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pre-baiting advice

Ian Murfin

Ian Murfin

Senior Member
Hi all,

I am looking for a little advice on pre-baiting, I've just moved house and am now very close to a stretch of the upper Trent and I'm thinking of doing a little prebaiting to hopefully improve my chances. My questions are:

Bait - boilies, pellets or a mix of both
Quantity - how much, don't want to over feed, it's a very quiet stretch so I doubt i'll be affecting other people's fishing
Frequency- any advantage twice a day over once a day

All thoughts greatly appreciated.
 
Assuming near bank swim which is easy to prebait, then 15 to 20 x 14mm boillies (freezer baits), every other day, for 2 – 3 weeks, before wetting a line.

Also consider head of fish and other competing species?

Above worked for me on a local river, the main challenge is finding a freezer bait that doesn’t quickly blow i.e. no repeat captures or 2nd chance at a lost fish!
 
I would also consider the time of year . Personally I think pre baiting in winter would be a waste of time and bait, with lower metabolisms in winter temperatures all you will end up doing at best is filling the fish up [ if they are feeding ] reducing the chance of them taking your hookbait
 
Thanks for the comments, it's definitely food for thought. I think you would normally be right Mike but it's still quite warm at the moment so I'm hoping they are still feeding. The Trent is a big old river so I'm hoping that I haven't over done it. I started with a hand full of boilies and couple of hand falls of pellets twice a day a few days back, I'm going to keep that going until Wednesday when I'll give it a go, I'm too impatient to wait 2-3 weeks Neil!
 
As Mike says its probably too late in the year for any heavy pre-baiting,Barbel can shut up shop for days at this time of year. It might be better to plumb the stretch, find the drop offs/depressions/historical winter swims and concentrate on these areas.The fish will not be wanting to move around much as it gets cold and you might be pre-baiting an area that Barbel do not frequent in winter,and just feeding chub which feed heavily in the cold(once caught the most deformed looking fat chub ever that must have eaten all two weeks of john baker frost and flood,never caught a barbel in that swim).If you fish a quality boilie barbel will soon get used to picking up a few.You are going to have to tune your feeding according to how many fish you catch,little and often will always be best,and fishing often and short sessions also works well.Just remember you cannot take it out if you have already chucked it in. Everyone and his dog uses pellets and if you do pre-bait with pellets you could just be feeding a swim for someone else,hope this helps.
 
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Would agree with above, all my pre baiting experience has been between June and the end of September, by which time the introduced bait had well and truely blown!
 
Might be worth putting a little bit of your chosen hook bait in a few areas you want to fish every other day but don`t overdo it, It worked on the Bristol Avon a few years back when a few of us were using the same paste bait but we did only scatter a few hook baits here and there but regularly.
Andy
 
I'm between willington and shardlow. I had a quick session yesterday without any success. I'm going to keep at it I think, albeit with less bait as temps now seem to be dropping. My logic is that I'm not really trying to introduce a new wonder bait to very cautious frequently captured fish, I'm trying to get a few fish to frequent a particular swim on their patrol routes to hopefully improve my chances on a big river. It might work, it might not, that's fishing for you!
 
My only real experience was on smaller rivers - Kennet mainly. Home made boilie mix with slightly different balance of ingredients depending on season. Used to do little campaigns - few days at a time trickling a few baits into half a dozen swims in very specific spots using a baitdropper. Rarely put in whole boilies, mainly broken up with some micro pellet. Maybe baited up for three nights and fished the fourth. Then go somewhere else and do the same to rest it. Got it going quite well and could have a fish or three within a couple of hours and be back home in front of the TV by mid-evening.

Used to live within 5 minutes of a lot of the Reading stretches mind you so little hits like that were quite easy to do. Bigger river and longer travelling might require different tactics, although there's a school of thought that you should break a bigger river up into smaller sections and treat it like a little one anyway?
 
Just thought I'd report back on this, I only managed a short session before the rain hit and the levels went a bit crazy, result was one plump and frequently air born chub. So not what I had hoped for but quite entertaining non the less. The river is dropping now but so are the temps so I think I'll leave it until spring before giving it another go.
 
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