What is a fishing bait? Fishing bait is a man made or natural food eaten by fish that anglers use on their hook to catch fish.
Why use fishing bait? To catch a fish you need to get the hook into the fishes mouth. Fishing bait is used to tempt and lure the fish into doing this.
What bait to use? This is where the problem could arise! There is a vast range of baits both natural such as, berries that fall into the water from overhanging braches and worms, flies, beetles, snails, slugs, spiders and grubs that live or fall into the water and man made baits such as bread, bread flake, bread paste, boilies, pellets etc.
The traditional baits are the garden worm and the maggot and these are still the most favoured baits today. Over the years anglers have experimented and used different food stuffs as a fishing bait such as bread, cheese, sweet corn, spam luncheon meat and even sausage meat. The bait to use to catch a fish depends on numerous factors, the main one being what fish species you are fishing for. It would be no use fishing for Gudgeon using a 20mm boilie. There are also baits that can induce a fish to bite almost immediately; a hook baited with bread punch fished along with a sloppy mix of cloud groundbait can often bring bites instantly from silver fish when the weather is cold.
On this page you will find descriptions of the fishing baits used by anglers and notes on how to use and look after the baits.
Remember though – You can bag up catching fish on a certain bait one day and next day not even get a bite on the same bait.
Matching the Bait Size to the Hook.
It is important that whatever bait you use the hook should be of the correct size. Its no good trying to use a single squat on a size 1/0 sea hook; apart from being just about impossible it would look ridiculous and unnatural. The idea is to present a bait as natural as possible to fool the fish.
Flavouring Your Baits.
Taking maggots as an example:
When you buy your maggots from a fishing tackle shop they will be in sawdust, maize flour or other such medium. Some tackle shops sell them cleaned but not all do. In either case it is best if you clean them yourself, When you have cleaned your maggots you can add your chosen flavourings.
Vanilla.
I find Vanilla to be a good flavour when fishing for roach or bream in the summer. Vanilla flavouring can be bought in small bottles from most supermarkets. You could also try using other liquid flavours such as Almond, Liquid Brasem etc. Add a few drops of liquid flavouring to your cleaned maggots half an hour before using them (ONLY a few drops or you will find your maggots doing the great escape up and over the side of your bait box).
Curry powder.
Curry powder can be added to your cleaned maggots and is a good flavouring for use when fishing in winter.
Turmeric.
Turmeric is a deep orange-yellow powder commonly used as a spice in curries. As with most flavourings used in fishing turmeric is available from most supermarkets. Turmeric when added to your cleaned maggots will add colour to them and as with curry powder is a good flavouring for use when fishing in winter.