UK Coarse
The Bait Room · Commercial / modern
Pumped, soft pellets that sink slowly. An F1 and skimmer hookbait, and a pole bait that matches a pellet feed.
Expanders are hard pellets you pump or soak until they are soft and slow-sinking. F1s love them. Skimmers love them. They let you fish a pellet that doesn't need a band and doesn't sit like a stone.
Prepare them so they sink, not float, unless you mean to fish them on the top. A syringe pump is worth having if you fish commercials a lot.
From the graph
Technique
Pellet on the pole
Pumped, on the hook
Technique
Pole feeder
A tiny feeder or a toss-pot used as a payload on a pole line, so the feed and the hookbait arrive together. F1s and carp on the deck, accurately.
Technique
Pole fishing
F1s
Technique
Pole on the deck
A plumbed pole rig with the bait on the bottom. F1s, carp, silvers and canal fish that want it still, not falling.
Technique
Long-line pole
More line between pole tip and float than a tight rig, so you can lay it in, hold off, and fish past the pole's shadow. F1s, shy silvers, a far-shelf you would spook at 16m of carbon over their heads.
Technique
Shallow pole
When hard pellets are ignored
Technique
Fishing on the drop
F1s
Technique
Paste fishing
The change bait
Technique
Pellet waggler
When hard pellets are ignored
Technique
Crucian fishing
Tiny, slow-sinking
Technique
Pellet feeder
A window or blockend packed with pellets rather than maggots or groundbait. Commercial carp, F1s and bream on a tight clip.
Technique
Traditional waggler
F1s
F1s on pole or waggler. Skimmers. Days when hard banded pellets are ignored. Cold water, smaller expanders.
Year-round on commercials. Especially useful in the cold and on pressured fish.
Direct on a pole or waggler hook. Hair or band if they need to stay on. A small expander in a method mix as a change.
Pump with a syringe or soak carefully. They should sink slowly. Too pumped and they mash on the strike.
Feeding
A small tub of prepared expanders is a hookbait session.
You're not feeding pints of expanders. Feed hard pellet, hook expander.
Hard pellets, micros, maggots in the cold.
Expander on the hook over pellet feed. Expander and maggot. 4mm expander for F1s, 6mm if small fish mash 4mm.
Hard pellets or micros as feed; expander on the hook is the usual pairing. You can feed expanders but it gets expensive.
Floating expanders you thought you'd sunk. Mush. A size 10 through a 4mm pellet.
If they smash it, go harder or bigger. If they ignore it, maggot or corn.
Beginner tip
Pump 4–6mm expanders until they just sink. Size 16, pole or waggler, F1 lake.
Advanced tip
Colour and flavour are extra; sink rate is the whole trick. Match the fall to the depth they're sitting.
Rig
Pole rig
A dotted pole float, bulk and droppers, a short hooklength, elastic in the top kit. Accuracy is the whole point.
Rig
Waggler setup
Locked float, bulk around the base, droppers down the line, fine hooklength. The same skeleton covers traditional waggler and, with a dumpy body, pellet waggler.