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Go to hookbaits

Ben Jennings

Senior Member
Now the season has been going for a couple of months what’s your go to hookbaits? I always like maggot or small pellet at the start of the season, but as it goes on always find myself going from pellet, to meat, to boilie but can never settle on a winning method.
 
Homemade boilie at the moment, maggots in winter
 
Massive Spam lover. It was on offer tother day in Asda. £2.70 a tin.(20%off) Bought a cheeky 10 tins again last week. So far apart from 12 maggot caught Barbel the other week, 85% have come on Spam. Its a far better daylight bait than boilies. Boilies come into there own at night, as I firmly believe as a visual round bait, its a red flag. I'd like to know if there's any anglers that do weekends and would give the Boilie catch rate during daylight and Night time. I bet its not much better than 30%.
 
Pellets for me usually, but I lasso them, as a lasso doesn't put any pressure on the pellet like a band does, so they don't come off. I use meat as darkness falls if I'm going to. Don't really use boilies much, but these last weeks they've been outfishing other baits, for me anyway.
 
8mm pellets are by far my most successful hookbait. More often than not I just fish one in a band, with a knotless knot hair. Rarely have problems with them coming off or breaking down, but then I rarely leave a cast in for more than 30 mins.

The only other bait I’ve caught barbel on are luncheon meat, caster, maggots, paste or mussels. Never really tried boilies for any length of time.
 
I'm usually a boilie user and probably use them as much as I can. I always get the matching basemix to the boilie I'm using and add a few powders and liquids to it and use roll them as my hookbaits.
If I can find a nice area close in though where I don't have to cast so far I do like to use a 1/4 tin of meat. I should probably use this method more often as its done me some good fish and usually sorts the bigger fish out but yeah 90% of the time I use boilies
 
Usually boilies 10-20mm+ depending on situation/time of season. Large lump of flavoured meat during warm winter floods.
 
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