How many times....

[Alan Whitty]

How many times do you go fishing, feeling like you have everything covered, tackle and bait wise only to find you had ???? Saturday it happened to me, the small fish were attracted to the loose fed maggot, I took a kilo of g.bait (very rare these days), but I reckon I needed 3kgs and instead of loose feeding, putting a babies head in and fishing each ball out before putting another in... Last Wednesday with Hugh I felt that a pellet approach would have cut off the small roach attention and allowed time for a tench or large bream to take the bait, avoiding small fish seems to be a thing of our times, which as the colder weather comes becomes a problem as bigger more filling baits get less of a response....

 

[peterjg]

Avoiding the tiddlers is a huge problem. I use hard bits of punched bread, pellets, sweetcorn, macaroni and wheat. If the bait is too soft it gets mullered by the tiddlers and if it's too big it either gets taken by carp or signal crayfish. Another bait which I sometimes use is prawns, I had a couple of very good (and surprising!) catches of rudd earlier this summer but now no use???

 

[Alan Whitty]

I took maize with me when I went with Hugh, but as I had never used it before I had no confidence in it, but I think I should have used only that, as nothing small would touch it...

 

[peterjg]

Whitty, it might be me but I have no confidence in maize.

 

[mikench]

For what it’s worth neither do I. It takes an age to cook/soften and I’m unconvinced it’s any better than corn.

 

[Keith M]

I’ve used Maize years ago for Carp, but even then I thought it was an ‘also ran’ bait so I didn’t really have a great deal of faith with it; compared to the other baits I was using at that time.

Maybe I should give it another try.

Keith

 

[nottskev]

It does happen that you sometimes can't get past the small fish, especially if you don't know the place and the amount of small fish takes you by surprise.
I habitually use small quantities of bait and spent years, decades, even, on places where feeding too much would kill your swim dead. In addition, small fish, relatively speaking, were often all you had to go for, so they were the target rather than a problem. It does mean I can get caught out either not taking or not feeding enough bait, as old habits die hard.
I can recall running out of chopped worm in no time thanks to small fish, and running out of hemp inside a couple of hours when big fish swooped in and mopped the lot up.

As for maize, I'd have thought it's for the carper who wants to keep a bait out for long periods, as it's much bigger and tougher than corn. I've never heard of people using it for short session general fishing.

 

[@Clive]

I use it. Because it has a harder skin than sweetcorn you will usually avoid the small stuff. Bream don't seem to be keen on it either, but for barbel carp and the crucian like carassins it is a very reliable bait.

 

[Philip]

About maize, just a week or so back I took a young kid fishing, nothing serious just an hour down the river. Using a whip, float and bread as bait all we could muster was minute bleak and constant float twitches and rattles as they attacked the bread. The only other thing I had with me was a bucket of cooked particles with maize in that I was going to bait up a swim with. Taking out a grain of maize I squashed it between my fingers then took one little bit of the shell with some pulp still attached and put that on the hook – a size 22 from memory so it was just a tiny slither of maize. Result was a number of nice Sardine sized Roach, no bleak & no constant float rattling. Added bonus was I didn’t need to constantly rebait as the bread came off.

 

[@Clive]

A friend of mine fishes the tidal Trent once or twice a month, overnight sessions for barbel. He rarely fails to catch a double. His tactics are to put whole maize, hemp and pellets in at slack water then fish the flood tide overnight using a large smelly pellet bait. When I used to fish for carp in the big lakes near where I live whole and milled maize was my standard spod mix. I would put it in by dropper or catapult and fish over it for the four or five hour session using two whole grains on a hair. Sometimes I put a floating artificial on with a split shot or bead of tungsten about 4" from the hook. I cannot remember being bothered by bream or other fish.

It is as cheap as you will find for hook baits and despite the nutritional data being somewhat underwhelming carp and barbel love it. Soak it overnight then simmer it for 45 minutes to an hour and let it cool. I preferred to drill the grains and mount them on a Quick Stop hair. You can put the grain directly onto a fine wire hook if you prefer.

If you spread some grains on a baking tray and put them in an oven at 120C for 15 to 20 minutes, shake them after 10 minutes, then let them cool they will float. Don't pierce them or they will take on water. Put them on a band and you have a pop-up bait.

 

[Philip]

I use alot of maize for baiting campaigns mixed with other things. Cost is obviously one big advantage about it. I buy it in 25kg sacks dry and it cooks up to about 35kgs. ....so 11 euros for 35kg of bait. I dont have any doubts the fish are eating it.

 

[@Clive]

I use alot of maize for baiting campaigns mixed with other things. Cost is obviously one big advantage about it. I buy it in 25kg sacks dry and it cooks up to about 35kgs. ....so 11 euros for 35kg of bait. I dont have any doubts the fish are eating it.

More than that Philip; you can be also sure that it is not getting mopped up by small fish. That 35kg will be far more efficient regards target species than any bait except large pellets and boilies, and it doesn't dissolve or degrade as quickly.