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.

Have several rigs ready

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.

A selection of natural baits

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

Commercial Fishing Tips | 5 tips for maggot feeder fishing

Once the sole preserve of river anglers chasing chub, the maggot feeder has now made its mark on commercial fisheries too – and not just for carp!

Here are 5 tips to make the most of the method…

Mix up the freebies

It’s common to feed a mix of baits when fishing the pole, so why can’t you do the same with the maggot feeder? Alongside maggots, add some fluoro pinkies and even a few casters or fish something a bit different. This also provides you with an alternative hookbait option if you’re struggling for a bite. Double maggot is the best starting bait, but switch to three pinkies from time to time to see if it improves the fishing.

A mix of maggots and pinkies can help keep the bites coming in thought conditions

Pack the feeder

Maggots will soon wriggle out of a feeder, so take a bit more time to fully pack them in on each cast to stop this happening – they’ll have no problem getting out once the feeder hits bottom! What you don’t want are maggots spilling out on the cast or as soon as the feeder hits the water. Cram as many as you can into the feeder’s body.

Cram as many maggots into the feeder as you can

Keep active for silverfish

Where silvers are concerned, moving the feeder can be a help, not a hindrance. Try casting out, leaving the feeder still for a minute and then picking the rod up and winding in, moving the rig by about 6ins. If nothing happens, repeat the process a couple of times. This movement helps the feeder empty, releasing a few more maggots into the swim. It also gives the hookbait a burst of movement, which can trigger a fish into hitting it.

Keep the feeder moving to gain extra bites

Starve them on to the hook

If your swim has a lot of fish in it, normally shown either by quick bites or a lot of indications on the quivertip, you can catch quicker by reducing the amount of maggots you’re feeding. Change to a smaller maggot feeder that holds say, 12 maggots as opposed to the 30 of a larger model and you’ll be giving the fish less choice. With fewer maggots to feed on, they should find your hookbait faster!

Less choice can mean more bites!

Long hooklengths

Fish will still be feeding off bottom at the moment, but that’s not to say you can’t catch them on the drop with the feeder. A long hooklength is essential here, typically the length of half the swim’s depth – so in 6ft of water, that means a 3ft link. This makes the hookbait fall slowly through the water once the feeder has settled, and can be brilliant for F1s and silverfish. Add a little maize meal to the maggots going into the feeder and it will put a slight cloud into the water to attract more fish into the peg.

Long hooklengths will help the slow fall of the hookbait

River Fishing Tips | Running or fixed feeder for chub? - Hadrian Whittle

My rig actually works on both principles – it’s a hybrid of a running and fixed set-up. The feeder slides on the line and is stopped above a short length of twisted line via a float stop or bead. 

The black-cap feeder rig

Above the feeder is another stop that can be slid up and down to increase or decrease the gap between the stops and, thus, how far the feeder can move.

By leaving just an inch gap and having the feeder balanced to just hold bottom, anything taking the bait moves the feeder, which then hits the stop and helps to hook the fish.

There are days when lengthening this gap works, others when shortening it right up catches more.

A cracking river chub

Match Fishing Tips | When you should use dead maggots - Rob Wootton

Dead maggots are a superb bait when fished in big bunches for carp in the margins. I also find they have the knack of singling out the bigger fish as they don’t wriggle about like live maggots, so they tend to attract fewer little nuisance species. 

They’re also very good on the feeder as, unlike live maggots, they don’t cause your hooklength to spin up and twist when winding in.

I always freeze maggots to kill them – I think the old method of scalding them with hot water seems to have gone out of fashion. The way I do it is to get the maggots and riddle off any maize or sawdust so they are totally clean. Then I pop them in a plastic bag, remove all the air, tie it off and pop the bag in the freezer. 

It’s important not to freeze them for too long, as they can deteriorate if you do. I usually prepare them two days before I’m fishing and take them out the night before to defrost.

Dead red maggots

Commercial fishing tips | Bomb out a maggot feeder in the cold with Dan Hull

Think feeder for carp on commercial fisheries and most anglers will instantly reach for the Method... and who can blame them?

