Keith Speer
Senior Member
Several years ago Mike Wilson (Yes him, the famous Leg-end from Savay) and I decided we would try a spot of pre-baiting on Old Father Thames.
At the time we were fishing a nice quiet spot just downstream of a weir, the swims were nice and comfy, protected by a decent stand of trees, nice distance apart, giving plenty of room to fish, but close enough to be social.
Parking was nice and close, the river had good flow (when the Thames has flow) and this venue was fishable most of the time and night fishing was allowed, it was a spot we liked very much indeed.
The only problem was with the Barbel, we would often catch Barbel, but we would often not catch Barbel, they did not seem to be there all of the time, in fact we were fairly sure that the fish spent a lot of time in the weir, this was fishable but awkward and if the fish were where we thought they were, not only were they awkward to reach but they were also a very long chuck away, now neither of us was put off by a long chuck, but we were put off by the remains of the old weir which was still in place and about a third of the way out.
This weir not only caused the loss of much end tackle, but also the loss of fish and re-spooling for every visit became not only tiresome but expensive.
In an ideal world we wanted to catch the fish in the section downstream of the weir, where it was not too difficult a chuck and we could sit in splendour in nice comfy swims with no large obstructions between us and the fish.
So over a cup of tea or three (which obviously I made as Mike would always let Jeeves take the night off when he was fishing), we hatched a plan, a plan so devilishly cunning that it would, until this day, remain up there in Mr Fox’s list of cunning stunts!
This plan involved………….Pre-Baiting!!!
Some of you will have taken the time to read Mike’s article on “The baiting pyramidâ€, it is in the “articles†section on this site and those that have not should do so, because not only does it inspire but it also gives an insight into feeding patterns of fish and explains the value of observation.
Our aim was to draw Barbel into an area that we could fish easily, quite simple really, but it would involve the purchase of a fair quantity of bait, little application and a bit of teamwork.
Our first problem was choice of bait, it needed to be cheap as Mike did not want to part with the Rolls and I thought it best to keep feeding the family, I did not want them to get all “uppity†at a crucial time, so we looked at Maize and we looked at Maple Peas, both would be easy to prepare in quantity and both were cheap, but of the two Maize would be a bit obvious to other close season wanderers, on the other hand Maple Peas would blend in and remain un-noticed, even if dropped quite close in so we opted for Maple Peas.
We knew we would need to start well before the start of the season, we were trying to “condition†the fish to feed in or at the very least visit our chosen area, this would not be an over night task, but we did need the water to be warm enough for the fish to be cruising about, so the start date was set for mid April.
Our plan was simple, we needed to place a Maple Pea in every square yard of the bottom from one side of the river to the other, this would be done by catapult, mainly firing the Maples high into the air to get maximum spread and we started with an area of approximately 200 yds of bank space.
So every two days we would bait this area, I would do a Tuesday, Mike would do Thursday and I would do Saturday, Mike would follow on Monday and would do Wednesday and so on.
I suspect seeing a chap in a three piece suit with a bucket, catapulting something all over the place made the odd boat owner scratch his head, but we kept it up, come rain or shine, every other evening.
We wanted the fish to see bait all the time, we wanted them confident and un-afraid, to accept that if they swam a few feet they would see a Maple, in fact Maples would be as common as pebble and twigs on the bottom!
Once we felt we had achieved this we started to narrow and reduce the area we baited, slowly bit by bit we reduced the area and while reducing the area we started to introduce small amounts of Hemp until we were only baiting the centre deepest channel over a spread of about 5-6 swims and for the last week before the start of the season we started to introduce Hemp in larger quantities but made sure we were very much more accurate with our baiting, ensuring it only went in where we planned to fish.
With the start of the season, we would arrive, put in 4-6 pints of Hemp with a bait dropper, into the centre of the boat channel, ONLY, in an area the size of a small dinner table and just before we cast out we would put in about two pints of Maggots, again by dropper.
To be honest casting a standard bait dropper 25-30yds is quite hard work, if we missed the spot we would not let the dropper open, but wind in and re-cast, accuracy would be everything.
The rigs were simple running rigs, with Maggot feeders and Maggots as hookbait.
What usually happened was that Bleak would kick off proceedings, followed by Dace and then Bream, we would re-cast every 2-3 minuets or as soon as the feeder was empty, while the small fish were about plastic baits were the hookbait but once the bigger fish moved in real ones did the trick.
Did it work?
Well it did to a point, we did not catch any big Barbel, in fact we only had two doubles, to be honest we had far more double figure Bream, although we did not catch many Bream at all and to cap it all at the start of August the heavens opened and the river went into huge flood which kind of stopped our singing in church, so we only had about 6 weeks worth of fishing!
When we did fish we kept the bait going in, during this period Mike and I fished about twice a week, with the odd extra evening if we could get away with it, BUT in those 6 weeks we had 167 Barbel between us, mostly between 6-9lb and it was great fun!!
