• You need to be a registered member of Barbel Fishing World to post on these forums. Some of the forums are hidden from non-members. Please refer to the instructions on the ‘Register’ page for details of how to join the new incarnation of BFW...

Some advice needed please...

Julian Griffiths

Julian Griffiths

Senior Member & Supporter
Hi guys.

My recent bait order I got just included the large quantity of boilies, matching paste, and a bait soak.

The company didn't do groundbaits to go along with the range of frozen baits he does.

Do most of you stay away from groundbaits in this situation and just stick to a few free offerings scattered around the area your targeting, or would you find a groundbait and try to mix something up that compliments the bait your using?

Be interested in your thoughts!

Just returning after a 5 yr layoff, so just getting a bit more clued up on things.

Cheers everyone!👍
 
It’s very much dependent on the river in question. I’ve used groundbait successfully on the Wye, albeit in my limited experience on the river. I’d imagine it would work well in similar applications on parts of the Severn, Trent, etc. On the Wye, I’ve only used groundbait to plug both ends of a big feeder to get pellets down to area that I was presenting a bait.

The time of year/water temp is a factor too...

I certainly wouldn’t get hung up about it matching your boilies and paste. As long as they’re all fishy or meaty (or milky in Winter) and there are fish in the area, you’ll just need to get them feeding and present a bait nicely.

On smaller rivers with lower fish numbers, at best a big bed of bait is probably a waste of money and at worse, could spook the fish. I fish the Hampshire Avon and Dorset Stour and wouldn’t personally use groundbait or much in the way of free offerings at all. Unless I visually had a group of fish really on the munch, which I haven’t encountered for a few years now... I know this contradicts the ton of hemp and casters school of thought, but that’s not how I fish, generally speaking.

If you’re thinking of putting groundbait & free offerings in by hand, there’s a interesting recent thread on here about that. I’ll have a look in a minute...
 
Alex Warren said:
Here you go...
Click to expand...
Now that was an interesting subject Alex, thanks for linking it to me!
I put myself in my scenario whilst reading all the replies, and the way I would approach a low stock venue, was echoed by some of the replies. So my thoughts are on the right track. At the end of the day, I'm there to catch them, and not to feed them off. I've got a plan now.👍
 
For my fishing I consider groundbait to just be a carrier for my free samples so I will make a mix that includes pellets, broken boilies, hemp, chopped up bits of meat etc. The groundbait just binds it all together in the feeder.

Some groundbaits already have pellets and crushed hemp in as well as flavourings.

Sometimes my groundbait mix will be completely different to my hook bait as I am just trying to send a scent trail downstream and draw fish to my hookbait especially in coloured water.

If you want to get a high ratio of your chosen hookbait in the mix then buy a Korda Krusher and grind your boilies up. Somehow though I fail to see the point of paying a premium to buy boilies you then crush down when the same thing is available in pellet form around half the price.

I have also never bought frozen bait and don't believe my catch rate is lower than those that do.
 
Depends entirely on the head of fish you could potentially have infront of you.
I consider my usual hang out the river Nene as a relatively low stock, big fish, single bite water the majority of times and in this case all ground bait has ever bought me Personally when I’ve used it is bream after bream.
i much prefer a little hemp through a dropper and afew free samples of my hookbait on a stringer rather than feeder fulls of groundbait.
on higher fish stocked waters I’d probably consider a different approach to encourage a shoal of feeding fish.
As I don’t really have a lot of experience on rivers well populated with barbel, I’m not going to attempt to offer advice on feeding or fishing them but I’d imagine groundbait would be quite useful here.
 
Back in my bagging up days on the BA, when the weather became cooler and the river was running a little high with colour, my go-to mix was one part Sensas Roach 2000, one of Sensas Z 72 and one of brown crumb, with some hemp thrown in for good measure. This combination was hugely successful for me and would carry meat or casters, with maggot, casters or meat on the hook.
I don't think Z 72 is available these days, so something similar.
Oh, and it also nailed plenty of chub and roach for me.
 
I don't know if it will help, but I made some paste from disintegrated boilies, pellets (same type as boilies) and some cooked hemp, I used them on a tear-drop lead (with a hole in the middle), wrapped the weight with the paste to use as an attractor with a 2ft hook link. Was surprised to find that some of the paste was still on the weight even after an hour or so in the water and that was with having had to recast twice (due to crap coming down the river).

Best thing about making your own paste (aside from the fact you can add what you want to it) is that it is so cheap and easy to make. A pot of paste costs from £4-£8 a pot, my paste made with about 200g of boilies, a handful of pellets and some hemp costs about £2 a pot for a similar pot and it can be a perfect match for what you have as your bait.

And I'm not even from 'Yorkshire'
 
The only wrap which is flavour specific to my boilie or pellet I don't make myself is Elips. I've tried and failed a few times to make a decent wrap from Elips pellets and Elips oil, but each time it wasn't very good. But Hinners' own wrap has a great consistency (ot loads of Elips pellets and wrap, but very rarely use Elips though). The only boilies I found it difficult to make wrap from is those high in (bird) seed content.
 
I don't stress about matching groundbait to boilies or other baits, I think its main use use is simply as a carrier of other freebies (hemp/pellet etc).

I know last autumn when some mates went onto using maggots with maggot feeders, I tried this and just found them fiddly. So even in the depths of winter, I reverted to simply mixing up some fluffy groundbait, putting a bit in the feeder, pinch of maggots in the middle and then capping the feeder with more groundbait. Caught a few fish so seemed to work for me. If using boilies, I'll stick a few chopped baits into the groundbait mix (the ridgemonkey cutters are excellent! :) ) and find this is a good way to ensure there are matching free offerings in the area around your hook bait.
 
I like to crush up a load of boilies in a food processor, tip them in a bowl add a small amount of small pellets to the processor, whizz them up and add them to the bowl, add a few micro pellets to the bowl, some half boilies and then plenty of pva friendly liquids of your choice. Depending on the water temperature depends if I go oily or not. Cloudy krill or manilla are my favourites. Mix it all up then use a pva mesh system to make 4-5" sticks. Thread a stringer needle through, pull your hook length through the lot so your hook is buried inside the stick and the bait hanging below. It's caught me so many fish over the years, especially in one-bite stretches of river where you have to leave the bait out for two or more hours. I do tend to use the same boilies as the hook bait, not that it likely makes much difference to the barbel, it's more of a confidence thing and I buy boilies in bulk so is convenient too.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top