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How big is yours.

Duncan Dimbleby

Duncan Dimbleby

Senior Member
Been fishing exclusively with garlic meat recently due to this high and coloured water but it's got me thinking. How big is big ( bait size ) and if conditions are not bang on, ie falling temps or lower than ideal water temps, should I infact be using smaller lumps of meat to induce a bite ?


The normal size lump I use is a one / ninth of a standard size tin of Spam, about the size of match box. The sort of size lump that would make a match angler whince, though I'm sure some of you use bigger.

Duncan.
 
Out of curiosity Nick, what size hook for half a tin and on the hook or hair rigged ?? Half a tin does seem excessive and when I've heard folk mention that size bait in the past I've always thought they were having a laugh...
 
I am curious too. I have heard of such bait sizes being used many times before, so I assume it must work...but how? I have had some pretty big barbel, and none of them had a mouth even close to being big enough to engulf half of a big tin of Spam. As far as I am aware, barbel do not whittle baits down until they are small enough to take into their mouths, indeed their mouths are not really designed for that to my mind, so I really am puzzled as to how it works :confused:

Cheers, Dave.
 
Summer floods on the Wye I used one sixth of a tin and got a PB , this Xmas / new year I tried a quarter of a tin and whittled off the edges and didn't get a bite , nibbled it down to about one eighth of a tin with still no bites , who knows ?Much more confident using Enterprise meat mates than I was with knotless hoops and boilie stops.
 
I tend to stick to the same size piece most of the time of about an inch on a size 6. I'm of the opinion if they are feeding they will find it and will eat it. If I did use a piece half the size or smaller then they would still find it, but I would have to use a smaller hook. Then the chances of a hook pull are greater from experience. I would only fish a very large piece if I was being selective and the barbel population were high. I very rarely fish those types of rivers. Most of my fishing is at night, and when conditions are like they are now a tin of spam with a little tinkering comes into it's own.
 
Generally a size two hook for the half tin and a four for the matchbox sized. I Whittle off the edges to aid the fish in getting it in

Bites tend to start with a rattle and then the usual three foot twitch.
 
I think it would help to consider what size of tin people are actually referring to?

The common sizes are 200g and 340g.

Personally the size of cube I use is about half with width of either tin, cubed.

Fits well on a size 1 or 2.


Stephen
 
I've also started buying the 4lb tins recently and using an old hoover tube sharpened at one end and tube the meat all the way through, then cut every 2-3". Leaving the meat looking like a big pellet.
 
A size 200g tin cut into three, hook either pulled through or threaded down line on a size 6, had a few nice uns this season;) never been over confident with meat in winter tho, would be interested in other peoples experience of usage;)
 
in floods, ive had more success with very hot curried spam/meat, than i have with the garlic, 200 gram tin cut into 6 pieces. i push a piece of cut plastic straw through the meat, push a baiting needle through the straw, and pull the hooklength back through. i find the meat doesn,t fly off on the cast.
 
Duncan Dimbleby said:
Out of curiosity Nick, what size hook for half a tin and on the hook or hair rigged ?? Half a tin does seem excessive and when I've heard folk mention that size bait in the past I've always thought they were having a laugh...
Click to expand...

Hi Duncan, I can assure you that a barbel of around 12lbs can take half a tin with ease. Around 30 years ago there was a barbel of this weight resident in the Parlour Pool on the Royalty. People would stand on the bridge throwing in lumps of meat and this fish would swoop up from the depths and take the bait about 3 feet below the surface in full view of the spectators. A pal and I were feeding this fish one day and decided to see how big a bait it could manage. We worked our way up from the normal matchbox size til all we had left was half a tin. For a laugh we chucked this in, not imagining that the fish could possibly take it. Up he came and swallowed it whole without even batting an eyelid. I suspect he could have taken a much larger piece, but we had run out of bait so couldn't try it.

This is the fish that Chris Yates tells the story of attempting to catch. You couldn't stand on the bridge and cast because there was a chain stretched across the river to stop this. The person fishing had to stand downstream, pass the bait under the chain so that a second person could stand on the bridge, drop the bait in and shout strike when the bait was taken.

Tim
 
When myself and some mates were trying to wade through the smaller shoal fish on a particular stretch of the Kennet some years ago we kept upping the bait size (with meat) until we were only picking up the larger fish. For barbel of 8lb + we found that four from a tin (large) was the optimum size and 3 from a tin if you were feeling ambitious.

As far a hooks go, we came up with a sliding hair rig with hair buffers to stop tearing the meat that meant you fished with an exposed hook and could therefore keep the hooksize down a little. A description of this rig can be found in the chub study group book, Chevin.

As an aside we did catch on 2 baits from a tin on a few occasions including a brace of 11s for myself one evening.

It also explains my previous incarnation`s moniker on this forum.
 
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Well...I must admit I am absolutely gobsmacked by that! I thought at first that Tim was on a windup. I measured a 340 gr tin last night...it is 3.5" H x 3.75" W x 2" D. Whichever way you want to halve that, you have one HUGE lump of meat :eek:

I must give it a try...though I am not sure if my rods could lob something that heavy. Half of a 340gr tin is obviously 170gr...that equals 6oz. add a 2oz weight and I would need a rod able to cast 8oz :eek:

Good excuse to buy a new rod though :D

Cheers, Dave.
 
Your meat looks delicious Steve. I would probably look to match it with a white Rioja and some Spanish olive bread. Unless I was really hungry and then a couple of slices of thick white Warburtons bread would be perfect.

I think a new show and tell gallery section of the forum might be in order, providing everyone with an opportunity to display their largest, most flavoured meat piece.
 
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