FORGOTTEN BAITS

     Not so much forgotten, I suppose, as seldom used these days. There is something a little special for me as a user of so called traditional tackle, in employing baits that my old rods and reels would have been familiar with when they were first used. I have no great desire to seek out bullock's pith and brains, although I have no doubt that they would still work at least as well or as badly, as they ever did. To my mind, fish are simple creatures, not as susceptible to fashion as anglers are, simply tuned in to finding food, whether that be bread, worms, boilies or pellets. They test it and eat it if it suits them. They certainly don't eat chocolate orange or salted caramel flavoured baits because they believed the adverts.

 

     Anyways, pontificating aside, I've been enjoying myself lately using stewed wheat for roach, mixed I have to admit with hemp and tares which are probably more established in the modern anglers pysche. It is a very convenient bait and, it turns out, at least as effective as tares, more effective if anything in my experience. I suspect that hemp might trump them both but as it appears impossible to buy any suitable for a hook larger than a 22, I cannot test the matter.

     A decent morning on the Trent recently produced a couple of dozen half decent roach and it got me thinking about other baits that I haven't used in a while. Paste was the main one that sprang to mind. I used it a year or two back on the canal with some success. I'd laced some of my first efforts with the traditional aniseed and I also tried tutti frutti. To be honest I never really noticed any difference in results between either flavour or plain breadpaste for that matter. As a throwback, wannabe roach fisherman I have an ingrained attachment to aniseed that differs little in reality to a modern carp anglers attachment to krill. Both work but so do lots other flavours.

     There was another paste much used for roach in my neck of the woods when I was a youngster, cheesepaste. Not the rancid, blue cheese paste beloved of chub fishermen, but lumps of much-manipulated yellow cheese. Not the soft pastes we use now but just a piece of cheese broken off the block and worked into warmth and pliability by moulding it vigorously between the fingers. Of course in winter, it would turn back into yellow concrete within minutes of hitting the bottom but it caught big Thames roach regularly.

     And so it was that I turned up at Jubilee armed with the tools to seek roach in the style of days gone by. I have a growing affection for float rods constructed from a mix of whole and split cane, so today I had my Sealey floatcaster fitted with an Ambidex match reel. A reversed crowquill would tell me tales with any luck.

     Feeding groundbait made from liquidised bread with a little crushed hemp and stiffened with a minimal amount of Gros Gardons would, I hoped, draw some fish in. Hookbaits would be breadpaste flavoured with aniseed and a 60% cheddar, 40% shortcrust pastry mix would be my cheesepaste alternative. In use, the aniseed paste was too soft, the cheesepaste just perfect.

     Both baits worked right from the off, although, it later transpired, I was striking too soon. Although they looked like good bites at first, I bumped a few and found scales on the hook suggesting that I had a lot of fish in the swim and many of my 'bites' were in fact liners. Some of those scales were huge and clearly from carp. I lost a couple of those as the swim was very tight between overhanging trees but I caught a fair few bream around the pound mark.

 
     At one point I found myself attached to a very large fish which I believed at first to be a seriously big tench. It reached the tree on my right a couple of times but luck was on my side and I wrangled it back out. At one stage I got a glimpse of a dark yellow fish deep in the shadows and persuaded myself it was a big tench but alas, it turned out to be a mirror carp. On the mat, it weighed 12 -10, no mean achievement for an old wooden rod some half a century old and on a 3lbs hooklength too.

 
     Only one thing was lacking today - roach, the sole object of the day's fishing. The two different pastes matched each other fish for fish although I shall experiment more with their recipes. Next time I shall hopefully fish a swim with a proven track record for roach and may use less groundbait or at least feed it differently. Whether I get it to work any better than I did today or not, it is deeply satisfying to catch on a bait that my grandfather probably used but which is seldom employed much today.