So if you think it is worth it…………………………………………?
Tight lines chaps.
At the time we were fishing a nice quiet spot just downstream of a weir, the swims were nice and comfy, protected by a decent stand of trees, nice distance apart, giving plenty of room to fish, but close enough to be social.
Parking was nice and close, the river had good flow (when the Thames has flow) and this venue was fishable most of the time and night fishing was allowed, it was a spot we liked very much indeed.
The only problem was with the Barbel, we would often catch Barbel, but we would often not catch Barbel, they did not seem to be there all of the time, in fact we were fairly sure that the fish spent a lot of time in the weir, this was fishable but awkward and if the fish were where we thought they were, not only were they awkward to reach but they were also a very long chuck away, now neither of us was put off by a long chuck, but we were put off by the remains of the old weir which was still in place and about a third of the way out.
This weir not only caused the loss of much end tackle, but also the loss of fish and re-spooling for every visit became not only tiresome but expensive.
In an ideal world we wanted to catch the fish in the section downstream of the weir, where it was not too difficult a chuck and we could sit in splendour in nice comfy swims with no large obstructions between us and the fish.
So over a cup of tea or three (which obviously I made as Mike would always let Jeeves take the night off when he was fishing), we hatched a plan, a plan so devilishly cunning that it would, until this day, remain up there in Mr Fox’s list of cunning stunts!
This plan involved………….Pre-Baiting!!!
Some of you will have taken the time to read Mike’s article on “The baiting pyramidâ€, it is in the “articles†section on this site and those that have not should do so, because not only does it inspire but it also gives an insight into feeding patterns of fish and explains the value of observation.
Our aim was to draw Barbel into an area that we could fish easily, quite simple really, but it would involve the purchase of a fair quantity of bait, little application and a bit of teamwork.
Our first problem was choice of bait, it needed to be cheap as Mike did not want to part with the Rolls and I thought it best to keep feeding the family, I did not want them to get all “uppity†at a crucial time, so we looked at Maize and we looked at Maple Peas, both would be easy to prepare in quantity and both were cheap, but of the two Maize would be a bit obvious to other close season wanderers, on the other hand Maple Peas would blend in and remain un-noticed, even if dropped quite close in so we opted for Maple Peas.
We knew we would need to start well before the start of the season, we were trying to “condition†the fish to feed in or at the very least visit our chosen area, this would not be an over night task, but we did need the water to be warm enough for the fish to be cruising about, so the start date was set for mid April.
Our plan was simple, we needed to place a Maple Pea in every square yard of the bottom from one side of the river to the other, this would be done by catapult, mainly firing the Maples high into the air to get maximum spread and we started with an area of approximately 200 yds of bank space.
So every two days we would bait this area, I would do a Tuesday, Mike would do Thursday and I would do Saturday, Mike would follow on Monday and would do Wednesday and so on.
I suspect seeing a chap in a three piece suit with a bucket, catapulting something all over the place made the odd boat owner scratch his head, but we kept it up, come rain or shine, every other evening.
We wanted the fish to see bait all the time, we wanted them confident and un-afraid, to accept that if they swam a few feet they would see a Maple, in fact Maples would be as common as pebble and twigs on the bottom!
Once we felt we had achieved this we started to narrow and reduce the area we baited, slowly bit by bit we reduced the area and while reducing the area we started to introduce small amounts of Hemp until we were only baiting the centre deepest channel over a spread of about 5-6 swims and for the last week before the start of the season we started to introduce Hemp in larger quantities but made sure we were very much more accurate with our baiting, ensuring it only went in where we planned to fish.
With the start of the season, we would arrive, put in 4-6 pints of Hemp with a bait dropper, into the centre of the boat channel, ONLY, in an area the size of a small dinner table and just before we cast out we would put in about two pints of Maggots, again by dropper.
To be honest casting a standard bait dropper 25-30yds is quite hard work, if we missed the spot we would not let the dropper open, but wind in and re-cast, accuracy would be everything.
The rigs were simple running rigs, with Maggot feeders and Maggots as hookbait.
What usually happened was that Bleak would kick off proceedings, followed by Dace and then Bream, we would re-cast every 2-3 minuets or as soon as the feeder was empty, while the small fish were about plastic baits were the hookbait but once the bigger fish moved in real ones did the trick.
Did it work?
Well it did to a point, we did not catch any big Barbel, in fact we only had two doubles, to be honest we had far more double figure Bream, although we did not catch many Bream at all and to cap it all at the start of August the heavens opened and the river went into huge flood which kind of stopped our singing in church, so we only had about 6 weeks worth of fishing!
When we did fish we kept the bait going in, during this period Mike and I fished about twice a week, with the odd extra evening if we could get away with it, BUT in those 6 weeks we had 167 Barbel between us, mostly between 6-9lb and it was great fun!!
So if you think it is worth it…………………………………………?
Tight lines chaps.
