beads in order to get takes; the golden flash that had once attracted the fish had become repellent to them, something to be ignored or avoided, by seen-it-all and released wild fish at least.

john step said:

Got to agree with Chav on the change of colour of bread. When the surface feeding carp are wary of white just try using the half and half variety of bread sold in supermarkets. A big lump used as flake slowly sinking amongst the free offerings on the surface is good. The difference can be amazing.

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Not just bread. I've seen fish scared off by sweetcorn and luncheon meat yet in the same swims the same baits coloured with food dye are readily taken. I don't need to now as I fish waters that are much less pressured, but I used to dye sweetcorn green and luncheon meat purple just by adding some blue food dye. Colouring baits breaks the association with danger that comes with over used baits in heavily fished waters.

I've seen fish scared off by sweetcorn

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I'd always assumed this was caused by the heaps of it heaved in the water around opening day and they were fed up of the stuff within a month. I feel the same way about it at summer parties - 'Oh goody - another bowl of sweetcorn!' uke:
That's usually the signal to switch to worm for the tench (not me at parties!).

Seriously though - I think the answer to both the white bread and sweetcorn problems is to do with the 'noticeablity' of the bait - it almost glows in murky water like it's got a spotlight on it - which could of course be the reason for its success in the right conditions, at the right time of year, etc. A lot also depends on the local angling 'pressure'!

Moderation in ALL things -including abstinence AND excess!