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Luncheon Meat

Ian Timms

Ian Timms

Member
Hi guys,

new to BFW and would appreciate any advice anyone’s able to give.

Am fishing my local Sussex rivers and tend to co-incide trips when the river is high and coloured. Meat is a favourite for many anglers on the stretches of river I fish and account for some very nice barbel, but of course with the coloured water and meat combination comes the proverbial eel problem, and keeping a bait on the hair for longer than 15 mins is a real issue as the buggers tend to strip the bait off within this time span, especially when fishing into dusk/darkness.

I‘ve tried using larger lumps of meat as opposed to smaller bits in order to combat this (tend to flavour quite heavily with curry powder and fry up), but still get the same result with eels attacking the bait fairly quickly. If I ”could” keep a piece of meat out there for a longer period of time I’m fairly confident I’d have a good chance of a barbel bite.

Am considering the option of maybe using fox arma mesh or anything similar as a means of keeping the meat out for that much longer (have never used arma mesh before so not sure whether this would combat the problem). Does anyone have any thoughts on this or any other suggestions on how to keep the meat in place without eels stripping off fairly quickly.

Many thanks,

Ian
 
I reckon you'd have to use larger pieces of meat, with your hook inside the meat. You could use smaller pieces by having a loop at one end of your hooklink, and passing this loop through your bait first, then pulling hook 'backwards' into the meat. Then you can put bait and hook inside the bag. That should reduce your chances of actually hooking the blighters anyway.
 
Strange really cause I never have a problem with eels on the Severn once you get to this time of year but in the summer I’ll use big pieces. If it’s a small tin cut into 3 or a large tin cut into 4. Only way really of keeping your meat on long enough to hopefully get a barbel. Still catch my fair share of eels though. Someone on here said that eels don’t like scopex so you could always try flavouring your meat with that. As for arma mesh I don’t know how well that would work. The eels would still just attack it
 
I’ve been using these a bit this season. Although I don’t remember paying that much for them... Might pay to have a bit of a search online to get them cheaper.

I’ve not hooked an eel using them, but have definitely had eel-type plucks & pulls, the sort of bite that would normally lead to the retrieval of a bare hair/hook. With the screws however, I often wind in to find some/most of the bait still in place, sometimes with chunks nipped off the corners. Obviously, if I leave it out for long enough and get enough ‘eely’ bites, they’ll whittle it down to just the stuff inside the screw (still better than nothing, I suppose...).

I’ve always been led to believe that Eels and Barbel feed at very similar temperature ranges, so the occasional pluck is a good sign, right?

I think @Lawrence Breakspear mentioned Scopex as a flavour which has possible Eel repelling qualities, so that might be worth a go...
 
Been using Arma mesh a while now and believe it does a good job of leaving meat out for longer.You will get little pluck's on the tip from smaller fish and if crays are a problem chewed up a bit.It's vital when meshing the meat that you melt the tag ends of the knot with a lighter.Depends on tip activity as to how often I check the bait but far more confidence with mesh than without.
 
Had plenty of eel attention using spam, both straight from the tin and heavily curried/garliced, but none using bacon grill, try it, caught plenty of barbel on both, bacon grill is much tougher, but strangely doesn,t seem very effective when dosed in curry/garlic unlike spam.





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Avid corn/ Maggot stops on the hair rig ,so useful for pellets as well , shorter and longer hooked versions.
 
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This is how I set up if u can make it out. Don’t really use long hooklinks unless I’m casting up stream. Size 4 hook. Wouldn’t go smaller as you’ll struggle to keep a big bit of meat on
 
Chucked my last piece in before I left the river earlier so got none to show but if you get a boilie stringer needle and push it through the meat then hook the hook on it and pull the hook through. Twist the hook 90 degrees and pull the hook flush with the bottom of the meat
 
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