Fishing bait guide | How much to feed when fishing

After location, what bait to use when fishing and how much to introduce must rank as the biggest conundrums facing the angler. For most coarse fishing there is always a trade-off between using enough bait to attract and entice the fish into feeding confidently and not overfeeding and ruining your chances of catching. 

A good place to start in trying to shed some light on this question is to look at how much food fish need to consume to survive and grow. This question in itself is not straightforward. As fish are cold-blooded animals their metabolic rate will vary in relation to water temperature. The colder the water the less calories fish need to consume, the opposite of most warm-blooded animals. At the optimal temperature, with all other factors being equal, fish can consume around 2% of their body weight in food per day. For a 10lb carp this equates to just over three ounces of food per day. This is at a temperature in the mid-twenties centigrade, something that is rarely seen in the UK, except in shallow ponds. 

Each species has a slightly different optimum temperature for food consumption, with cold-water species being significantly lower than those that prefer warmer conditions. For all species, though, food consumption falls away rapidly as the temperature drops. In winter fish will need only a fraction of this optimum amount. 

As water temperature decreases the time it takes for food to pass through the gut also increases. From as little as a few hours in the summer, gut passage time can extend to several days in winter. 

This has a knock-on effect, as fish will only eat when they are hungry and this is partially controlled by the fullness of their gut. 

In the controlled environment of a fish farm, where environmental conditions and stocking density of the ponds is known with a degree of accuracy, it is possible to control the amount of food applied to maximise the growth of the fish while also minimising waste. The chances are that when fishing your local river or pool there is no way that you are going to know exactly how many fish are in your peg and if they happen to have fed prior to your arrival. This makes estimating the amount of bait you are going to need virtually impossible, although we can use a few rules of thumb to remove some of the guesswork. 

The first thing to bear in mind is that fish have very acute senses which enable them to determine what is edible and its location with a great degree of accuracy. A carp, for instance, can easily find a grain of sweetcorn on the bottom. Most fish will also have a clear memory of eating bait in the past. Rather than having a ‘five-second memory’, most fish have a very good recollection of their environment, the food within it and what is edible. Thirdly, fish will be stimulated to feed by the behaviour of their shoal-mates, so once one fish begins to feed, the others are likely to follow suit. 

So it makes much more sense to introduce bait sparingly to begin with and build-up the swim as more fish arrive, or as the food is consumed. Underwater filming tells us two things; often the hookbait is one of the last baits to be eaten and that fish are messy eaters, often spreading out bait as they wash it around the swim. The old adage of feeding to your bites, and topping up after each fish, makes good sense. 

Attempting to estimate how many fish are in your peg is very difficult, but it is likely to be several times the number that you manage to catch. Should you then feed as if there were more fish in your peg? Often the answer is no, as these fish are likely to be the ones that are feeding less confidently, either because they are timid, or have eaten recently elsewhere. 

In small enclosed venues, limiting the amount you feed is also eminently sensible as bait can lead to the water quality being affected, whether it is eaten or not. 

Bait, whether it is maggots, groundbait, boilies, or any other, will introduce extra nutrients to the water. All nutrients will be broken down by bacteria, which will proliferate where there is an excess of waste.

In turn, algae can bloom where there are high levels of simple nutrients, which again can lead to poor conditions for fish. While we sometimes think of uneaten bait as being the most polluting, it can in fact be bait that has been broken down, but not absorbed, as it has passed through the gut of the fish which has the biggest short-term effect on the environment. 

So, ironically, introducing too much bait can lead to poor water quality, which can adversely affect the appetite of coarse fish. This is why many fisheries limit the amount or type of bait that can be used, especially during the summer months when the stressors on the environment can be particularly acute. While the type of bait used can have an effect, often it is the amount of bait that is much more important to limit.