The effectiveness of this type of feeder is well known, and it works superbly in winter for putting a hookbait just inches away from a small dollop of feed.

Are you missing a trick, though, by automatically choosing the Method? As the water cools, the appetite of carp and F1s for pellets diminishes and maggots begin to play more of a part in our plans, especially when fishing the pole – so why should the same not apply to feeder fishing?

To introduce maggots through a feeder there really is only one choice... the maggot feeder. This is better-known for catching chub and roach on rivers, but the maggot feeder can be devastating for commercial carp when they’re not interested in larger helpings of feed.

Maggots are the ultimate trigger bait to get fish feeding, and are so often what we turn to for getting a bite when all else fails. They also catch everything that swims and so aren’t as selective as pellets. This is handy on cold days, when anything gracing the landing net is more than welcome.

Feeder choices

Classic-style maggot feeders aren’t really designed for longer casts on commercial carp waters so you’re better off picking up a newer design that is more streamlined and will cast a long way with ease.

I use a Middy Carp Bomb Feeders, which has a loading in the base and a slimline shape to hel with consistent, accurate casts. My ploy is to begin with a bigger feeder to get bait into the peg but then scale down to a smaller model once I begin to get bites. This will give the carp just enough freebies to keep them in the swim without filling them up.

Not just maggots!

I don’t put only maggots in the feeder. In addition there are fluoro pinkies in the mix to give the fish something a bit different and to also provide me with an alternative hookbait if I’m struggling for a bite. 

The ratio is 60:40 red maggots to pinkies, with single maggot or double pinkie my main hookbait – although double maggot will come into play if the fishing is good.

Have more options

It’s convenient to have just one line to keep fishing and building up all day, but this limits your chances of catching well – if I were fishing the pole I’d have two or three spots to feed and fish, so I don’t see why it should be any different on the feeder.

That means a line on a long cast of say 40m and then a second one at around 20m, depending on the depth of the lake you are fishing. So long as these two lines put you in the maximum depth on the lake, you’re in business.

Pack the feeder

Maggots will soon wriggle out of a feeder, so I take a bit more time to fully pack them in on each cast to stop this happening. 

They’ll have no problem getting out once the feeder hits bottom and provided you are using a small Carp Bomb Feeder, there’s no need to worry about introducing too much feed. 

Accuracy is vital so you don’t end up with a spread of bait over too wide an area. ‘Keep things tight’ is the motto here, so if the feeder doesn’t land where you want it to, wind in and cast again.

Bite times

The fish will tell you how long to leave the feeder in before casting again, but as the water cools this time will lengthen, and up to a 20-minute wait might be needed.

That’s as long as I would wait, but I would begin by casting every 10 minutes to keep a reasonably regular amount of maggots going in. Then, when I begin catching, I can change this according to how fast I am getting an indication.

Tackle bits and bobs

Although my lines are reasonably strong, made up of 0.20mm M-Tech Carp Commercial mainline to a hooklink of 0.16mm Lo-Viz, the hook is very small to suit fishing with single maggots.

A size 20 KM-4 is small but very strong, and will land big carp easily while getting you more bites in clearing water.

When it comes to hooklink length, this too varies. On some days the fish will sit well off the feed or follow the bait down as it falls before taking it, meaning a long link is better.

On others they’ll be on the feeder immediately with a fast bite, which is where a short link catches better.

Des Shipp's guide to catching F1 carp on the pole

It’s all too easy to write off catching fish at short range on winter commercial fisheries as a combination of clearish water and low temperatures makes even the most optimistic of anglers resigned to catching nothing a few metres out from the bank.
But according to England star Des Shipp, you’re missing a massive trick by giving a short line the cold shoulders, especially if your venue is home to big, wily F1s that don’t get caught fishing at longer ranges on the pole or feeder.
As a match angler, Preston Innovations-backed Des knows only too well the value of feeding a fishing a swim just 5m or 6m out, even when there’s ice on the water. He’s had many matches that have sent him from zero to hero in a hectic hour’s bagging on a short pole line and the exact same principles apply to a day’s pleasure fishing that might not have yielded much fishing further out.
“Although 6m out is not a natural patrol route for F1s as such, they will still move closer to the bank as the day goes on,” Des advised. “For that reason, this short line isn’t one that you’ll empty from the word go and it may be that you only catch for 30 minutes right at the end of the day but this short period of time can produce 10 big F1s in as many chucks and turn a poor day into something that makes the grinning and bearing of winter worthwhile.”

