Pole Fishing Tips | Six feeding tips for silvers on natural venues - Josh Newman

Little-and-often is a tried and tested way of feeding for silverfish, but there are occasions in summer when a bolder approach is required.

Be bold with your feeding for summer silvers and you will catch more

Feed heavily to start

At the start I’ll throw in 14 large balls of the groundbait and leam mix. This sounds a lot, but I won’t be feeding any more of this mix, so I need a good amount to try and keep the fish in the peg.

Top-up with more

When I think the effect of the cloud from balling in has finished, it’s time to add more feed with a pot. This is a mix of damp leam and grey leam (half a bag of damp to just 25ml of grey), plus particles.

Keep loosefeeding

Loosefeeding hemp is important. It not only gives me the chance to catch on it late in the day, but it also keeps on drawing fish into the swim by having something falling through the water all the time.

Steady feeding with hemp will keep fish interested

Set up Multiple rigs

Because of the cloud, I can catch fish 6ins off bottom and then switch to the deck later. One rig won’t do both jobs, so I set a couple up. Both are Sensas Avon floats with a 0.8g for fishing off deck and then a 1.25g pattern for down below.

Multiple rigs will ensure you can catch fish at all layers

Dot your float down

The less float bristle you have on show, the more bites you will hit. Trying to shot a float with small split shot is tricky, so I use micro styls. I’ll shot the float as normal, then add four or five tiny styls to leave just a speck showing.

Dot your float right down to hit sensitive bites

Try ‘Short’ elastics

In deep pegs of over 10ft, you need a strong elastic to set the hook. Running elastic through a top kit would require around a No6, which is too heavy. My solution is to use a length of No4 elastic through just the tip section of the kit.

A light elastic through just the tip section will land you more fish