DAY TICKET NEWS AND BAIT TIPS

Jamie Londors sent me a selection of his photo's from his weekend on the day ticket lake. Jamie had 26 fish in about 48 hours and Billy Flowers, Jamie's mate had about the same number of fish. Jamie's best two fish came in consecutive takes and weighed 20.10 and 21.10, both cracking mirrors.

All the fish were caught on Scopex Squid plus Robin Red 10mm hookbaits cast into areas baited up with spodded mixed pellet, boilie, mixed particle including sweetcorn and probably salmon fry crumb, (although I'm not sure about the salmon fry crumb being in the spod mix), but their small "stick's" were definitely loaded with salmon fry crumb.

Both Jamie and Billy worked hard all of the time to catch their fish, on a weekend that wasn't really good fishing conditions. Both anglers were spodding regular, every couple of fish or every hour or so if nothing was happening. Being match carp anglers they are very fluent in their fishing, getting the bait back out quick, very accurately, spodding to tight spots and generally fishing very effectively. It sounds like hard work but when you think they caught nearly 60 fish and everyone else on the lake between them caught about 6 fish it's worth it, isn't it??.

They used a fair amount of bait between them in the 48 hour session, several bucket fulls of mostly Nash gear since we sponsor them both, plus a lot of particle and pellet.

I know this sounds quiet expensive for bait but in fact there are cheap ways to bulk bait out using particles, pellet, vitalin and even brown bread (much better than white bread) All you need is a little time. I'm cooking some Red Factor up at this moment to use at the Essex Manor and probably at Bayeswater. I bought a 25kg sack for I think about £25. Most particles are about this, a £1 a kilo. There is the obvious, hemp, tares and party blends but also black eye beans, maple peas, chick peas, groats, wheat, barley, maize and dari seeds are all excellent baits, some costing about 50p a kilo. I do feel it works better to mix a few together and although I have red factor this time I usually use a mix of 2 parts hemp, 1 part tares and 1 part maple peas.

The 25kg I've cooked gave me 6 x 10ltr buckets of bait that will go in the freezer till I need it, that's about 60 kilo's of bait. If you haven't got freezer space then only cook as you need it.

To prepare any particle I find it best to soak it for 24 hours first. Only half fill a bucket with dry particle and top the bucket of with water. You can add salt, sugar, molasses or sweetened flavours at this stage to add a little zest. I added about 3 table spoons of salt to each bucket. After 24 hours simply boil the particle until the seeds are soft or split.

Some particle will be ok just soaked for the 24 hours, especially if you soak them in boiled water, barley, groats and wheat for certain are ok done like this, no cooking.

When I use my particle for spodding I'll use about half a bucket and add Vitalin method mix to it, pellets and crushed boilies. Jamie and Billy used 10mm boilies but again 10mm baits are dear, crushed 15mm baits work out cheaper and I like the mish mash of different sizes. If I use the particle in a method mix I'll use less particle but more method mix and pellet. Whichever way I'll use it, it'll only cost about 50p a kilo compared to £9-10 per kilo of boilies.

There has been some big catches of fish out of the lake on heavy spodded areas, Jamie and Billy's catches were excellent on such an hot weekend and well worth the effort. Sometimes the best method to catch a lot is to put a lot of bait out, it's as simple as that. If you put the bait out accurately it has the most chance of really getting them going, if it doesn't work then you can fish around it, all that's lost is a bit of effort.

Either way, it works most times at Bayeswater, all of my 10 or more fish catches have been when using a good amount of bait, method mix, maggots, boilies or floating bait.

Give it a go

Gary

15lb Plus

17lb

One of Jamies 20s

Jamie with a mid-double

Jamie and the other 20

DAY TICKET NEWS AND BAIT TIPS - SEPTEMBER 2009