A FOOL AT ONE END .....

...and a worm at the other. Of course, and why not? A lob tail has always been known as a big Roach bait and yet in all my angling life I have never bothered with them. Just lately however worms have become my go to bait of choice and they have thrown up a few nice fish too.

Bites today were at a premium, I probably only had a dozen, maybe fifteen, all morning and most of those I couldn't hit. Initially I just left them longer and longer but when I did catch fish, the problem was solved. They were just too small for the size of the bait. I had scratched up three or four Roach in the 3 oz bracket until a determined, sudden disappearance of the float yielded a Chub of around ten or twelve ounces. It seemed as though my day was done after that. Bites became very scarce but as the morning petered out some encouraging signs appeared.

 
The odd bubble started coming up near my float closely followed by small indications that suggested fish were close by. I had only used a small amount of black groundbait as a carrier but as always I had added ground hemp to it. When it first goes in, small oil droplets pimple the surface but this effect stops after a minute or two. One of the interesting features of this additive is that when a fish disturbs the groundbait on the bottom some of the 'pimpling' restarts and this also began to happen. Eventually a confident bite found me attached to something decent. It was a stunning Roach that slid over the net and after a few snaps, my scales reduced it to 1-7. For some that might not be a big roach but it was my equal second best so I was very pleased with it. How could I not be with such a stunning fish.

 
It was just one more example of why I am more than happy to use worms more and more. I don't know why I should be so surprised, they are probably the most natural bait we have but such is my confidence in them that more than any other bait, I do not become particularly discouraged when nothing is taking them. On the contrary, sometimes it feels like the fewer the bites, the bigger the fish that they catch. Another example of Pete's old adage, " if I'm not going to catch anything I might as well not catch a big'un." Cue a larger worm when bites are few and far between maybe?