Do you put ya balls in ?

Over the last few years I've been moving more towards river fishing and away from carp fishing due to the circus that is now carping , I always had the odd dabble on rivers but was never an out and out river angler due to living in Manchester and loving carp fishing , we had a caravan on a camp site next to the Trent near Newark about 10 yrs ago the site has 7 pegs , one evening while fishing for barbel I got a real eye opener I was fishing midweek and was the only one on till a bloke turned up and got in 2 pegs upstream from me ( the pegs are quite tight together) he started by putting balls of groundbait in up stream from him (as I would have done at the time) he wasn't shy about it though putting around a dozen good sized balls in not long after I started getting takes and ended up having a really good evening , I heard him get a few but nowhere near as many as I was getting and it was obvious he'd baited my swim for me , this has always stuck in my mind and now I'm moving more towards fishing rivers more serious this is playing on my mind a lot to the extent that I don't put bait in unless I'm putting it straight on the bottom (when fishing on the bottom)I've already touched on this on a previous thread about bait droppers , Obviously it depends a lot on how much water is running through , depths and such but my question to you is this , if you put balls of groundbait in how confident are you that some of it's getting down to your area have you got a rule of thumb i.e baiting a few feet upstream for every foot of water or anything like that? I like the thought of some bait washing down stream for the fish to follow it upstream but too much washing down just gives me an image of all the fish in the area chasing the bait downstream and out of the area. Any thoughts on this ?

Lee you're clearly not of an age who boarded the 10s of coaches on a Sunday morning in the 60s and 70s around M/c heading for the Trent, Witham, etc, on club matches. The question you ask was quickly learnt in those days if you wanted to catch some fish and not look like some duck egg to your peers.

Only experience can tell you where to feed in any given set of circumstances but as a rule of thumb 5 yards up stream of where you are sat and casting to. If you are not catching you can either move the fished bait up or down to make contact with the fish feeding on the groundbait.

I know the stretch and caravan park you're talking about well Lee, it's known as Smeatons and the pegs as you say are very tight right up to the road bridge.

It's no surprise at all that the other angler had baited your swim for you as the main flow comes down right under that near bank and I wouldn't like to have to guess the combination of not only the distance upriver to chuck balls of groundbait but also the consistency so that they break down quickly when they hit the bottom as opposed to rolling along the riverbed intact with the flow.

On slower stretches by all means, I often ball in myself but in that strength of flow I would go for the dropper every time.

River carping is the only branch of carping that remotely interests me and the Trent has some proper 'uns for those prepared to put the work in, many smaller fish come out to barbel anglers too of course.

In short, if you are confident of guessing correctly where your feed will end up after breaking down then great but if in doubt go for the dropper.

Edited to add: I agree with the idea of looser feed washing downstream to draw the fish up to the main feed area, why not add a couple of droppers of lightly mixed groundbait upstream of where you're main baited area is to waft down over it and further along downriver, a kind of best of both worlds with more predictable accuracy?

binka said:

I know the stretch and caravan park you're talking about well Lee, it's known as Smeatons and the pegs as you say are very tight right up to the road bridge.


That's the place mate I was in peg 4 this bloke dropped in peg 2 and was putting his bait in closer to peg 1 , this meant his bait was going in probably about 30 yards upstream from me , as you say though them balls could have been rolling along the bottom for a distance

[/COLOR]Edited to add: I agree with the idea of looser feed washing downstream to draw the fish up to the main feed area, why not add a couple of droppers of lightly mixed groundbait upstream of where you're main baited area is to waft down over it and further along downriver, a kind of best of both worlds with more predictable accuracy?

Click to expand...

This is something I'm gonna try , I think I'll be sticking to my droppers and feeder or not at all baiting approach

---------- Post added at 23:48 ---------- Previous post was at 23:41 ----------

The bad one said:

Lee you're clearly not of an age who boarded the 10s of coaches on a Sunday morning in the 60s and 70s around M/c heading for the Trent, Witham, etc, on club matches. The question you ask was quickly learnt in those days if you wanted to catch some fish and not look like some duck egg to your peers.

Only experience can tell you where to feed in any given set of circumstances but as a rule of thumb 5 yards up stream of where you are sat and casting to. If you are not catching you can either move the fished bait up or down to make contact with the fish feeding on the groundbait.

Click to expand...

My dad and grandad would have been on them coaches pal but me being born in 1970 didn't start fishing until the late 70's

I rarely fish rivers with the kind of flow you are dealing with but I am still cautious about balling in a lot of bait in one go. You can't take it back out and all that.
My feeling is that some will always wash downstream, and thus help to draw fish toward you. Once a lot of bait has gone beyond your fishing range it's unhelpful. I would rather it got eaten before that point. If I encounter a large shoal of decent bream then a dozen or so jaffas might hold them, and I believe bream are happiest moving onto a bed of bait rather than being bombarded when they are already there.
If it's the roach that I prefer, 3 or 4 tangerines is the measure. Heavy enough, adding mole hill soil if needed, to drop quickly and only break up slowly. This can be more effective if left alone for at least an hour. If I am motivated enough I will riddle my groundbait and separate the bigger morsels as the best guides tell us to do. Instead of chucking them I give them an extra soak along with grilled hemp. My thinking is that these bigger flakes will settle and create a reliable spot to get some reward for swimming upstream then turning out and drifting back down to hold station again. Too much of this could fill up a roach quickly and that is always a balancing act. Stronger flowing rivers, and deeper ones increase the spread of bait, so you have even more variables to assess. When carping I have been advised to aim to put loosefeed on half a dining table. Fish take their seats around the zone and drift in and out. You will have better knowledge of this than I.
On the river it's more of a buffet aisle where fish gather in social clumps for safety and pick up a morsel or two then return to the group to check no pike have gatecrashed the party. I will hope to keep them alert to food by dropping a conker of lighter groundbait with very little feed every now and then.
In the specific situation you describe it might be quite possible your upstream assistant simply scared them down to you by shelling them with howitzers.

That was a good read thanks ! Mole hill soil , top tip :thumbs: It had crossed my mind about the bombadeer maybe spooking the fish down to me but the way they got on the feed made me wonder , it really was one barbel after the other , I think it was either his bait settling on my area , his bait mixed too stiff and rolling down as binka suggested or maybe particles washing down past me and a shoal following the trail upstream and just reaching my area before his

Sensas Leam Groundbaits Baits | BobCo Fishing Tackle, Leeds

You could try adding some of this to your groundbait. It sinks like a stone and has a slow release texture...

I've never used leam myself. I associate it with bloodworm and joker, which I've also never tried. I use to use PV1 at times but I believe that's a different animal.

Depends quite a lot on the water I'm fishing, and the target. For a few seasons, myself and a mate used to go bream fishing on the thames on the first night of the season. We'd mix up a lot of groundbait - mostly plain brown crumb but with lots of goodies.. sweetcorn, worm, caster, pellet.... then we'd ball that in with a rough diamond formation in mind, straight in front with the middle of the diamond being the middle of the river. The first time I was with him when he showed me how to do this, I was absolutely convinced that any fish within a three mile radius would have disappeared. But no, lo and behold an hour or so later (just as it was getting dark) we started getting twitches on the indicators and it wasn't long after that when we got our first bobbin lift to the butt and a big old slab to the net. This carried on pretty much all night, and we'd end up with catches of 40 or 50 slabs.

The point is - the river here is very slow, especially in summer - and we could be sure that the bait was dropping roughly in the are we were going to fish.

On anything faster flowing, I'd rather use a heavy mix and a feeder, just to be sure I'm fishing where I put the bait.