UK Coarse
The Bait Room · Commercial / modern
A feed, not a hookbait. The cloud and the carpet that makes cage feeders, some method mixes, and bream lines work.
Groundbait is crushed biscuit, fishmeal, sweet mix or a canal blend, mixed with water and used as feed. It is how you hold bream, how you put a smell in a swim, and how you bind a method if you don't want straight micros.
It is not something you put on a hook and hope. Mix it for the job: sticky for a method, emptying for a cage, overwetted slop for a pole cloud on some silver lines. Too much in a small commercial peg is how you fill them up.
From the graph
Venue type
Natural stillwater
Pits, meres, estate lakes and waters that were not built as day-ticket carp mills. Lilies, silt, snags, and fish that do not have to eat your bait.
Venue type
Reservoir
Big, often windswept stillwaters. Bream, pike, trout rules on some, and a cage feeder that has to handle distance.
Venue type
Commercial fishery
Day-ticket lakes built for sport: islands, pegs, F1s, carp, and a café. The easiest place to learn, and still a place you can fish very well.
Venue type
River
Open season
Technique
Cage / open-end feeder
The payload
Technique
Bream fishing
The bed
Technique
Canal feeder
A small cage
Technique
Distance feeder
A heavier cage or rocket feeder, a longer rod, and a clip at range. Reservoir bream, big pits, and a plateau you actually found.
Technique
River feeder
Cage on slower water
Technique
Slider float
A bed at the clip
Technique
Hybrid feeder
A slower mix
Technique
Method feeder
To bind a mix if you don't want straight micros
Cage feeder for bream and tench. Binding a method. A canal cloud. River groundbait in a swimfeeder after 16 June.
Year-round, with less of it in the cold. Fishmeal mixes are a commercial habit; sweet and brown mixes still have a place on natural waters.
In a cage or open-end. In a method mould, often with micros. In a pole pot. Not on the hook.
Add water in stages. Mix, rest, mix again. For a cage it should empty in under a minute on the deck. For a method it should survive the cast.
Feeding
A bag is a bream session. A handful mixed into micros is a method session. A whole bag in a F1 peg is a mistake.
Every cage cast until they're there, then less. Not a six-ball bombardment on a 20-yard commercial.
Maggots, chopped worm, corn, pellets, hemp.
Groundbait and worm for bream. Groundbait and maggot. Micros with a little groundbait in a method.
The feeder or the pot is the dose. You can also ball it on some natural waters — check local style and rules.
Hooking a ball of it. Mixing it like cement. Filling a small peg. Using a fishmeal bomb on a shy canal.
If they're lining out, less feed, smaller cage, or a bomb on the same spot. If they want pellet, stop making soup.
Beginner tip
A simple sweet or bream mix, 30g cage, maggots and corn in it. That's a stillwater bream line.
Advanced tip
Change the wetness before you change the brand. An overwet slop and a dry crumb are different baits.