Top 10 baits to when fishing for big roach!
Roach anglers have never had it so good when it comes to the choice of baits that are on offer. Where once the menu would have been quite limited, in recent years new baits have earned their place alongside the old staples.
Here is my selection of the best roach baits to try, and why each one is so effective.
1) Casters
Just as dark-coloured dead maggots catch a better stamp of roach than white maggots, so casters will catch bigger fish too. Ask your local tackle shop for freshly turned casters, as these will sink well, and their dark red colour makes them ideal for roach.
Casters have a couple of advantages over maggots. First, the hook can be completely buried in a caster, ideal for fishing in clear water for wary roach. Casters also stay put on the bottom and won’t bury under stones or weed. Hemp and caster is a classic combination and my go-to roach bait for river trotting
2) Hemp
No self-respecting roach angler would leave home without a pint of freshly cooked hemp.
Roach love the taste but interestingly, when I have filmed fish underwater feeding on the seeds, they will often pick them up and spit them out repeatedly before eventually swallowing them. I think this is why bites with hemp on the hook can be really fast dips on the float and hard to hit. As a roach attractor hemp is unbeatable, and I will use it in combination with all the other baits in my top 10 to concentrate roach in my swim
3) Maggots
There isn’t a roach alive that won’t eat maggots. Try using a single grub for small roach, stepping up to two or three for bigger fish. Regular feeding is key to building up a good catch – a dozen maggots every 30 seconds is a good starting point.
I clean mine in fresh maize flour and boost them with a few drops of pineapple flavour the night before fishing. To sort out a bigger stamp of roach, try using red maggots or a bunch of dead maggots hard on the bottom. Being less visible, these baits will be less likely to be picked off by small fish, which feed mainly by sight.
4) Hooker pellets
Roach are turned on by the taste of fishmeal, and my local River Severn is turning up increasing number of specimen redfins on pellet baits intended for barbel.
These being hard baits, roach do tend to spit them out, giving fast unhittable bites. A partial solution is to use the softest hooker pellets that you can. I pump my own, which tend to be softer than pre-prepared baits. A 6mm pellet on a size 16 hook is about right. Try adding sweet strawberry and pineapple flavourings to hooker pellets.
5) Tares
Traditionally used as a hookbait when feeding hemp, the slightly larger and softer tares are easy to hook and stand out well as they sink through the water. Tares are very cheap and easy to prepare. Just soak them overnight and then boil for a few minutes until they soften.
Some anglers add a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda to darken the colour of the tares. Tares don’t seem to have a great deal of attraction in their own right, so combining them with hemp is essential. As a hookbait, they tend to attract better bites than hemp.
6) Sweetcorn
A very under-rated roach bait, but one that has caught me some lovely specimens from stillwaters and rivers. Two grains might seem like quite a big bait, but will catch roach from 1lb upwards and be immune to the attentions of smaller fish.
Specimen carp venues are the ideal places to fish this bait for big roach, as many carp anglers will incorporate corn in their spod mix but never use it on the hook – giving the smaller species a free meal and effectively prebaiting your swim.
7) DendrObaena
Worms will catch every fish that swims, androach are suckers for these baits. In fact, in some venues aquatic worms and midge larvae make up a large part of the diet of roach. Chopped worm and caster is a classic combination of feed and hookbait, ideal when you want to put together a mixed bag of fish.
To be more selective for roach, try fishing half a dendrobaena over hemp. Don’t be afraid to use the largest worm that you can for roach, as this will often single out the larger specimens
8) Mini-boilies
It is no surprise that 10mm mini-boilies have accounted for some of the biggest roach in recent times. These relatively large, hard baits are very selective for specimen roach, as smaller fish simply can’t fit them in their mouths. Scopex Squid and Tigernut-flavoured baits have both worked well for me.
It isn’t just carp venues where the roach fall for mini-boilies. I caught my biggest roach from Lochnaw in Scotland on a boilie, simply because it enabled me to single out the larger fish from among the millions of tiddlers that pounced on more traditional roach baits instantly.
9) Groundbait
French match anglers, who know about these things, have long used groundbait to attract and hold roach in their pegs. I use Sensas 3000 Gardons (roach) as the basis for my groundbait mix, adding lots of crushed hemp in shallow water, or when using an open-end feeder.
Roach up in the water are attracted by a light, cloudy mix, but on the deck I stick to dark red or black mixes. When expecting to catch on the bottom, I know the roach will settle over dark feed.
10) Bread
For some reason, bread in all its forms is a brilliant roach bait in running water, but is very inconsistent in stillwaters. The one exception is punched bread, which can be very good whatever the venue. Punch is, of course, just small pieces of flake, and I think its small size is the reason it works in lakes as well as rivers.
River roach, though, are much more willing to take a bigger bait, and a piece of fluffy bread flake the size of a 20p coin is ideal.Feed is liquidised flake, fed either through a small open-end feeder or a tiny bait dropper to ensure it reaches the bottom quickly without first dispersing.
