Commercial Fishing Tips | Time to get the most from natural baits - Ian Chadburn

In an age of pellets, paste and wafters on commercials, it’s easy to leave good old maggots and casters in the tackle shop fridges for the river and canal anglers. After all, maggots only attract little fish – and who wants to catch those?

As we start to experience colder weather, the answer to this question should be ‘everyone’. We can all recall days out when the carp haven’t played ball and you come off the bank with little to show for your efforts using baits like pellets.

Natural baits will still catch plenty of carp

As the weather and water cool, fish don’t feed as strongly or for long periods of time. This means you’re left with long gaps between bites, gaps that can easily be filled by adopting a natural bait approach with maggots and casters.

There’s not a fish swimming that won’t eat maggots, so you can never be sure what you’re going to hook when the float goes under. The natural route shouldn’t be limited to just maggots and casters either – worms and hemp also work.

Slow periods can be made busy with natural baits

Use groundbait

Keep one line reserved for big fish, feeding it with groundbait and corn. Depending on the depth, feed the groundbait either loose in shallow water with a silty bottom, or as a ball in deeper pegs with a hard bottom.

Groundbait should be fed on the big fish line

Catch them all

While you let the big-fish lines settle, fish for bites with maggots. These could be from a 2oz roach to a 10lb carp just 5m or 6m out. Throwing in around half-a-dozen maggots every drop-in will keep a steady stream of bait going in.

Keep feeding maggots in close to keep action coming

Little & large floats

On the maggot line, a slim float taking around 0.4g will let you fish with the bait falling through the water. On the long pole, big-fish agenda, this is upped to a 0.6g rugby ball-shaped pattern for stability.

The baits to use

All you need are maggots, casters, worms, hemp and corn. Maggots, casters and worms are the main hookbaits, hemp and corn coming into play as feed. A couple of pints of each will be ample.

Fish the margins

Until the first frosts strike, the margins are a great place to catch later in the day. Forget about finding 12ins of water... 2ft 6ins-3ft is what you’re after. Depth is more crucial than cover from reeds and lily pads.

The margins will still produce until the first frosts

Use your time wisely

Treat the big-fish lines as somewhere to have a look at now and then. The maggot line will be where you should spend most of your time. A maximum of 10 minutes is all you need on the big-fish lines.

Don’t spend too long waiting for bites on the big fish line