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Dying maggots a dark colour?

Joe Winstanley

Senior Member & Supporter
During my last couple of tench sessions I’ve been having some problems with tufties hammering my swim, even in 9ft of water. The mere I’m on is gin clear at the moment and I think the red maggots (spombed out dead’s and lives in the feeder) must be standing out like a sore thumb over the dark silt. It’s certainly not the dark groundbait which blends well with the bottom and I even darken my hemp by adding bicarbonate of soda. I’m wondering if dying the maggots a dark shade of brown or black will help, has anyone tried it? And what did you use?

Cheers,

Joe
 
Joe,
I suspect you'll be peeing in the wind. I've managed to hook a tufty on red maggot in over twenty feet of coloured water.
 
I’ve been doing the same thing to avoid the tufties, dark ground bait black breadcrumb and dark pellets with some dead reds in the feed and some on the hook for large bream. It had become such a problem that I nearly stopped fishing on this particular water but after taking corn and anything else light out of the feed it seemed to have done the trick until last Friday when I hooked one for the first time in a while. I think they’ve wised up to it - there were a few having a go before and after I caught one of them. I might need to go back to using maggots on the hook only and stop including any in the feed

This is in only ten feet of crystal clear water so I’ll still expect to get some bother from them
 
Get your self a big bag of cheap mixers or bread and feed down wind whenever diving birds coming onto the area. If carp start coming up for them treat it as a bonus and catch them.
 
Get your self a big bag of cheap mixers or bread and feed down wind whenever diving birds coming onto the area. If carp start coming up for them treat it as a bonus and catch them.

I've tried that on another water Mark, it bought some short-term respite but then seemed to makes things worse in the long-term. Another problem is that my two of my three favoured swims face into the prevailing wind.
 
You could try double freezing your dead maggot, they tend to go black on the second freeze. You could also fill your ground bait balls with green powdered Peema food colouring bought by the 500gram for a couple of quid from Asian shops it is very concentrated you
end up with a green swim
 
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