The right distance
“The first job is to decide where to fish and my general rule is to go around a top kit of my pole plus two sections out, which is around 5m or 6m,” Des explained. “However, there needs to be the right depth here and I’d look for between 4ft and 5ft on a flat bottomed area. If the bottom is sloping at this range, that’s not ideal so I’d keep adding sections until I find a flat spot.”

Nothing but maggots
“I leave pellets and corn for fishing longer and on the short line, I use just maggots, which are brilliant for winter fishing on commercials,” he said. “It’s true that they pull in silverfish, which can be a nuisance but if the roach and skimmers are of a decent stamp, I don’t mind catching them while waiting for the F1s to have a go. I take three pints of red and white maggots plus a few fluoro pinkies.”

All in the timing
“I wouldn’t fish short for at least two hours because firstly, you won’t catch F1s at short range this quickly and secondly, I like to give my long pole or feeder line the chance to build up,” Des explained. “By working out how many bites I am getting when fishing long and how good the fishing is, I can then make the decision as to when I have a look short. By this, I mean that if I am getting lots of bites on the long pole and the fish are of a decent size, this tells me that I can expect to get bites short a lot earlier. If the fishing is hard, it might not be as solid close in.”

Have some faith!
“I’d never write off the short line as in the final hour the F1s can rock up and you can get one every drop in so early on, you may only be having a quick look short before reverting back to the long pole,” he said. “If you catch a few F1s then don’t hammer the peg by staying on it. If the bites then fade, that’s the signal to rest the short line for 15 minutes so that the fish can regain their confidence. If you only catch little fish when you change to the short line then I would also come off it quickly as there’s no point in fishing for them. You’d be better off on the long pole with pellets trying to catch an F1, carp or big skimmer.”

Feeding maggots
“Because you are fishing at short range, you can feed maggots by hand and this is good for two reasons. It makes you disciplined into feeding all of the time – using a catapult or pot takes longer and it is easy to neglect feeding short when fishing the long pole,” explained Des. “Feeding by hand takes just seconds to do and you can still fish long while doing it. I begin by feeding every four or five minutes with half a dozen maggots but will up this if there are a lot of silverfish present and I think that there’s not much ending up being left in the peg for the F1s. This is the second advantage of feeding by hand in that I can change how much and how often I feed with ease so I may go from half a dozen maggots every five minutes to 50 maggots every 15 minutes. Hookbait is double maggot (one red and one white) or a single red maggot and single fluoro pinkie.”

The rig
“I will have two rigs ready for the short line with the aim of catching just as the bait settles and then hard on the bottom,” he revealed. “The trouble with F1s is that even in winter, they will be off bottom slightly but you won’t catch them by fishing off bottom so you need a set-up that lets the bait fall slowly in the last few feet of the swim.”
“In ideal conditions, that rig uses a 4x12 F1 Maggot float shotted with a string bulk of No 10 shot in the final 2ft of the swim but I also have a positive rig with a bigger 4x14 float taking a conventional bulk and two No 10 droppers. This will come into play if the fishing is good and I am catching well.”
“Lines are 0.13mm Powwrline as main to a hooklink of 0.10mm for just F1s or 0.12mm Precision Power if there are carp about. Elastic is 9h Hollo and the hook is a size 18 PR412, upped to a size 18 PR434 if the fishing is very good but it is important to match the hook to the strength of line. By this, I mean that the 412 hook is very light and not as strong as 0.12mm line and so is more likely to break first – the 434 however, is perfect for stronger lines. The rig is then set to be fished around the body-length of the float overdepth but at times I have gone up to six inches overdepth in windy weather or on a towing lake.”

