Bait Talk - Spring Edition

I’ve been saying it in every post since I started my page that I was going to do a post all about bait…and here it is!

As I’m writing this it’s snowing outside, and although this week’s going to be on the chilly side (going down too -7 tonight) and most lakes around the country will be starting to freeze over, spring is just around the corner and the days when we have sun it’s starting to feel stronger and has a bit more heat to it. I am going to start off talking about my baiting approach for spring; my baiting changes with the seasons in order to maximise my chances of landing a few fish. I’ll also add my approach may change with the distance I have to travel to the lake - that may sound completely mad, but, as my current syndicate is just a minute away from my house, it makes baiting (and picking the right times to bait) very easy as I can walk around as much as I like.

Picking the right times to bait at this time of year can give as big of an edge as anything else. I see some people just turn up at the lake, pick their chosen area and pile in the bait: That for me is a big no. The water is still not very warm, maybe max 7 degrees, so the fish will be less active and so feeding random areas with big beds of bait won’t help your chances at all.

As the lake I am fishing is fairly deep, it will take a lot longer to warm up than lakes of around 4 feet so, when I see people just launch in bait I think they are hindering their chances more than helping.

What I have been doing is picking the warmer weeks and maximising my time on the bank as much as possible, climbing the trees, not so much looking for fish, but looking for small spots or likely looking areas that I could place a few baits.

Through doing that I did managed to find a few spots and I started introducing small baits such as sweetcorn and chopped up nutcracker. I chose to add sweetcorn so I could visually see the spots more clearly; I started off with just a few small handfuls of each. I added these to 4 or 5 spots around the edge; I would then come back the next day and check on all of the spots and straight away I could tell fish had been feeding quite hard on one of the spots as every single bait had gone. I knew the coots might have been getting a few of the baits so on this spot I added a bit more bait, maybe half a kilo, again a mixture of nutcracker and sweetcorn. The boilies I used were a mixture of 18 and 14mm baits with the 18s being chopped up into halves and 3/4s; I repeated this procedure for a good week and each time the bait had gone.

As I was saying, I had seen people just bait random areas of the lake and on one occasion I had a walk around to their spot and, to my horror, there was still bait sitting there and lots of it, so I knew to avoid that spot as much as I could; The bait had probably been sitting there since the last time they fished and it was now almost a week later! For me that bait was considered dead - the swans were picking the odd bit of it up but I didn’t think they would ever clear the spot up completely which reassured me that the fish were more than happy to feed on the spots I had chosen. The only better confirmation I could get was to either catch one or be there when the fish where feeding.

After a week of prepping a few spots, finally I got to do a night and I managed to nick a mid-double common-  jack pot! I now knew it was most probably fish cleaning the spots. Now it’s easy to go down there and fill it in on these spots as I was sure fish were always visiting them, but I didn’t think it was the right move - I am constantly checking the weather each day and I could see this cold spell was coming so I started to slow down the baiting - I will keep it going in slowly but I won’t put any more than a 1kg of bait over the areas.

So that’s mainly how I approach my baiting in spring - of course not everyone has the luxury of checking and baiting areas, as I am sure a lot of you won’t, however I am just really lucky with regards to how close I live. That said, there are still things you can do to help land more fish.

Before I moved house I was travelling 45 minutes to my favourite lake and baiting up and checking spots, however it just wasn’t affordable with my apprentice wage, so I had to change and adapt my approach almost every session I was there as it wasn’t consistent fishing. I couldn’t get there every week so I played off what everyone else was doing: I knew a lot of people on the lake used a fishmeal type of bait, so I decided to use urban baits red spicy fish and fished 20 baits around each spot with added hemp and maize.

I remember one week in particular where I was lucky enough to get 2 nights on the lake, I think it was a Wednesday and a Friday, and I had also done the previous Friday - that wasn’t very normal for me so I took my chance and my god did it pay off.

I started up the top end of the lake in a swim I knew very well. There was a big set of reeds opposite me but, as it was early April, they weren’t all green and luxurious just yet. There was also a set of dead pads to my left, and I knew the fish loved them in the warmer months, so I set the rods way back from the water and baited with 20 boilies and sprayed a few handfuls of hemp and maize.

The lake held around 35 carp and it was around 4 acres max, so I wasn’t expecting a lot of action during the hours of darkness, but, I managed to take 3 fish and one of the smaller originals to boot - I couldn’t believe it!

I arrived back on the Wednesday: I had to settle for the swim opposite as during my last session a big tree fell down and actually destroyed one of the other lad’s swim – It even smashed through his brolly! I had to drag him out and to this day I have got to grips with the fact he got out with major injuries! I set up in the swim and repeated the same baiting approach.

I went on to land another 2 fish that session! All of these fish were small ones, the biggest being maybe 20pound or so. I decided to move down a few swims where I had seen bigger fish, but I kept with the hemp and maize. Over that session I took one of the big girls at 27lb and ounces - I was over the moon! I took 6 fish in a week and two originals!

So, that’s an insight into how I would approach baiting up at this time of year on both ends of the spectrum. I hope it’s given you some tips - watch your quarry but don’t always ignore some of the successful anglers because at times using their methods (but switching it up a little) can help put that extra fish on the bank.

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Good luck tight lines!