5 Tips On Groundbait For Roach

No roach angler worth their salt would be without groundbait at this time of year – here’s how to use it!

ADD FREEBIES

GROUNDBAIT alone is not enough to keep the fish in the peg and, because you want them to eat the hookbait, you have to add the same into the feed. For roach, that’s dead pinkies, dead maggots and casters – the three most common hookbaits. In the opening balls of feed, add very few free offerings. Once these are fed, pop in two more balls that are rich in feed (packed with casters and pinkies) to create a focal point in the swim to fish over. On a hard day that may be just a sprinkling, but on a mild day with colour in the water, pack each ball with feed. Dead pinkies are great because they are soft, visible and small enough to get fish grubbing about.

TRY USING LEAM

YOU can add leam to normal groundbait, which will make the mix behave very differently. Leam used to be seen as something that was only used with bloodworm and joker, but when this fine, powdered clay is added to over-wetted groundbait it achieves two things. First, it adds some weight and second, it breaks the ball down quicker on the bottom. Depending on how much leam you add, you can make a ball split almost immediately, leaving a lingering cloud, which can be dynamite in shallow, clearish water. Heavy leams are also available that will combat strong flows in deep water, getting a ball to the bottom in seconds.

Leam will make the mix behave very differently

BALL IT... THEN CUP

THE best way to get a lot of groundbait into the peg quickly is to throw in several large balls, known as ‘balling in’. You’ll see this a lot on big, deep natural venues where small fish are the target. A massive hit kicks the peg off quickly, but you need to decide on how many balls to throw in. There’s no point scrimping on numbers, so eight or 10 large balls can go in over an area of a square metre. A pole cup then comes into play. The opening hit gets fish into the general area, but you want them to move and concentrate on the spot where your rig is. Two or three more balls go in with the pot in the same place, but these hold more particles.

A pole cup is a great way to feed throughout the session

RIDDLE YOUR MIX

ASIDE from removing any large lumps of part-mixed groundbait, riddling also adds air into a mix, which makes it sink quickly and break up fast. Without being put through a riddle, the groundbait can be too stodgy and struggle to come apart. When you’ve riddled the mix, you need to decide what to do with the bigger particles that you’ll have left over. These can be thrown away if the fishing is likely to be hard, but on more prolific days they can be pushed by hand through the riddle to put some bigger bits and bobs into the mix.

Riddling your groundbait has many advantages

FEED IT LOOSE

THERE are times when cupping in groundbait loose is better than balling it in, and this is normally in very shallow water of 3ft or less. A loose mix also gets things underway much faster because the groundbait is already broken down and can work its magic straight away. It’s important that the mix is wet, so it has the weight to get down quickly and stay put on the bottom without any danger of drifting off, especially in flowing water. Loose groundbait also works on canals and drains with steep marginal slopes under the water – a hard ball may roll down this slope, away from where you’re fishing. Loose groundbait will form a carpet just where you want it, and never move!