Fish past the feed
“By using 2.5ft of line between pole tip and float, I have the option to flick the rig past the feed should I be getting too many line bites or foul hooking fish by fishing over the feed,” said Des. “F1s are well-known for hanging off the back of the feed and although there may not be many there, you won’t get silly bites either.”

Catch quality fish on pellets with Des Shipp

When the chips are down in the depths of winter, there’s a bait I always turn to for F1s and that’s maggots.
From Tunnel Barn Farm to Hillview Fisheries, I’ve enjoyed some great results since the turn of the year fishing and feeding maggots, even when there’s ice on the water and the added bonus is that a pint or two of reds will also catch me vital weight-building silverfish while I’m waiting for the F1s to arrive.
However, this best of both worlds isn’t always the right way to go about things, especially if the peg is full of tiny roach. The silverfish have to be of a decent-enough stamp to make fishing for them worthwhile but you have to accept that there will be days when there’s only tiny fish to be caught - in this instance, I’ll reach into the bag and break out pellets.
True, pellets are more selective and you wait a lot longer for a bite but you’ll bypass the little fish and know that when the float buries, it’ll be an F1 or a decent skimmer. However, I’ll rarely try and turn a maggot line into a pellet one – instead I will begin a new line a few metres away and feed just pellets. This always seems to work better than trying to catch off one line that’s already full of little roach and skimmers!
On a cold, misty day at Hillview Fisheries in Gloucestershire,  low water temperatures combined with a never-ending stream of half ounce roach knocked the theory of catching a big bag of F1s on maggots on the head. Feeding a dozen maggots with a small pot every drop in at 13m only seemed to encourage more little fish into the swim without a sign of an F1. Not ideal but not a disaster either as I had pellets in my bait bag! Yes it was going to take longer to catch but the pay-off would be something that pulled back when I got a bite. All it needs from the angler is a bit of patience.

Feeding
With the decision made to switch to pellets, how does the feeding change? Not much to be frank and I will still begin using a small pot introducing eight or nine dampened Fin Perfect 4mm pellets every drop in. A 4mm pellet is the ideal size for winter F1s and I also have a catapult on my tray in case I need to begin firing in bait to make a bit of noise to encourage the F1s to investigate.

Band on the hook
A soft expander pellet will simply be ragged off the hook by tiny skimmers and roach so that means using a hard pellet for the hook. A hard 4mm Fine Perfect to complement the feed is just the job and I fish this in a small pellet band but rather than tying up a hair-rig with the band tied to it, I simply slip the hook through the band and then slot the pellet into place. It’s not strictly hair-rigged but I find this way of fishing quicker and get no less bites doing it.

Two rigs for one job!
The maggot rig that I have been fishing with to begin the session can also be used for pellet work with just the addition of the pellet band. The float is a 4x12 F1 Maggot from my new range, which is light enough to give the pellet a slow fall through the swim because I’m convinced that F1s and skimmers in winter sit a foot off bottom and watch it fall in the final few feet of the swim before taking it. Use a heavy float and the bait will bomb down too quickly and you’ll miss out on so many bites.
Lines for this rig are light in keeping with the conditions, so that means 0.13mm Powerline main to a hooklink of 0.10mm to 0.12mm Precision Power depending on how hard the fishing is, and a size 18 PR434 hook, which is a very light hook but still capable of landing a bonus carp when used with 9h original Hollo elastic. I set the rig to fish slightly overepth, plumbing up so just the float body is above the surface, being sure to dot the float down well and strike at every dip.

Lowering it in
Because the fish watch the bait it is important to gently lower the rig into the peg rather than being in a rush to get the float cocked and ready for action. I’ll lay the bottom half of the rig in and then lay the upper half of the rig complete with float in the opposite direction over the top. This means that there is no tight line as the rig settles and so the pellet sinks naturally giving the fish time to pick it out and take it. A strung bulk is ideal for this, situated in the bottom third of the rig.

