Tench baits

[Anderoo]

I always thought that (assuming your water wasn't teeming with nuisance fish) maggot or caster was the best tench bait for the biggies, but I'm starting to rethink that. Please spare a minute and reply with the bait you caught your biggest tench on.

 

Mine was on little fruity boilies (not exactly traditional!).

 

[chelmerpaul]

My largest tench (a mere 5 and a half pounds) fell to sweetcorn, but I've also has decent fish on casters and red maggots. The biggest specimens are probably caught on boillies from carp waters.

[Guest Rabbit]

Breadflake for me... a fish of over 9lbs. Bread can be effective 'early season', when the tench are less suspicious of hook baits. I find theat some solitiary larger fish will very often take a arge hookbait, but to get a shoal to feed and stay in position I would use caster and hemp as a loose feed and caster on the hook. I have had some success with sweetcorn on the rivers also, so I suppose no set rules really.

[Tony U]

Fishmeal Boilies, though my biggest male fish, from a river incidently, was caught on swimfeedered maggot.

 

Tony

[Elton]

Nice opportunity to remind everyone of this article:

 

http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/Coarse-Fishing...ench_baits.html

[Chris Plumb]

My biggest was on Black Pudding - (see pic in my profile!). Had a few decent tench on it. My second fav would be cockles - often fished as a maggot cocktail.

 

 

C.

[Alan Stubbs]

An Ace Baits' blue cheese and garlic boilie. However, I'd gladly defer to any recommendations offered by Jim Gibbinson when it comes to tench fishing.

[chesters1]

boily and also my biggest bream as well

[BoozleBear]

boily and also my biggest bream as well

 

Surely Tench size is also down to the water as much as the bait? If you go to a carp lake that has had boilies flug into it for the last few decades, the tench will be getting rather big, and partial to the odd boilie. If you fish the canal, the tench are not likely to be as big, but your biggest one might have come to a worm, maggot, or piece of corn, as that is what the fish there are used to.

 

Judging by the variety of baits mentioned already in this thread, I would be worried about picking a bait that somebody has caught their biggest fish on rather than one that works well on your chosen water.

 

As always, just my humble opinion.

 

Cheers,

 

Simon

[dant]

9lb 2oz taken on good old fashion sweetcorn, fished on the lift method from a Norfolk Estate lake about 7/8 years ago..

Edited April 23, 2007 by dant