Bait is a funny thing. You can go to a venue on any given day, use a certain bait and catch loads of fish. The next day, you go to the same venue and use the same bait, but this time - nothing. Why?
Well, the truth is, there's no real answer to that. The correct bait will only help you enhance your chances of catching fish. There are so many other tangibles to throw into the mix as well - weather, water condition, time of day, how much bait has already gone in the water, which fish are in front of you etc.
However, if you want to maximise your chances of catching on a whip on either a canal or commercial lake, there are a few baits which will help you maximise your chances of catching (whatever the weather/conditions!).
The staple choice of all anglers and the bait most likely to help you catch the majority of fish that swim in our waters. Maggots are purchased from a tackle shop in pint measures and come in a range of colours such as white, bronze, red and orange. A ½ pint of mixed maggots will be enough for the majority of short fishing sessions. To prolong their life, keep them in a tub with holes in the lid, placed somewhere nice and cool - A fridge is ideal!
Worms make a great hook bait and can either be foraged for yourself (kids love doing this!) or can be brought from the tackle shop in tubs. A small tub would be fine for a short session. Worms make particularly good hook baits for perch, who just can't resist them! Don't be afraid to split a worm in half on the hook to stop it wrapping itself around the line. Also, try not to loose feed worms - Stick to throwing in a few maggots and putting a half worm on the hook. Hook a worm through the end of it, so it hangs downwards on the hook.
Casters are the next stage in the life cycle of a maggot. They are the chrysalis of a maggot - a shell-like pupae that contains the soon-to-emerge fly. Again, castors can be purchased from a fishing tackle shop in half pint or pint measures. Castors make a great hook and loose feed bait on both canals and commercials and can sometimes help you catch a bigger stamp of fish. Castors will come in slightly different colours, from light to dark. The darker the caster, the longer it has been in castor form. Lighter ones tend to sink quicker, with some very dark ones not even sinking at all!
Again, Pinkies and Squats come from the maggot family. These baits are smaller than traditional maggots and make a great bait in colder months when bites can be harder to come by. Pinkies are the better of the two as a hook bait and both are good to loose feed. Both are good to feed little and often as they tend to attract fish as they fall through the water rather than when they are on the bottom. Both can be brought from tackle shops in half pint and pint measures.
The favourite of roach, bread is a great hook bait to try if you are specifically targeting them. You can either attach it directly to the hook or via a hair (both ways are shown to you in the Major Oak Angling Academy coaching films - www.majoroakfishing.co.uk). Use a bread punch to take small disk out of your slice of bread and then attach it to the hook or hair. Bread can tend to fall off the hook quite easily as it will dissolve, so make sure you check and, if needed, change your hook bait quite regularly.
There are a couple of other home sourced baits that you might want to try. Sweetcorn makes a great summer bait for carp and prawns have been known to catch big perch. Just remember, the bigger the bait you put on your hook, the bigger the hook will need to be to hold it - You need to make sure that the point of the hook is still visible when the bait is on to enhance your chances of it setting in the fish.