Phil Ringer's guide to picking the right bait for carp this winter

I’ll rarely go to a carp match in winter these days without a bulging bag of hookbaits stacked on top of my barrow and that’s because when I’m fishing for just a handful of bites, making a change and hitting upon the bait that the fish want on that given day can turn a blank day into a potential winner.
Too often I see anglers sticking to the same hookbait for the full five hours, working on the assumption that eventually, the carp will find the bait and take it and while that might work in summer, when the water is cold and clear, the chances of this happening are minimal to say the least.
The preferences of carp can change in the space of a week and by that, I mean that when bread may have won the match on one weekend, seven days later it could be a banded pellet or a yellow mini pop-up that catches. Keep on casting the same bait and you’ll simply never maximise the full potential of the peg.
I do have my winter favourites though and Wafters are king in my opinion but bread, corn, a pop-up and even a piece of meat can be the bait of the day depending on conditions and in many instances, the venue you’re fishing.
So this week I’m going to talk through the bait that goes into the van when I’m bound for Barston Lake or Boddington Reservoir, both home to big carp that aren’t the easiest to catch in winter…

Maggots
Unless I was fishing for F1s or skimmers, I rarely consider using maggots as a hookbait. They’re not much use when I’m waiting up to half an hour for a bite especially if the lake holds lots of roach as these little fish will soon chew a bunch of maggots into skins without a touch registering on the quivertip. They’re really only a last resort if I can’t get a bite on anything else – you’re better off saving them for the pole on F1s venues!

Hard pellets
If your venue sees lots of hard pellets fed by anglers fishing the pole or pellet waggler in summer and autumn then a hard 8mm pellet fished in a band could do well as the carp in these waters will accept them as part of their regular diet. They’re small fish-proof and so can be left out for a long time but their lack of colour I think works against them when you’re trying to get the hookbait to stand out.

Corn
A winter bait that’s as old as the hills and actually works better in clear water than coloured. A stack of three or four pieces of corn fished on a hair-rig is impossible for a feeding carp to miss and you can even use a piece of fake floating corn if rules allow to slightly pop the stack up off bottom. I always use plain yellow corn as I’ve never found that red or orange colours gives me that much of an advantage.

Bread
Much-used by pole anglers for dobbing on snake lakes bread also makes a superb winter bomb bait on big lakes and like corn, it is very visual to the fish. The one down side is that it won’t stay on the hook for ever and can be whittled down by little fish so if you lake is home to plenty of roach, it may not be the best bet. I fish five or six pieces of 8mm punch on a hair-rig and always go for Warburton’s thick-sliced white in the orange bag. One word of warning with bread though - it will fluff up to several times its size when soaked so ensure that you hair is long enough to leave a gap between the bait and hook when the bread is fully fluffed up.

Boilies
We’re talking standard bottom baits here in 8mm or 10mm sizes but I do think that the plain old boilie has now been overtaken by the Wafter or pop-up. That’s not so day I won’t take them with me for a change bait with orange being a particularly good colour. Ringer Baits have also developed some ‘washed out’ boilies that are faded in colour and so look like they’ve been on the lakebed for ages to a carp, thus not arousing their suspicion. Early tests with these have been promising.

Pop-up boilies
Presenting a hookbait two inches off bottom waving around offers a totally different presentation to the fish, one that can make a huge difference. An 8mm bright pink colour has been very effective in recent years but they rarely work when used with a Method feeder so I use them on the bomb when fished alongside a small PVA bag of pellets or with the pellet cone.

Wafters
Here it is – the bait that won best match bait in the recent Angling Times awards and even I couldn’t have predicted how popular these would become! A Wafter is basically a pop-up that when fished on a hair-rig becomes critically-balanced to sit just off bottom, meaning that when a fish takes the bait, it feels no resistance as it would from a bottom bait. The chocolate orange variety is bright orange and stands out a mile although on some venues the yellow versions catch well but I’d always start on a single 8mm orange bait when fishing the Method or Hybrid feeder.