The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

I spent the morning lifting the last of the onions from the onion bed on the allotment this morning. We have been a little slack with the weeding for the last few months and so when I finished harvesting I gave the ground a quick scuffle, collected in the worst of the uprooted weeds and then decided to dig the ground and bury what remained. While digging I collected a few worms for fishing in the afternoon.

I was after perch this afternoon in a club pond. I fished half a worm on a size 12 and tipped it with a red maggot, mostly in an attempt to stop the worm sliding off the barbless hook. (I use barbless for all my fishing.)



The way I set up my bottom end only waggler float was with two very small (no 6 I think) shot to lock the float in place, bulk shot of about 4 bb just above the 2lb hook length and then a single no 4 tell tale shot about five or six inches from the hook. I set up like this, with the bulk near the bottom, to pull the bait quickly through the surface layers to where there were loads of small silvers going mad and destroying the worm before the perch had a chance to get anywhere near it.

Loose feed was a sprinkle of red maggots ever five minutes or so over the top of the float. At which point the silvers would go mad and occasionally the surface would ripple as they scoffed the loose feed. This made me think that one of the reasons for scatting maggots was to attract the small fish on which the big perch prey. It was obvious to me therefore that the big perch, should they come along, would be attacking the fry well above my bait which was laying on the bottom.

But if I suspended my bait there it would be devoured by the small silvers in seconds. So fishing on the bottom, away from the silvers (and the perch therefore) seemed like the only option.


I did think about adding the maggots to a ground bait to get them down to the bottom, where hopefully the small silvers would follow and feed around my worm hook bait, thus enticing a big perch closer to my hook bait worm. I have also seem people using "mole hill soil" to get maggots down to the bottom. This would have the benefit of no over feeding or putting too much bait in and attracting the unwanted attention of the carp and bream. Alternatively I could continue feeding maggots in the normal way and suspend a big prawn (which the silvers would find too big) in the first few feet of water where the silvers are.

What would your solution to this be?


Despite the lack of larger perch I had a fantastic few hours fishing. I caught bream, roach, rudd, tench, carp, a crucian, ide, chub and quite a few (small) perch.

The ground bait that I use for my perch fishing consists of equal portions of soaked sheep nuts and brown crumb, hemp and dead maggots. I never throw any maggots away just freeze them to be used in the ground bait. I sometimes use the additive Predex. Any ground bait left over after a days fishing goes into the freezer ready for the next trip.

I would buy some dendrobeana worms and chop a few up at a time and introduce them via a bait dropper with a few maggots mixed in... this has worked for me on more than a few occasions

This works for me. I put several worms on the hook and pull them up above the knot. I throw in my groundbait with no maggots and fish one side of it. If rudd or roach show up, I throw maggots the opposite side of the groundbait to draw them away. The larger perch, roach and rudd always seem to be just outside the mass of smaller fish anyway. Those small fish will attract larger perch to your area.

Why attract small fish when you want the big perch to eat your worm. With bait fish in the vicinity you're, to my mind, less likely to attract the perch to your worm. They're going to be too busy trying to catch the little fish. When perch fishing I just use half a lob, and rely on the scent to attract the fish. If they're there I and feeding you'll get bites in minutes. Anyway, this works for me, either under a float or legered.