How long do you give a bait!

I am thinking specifically about tares but my question can apply equally to all baits! I can be impatient but generally how long would you give tares when, say float fishing for roach? I tend to give a bait about an hour at most if it is not inducing bites but do change hook size and depth!

They can be instantaneous like a magic bait once you have got the roach going and taking hemp. However I tend to get the roach going on a pinch of hemp and maggot on the hook also feeding a pinch of maggots at the same time. When I have caught a few roach so I know they are in the swim I am fishing I try tares and stop putting maggots in. Just hemp.
You cannot catch roach on tares if there are no roach in front of you.
You can juggle about with hook size when they bite but generally when they take tares you will get plenty of bites on shark tackle even if you dont hook any. You will know they are there.

Everything depends on the water you are fishing. On some waters, you'd be best served in giving a bait little more than five minutes without a bite. The longest I've had a single bait in the water, and caught, is somewhere beyond three days.

john step said:

You cannot catch roach on tares if there are no roach in front of you.
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Not just roach and tares but any bait and any fish.

I plan to visit the same Mere and the same peg as I know there are quality roach near the lily pads! I will use tares on the hook and hemp as feed! I have some back up baits namely paste, expander pellets, meat and 4 and 6 mm hard pellets Just in case!!

Thanks all for your comments!

mikench said:

I plan to visit the same Mere and the same peg as I know there are quality roach near the lily pads! I will use tares on the hook and hemp as feed! I have some back up baits namely paste, expander pellets, meat and 4 and 6 mm hard pellets Just in case!!

Thanks all for your comments!

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I very rarely leave my bait more than ten miniutes, usually two or three. If I was targetting roach Mike i'd use different baits to you. I'd prefer maggots, casters , sweetcorn and bread. As I said, I wouldn't leave my bait very long at all. You could be sat with your bait hidden or ii may have come off.

mikench said:

I plan to visit the same Mere and the same peg as I know there are quality roach near the lily pads! I will use tares on the hook and hemp as feed! I have some back up baits namely paste, expander pellets, meat and 4 and 6 mm hard pellets Just in case!!

Thanks all for your comments!

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Do maggots really not make that list?

I usually take at least 3 baits with me, keep changing them about every half hour until I get bites. If you read through the HDYGO thread you will see how often a change of bait brought fish on. I think its the most important thing to get the right bait on the day.

I have no maggots on this occasion but do have bread! I can only try! I do recast every few minutes or so unless it's a hard pellet!

My most successful method by far(at this time of year) is fishing 'on the drop' with tares and hemp (and single reds) so by definition to have the bait dropping through the water you need to be casting (almost) constantly. It is a very busy and tiring way of fishing over several hours so I tend to leave the bait be for (say) 10 minutes after a non specific number of casts, but as John Step says above, if the roach are feeding and really going for it the float is rarely still.
I also tend to start with hemp (again with same method, as it has the effect of 'searching' the swim) and I can easily work out where the fish are taking the bait - i. e. at the top of the drop or further down in the water. I then introduce tares ........

Mikench: Taking lots of different baits is fine, but I suggest a specific hemp/tare session(s) might yield better results. Tare fishing can be a method that takes some time to develop (I have persevered for an hour or more before starting to take fish!) and on occasion they just don't want them, for some reason.
You are, by your own words, an impatient soul and I think just taking the hemp/tares would (perhaps) stop you from changing to another bait just because the tares might not be working! They do take time but without doubt produce better quality roach at the end of the day - on my waters at least!

Personally, I think total success with tares, in most cases, comes down to quality of bait and preparation and I spend much time in that pursuit.


ps Don't forget the water pistol (loaded with the perfectly strained hemp cooking juice to send a milky liquid down through the water. Much the same as liquy bread works..........................A mucky process but it works well at times!

I fish hemp and tares a lot on the Dorset Stour; on those stretches that see and have seen the use of these baits regularly for years (the best example is Throop) the response to tares on the hook is pretty much instant in warm weather from July to October (a bit slow in June) but on some of the hardly fished bits of the upper Stour I've tried hemp and tares many times and feed it every time in an attempt to wean them onto it but have as yet failed although they take bread on such stretches with out any problem. Try a much more heavily fished adjacent stretch and they take it no bother.

There are times when hemp and tares can take hours to work and the hemp experts in this case will often feed a line with hemp very sparingly whilst fishing another bait such as maggots or casters, trying the hemp-fed line every 30 minutes until there's a response. Sometimes after three or four hours they find the roach queuing up for hemp and tares.

Naturally, a change of bait will often bring a result, and of course it's worth taking and trying different baits. But I've tended to find that on balance, success depends more on persisting with feeding the swim than on swapping hookbait.

I used to fish with a friend with (even) less patience than me. After a couple of hours, he'd often report that he'd tried baits x, y and z and "It's just not happening today" and go home. I'd often catch well after he'd left just by continuing to feed the same baits that didn't appear to be working; eventually, it has attracted the fish's attention and stimulated a few to feed, whereupon you're in business.

You generally have a good idea what bait usually catches fish on a given water, so if I'm not, I tend to think it's where/how/ how much I'm feeding that's the problem, rather than the bait choice.

Mark Wintle: re your post, my findings with hemp are the same as yours. What baffles me though is that on some stretches of the Thames which are hardly ever fished hemp works well and why is hemp such a poor bait on the Kennet compared to the Thames?