Ground baiting for Tench

ButcherOfNog

3 outings so far this season, all in the last 2 weeks and no joy whatsoever. Am using breadcrumb with some sweetcorn as groundbait and mostly worm as hookbait. Haven't fished for about 10 years previous to this year so any new fangled ideas would be welcome

By the way, had a fun (well, i laughed) session early on Saturday morning, twas at a lake I'd not fished before. Picked what looked like a good spot and ground baited it, set myself up and started fishing with worm (using a float n lift method). Lots of bites .... lots of little pike ... and lots of perch attacking my worm whenever i reeled in. Couldn't catch anything else, every other fish type had obviously scarpered somewhere safer, lost 5 hooks due to pike biting thru my line after I'd hooked them, nothing much I could do other than sit there and enjoy it

Pimp Ninja

You could try using the sweetcorn as hookbait. Just hook it through the corner of the corn. Use a size 14 - 12 hook for one piece or a size 10 for 2.

Also mixing in a bit of crushed hemp with the crumb never does any harm.

Furez

Ive fished for tench for years and when I started I used to spend money and time baiting up for tench.
As the years went by I found the ground bait unnecessary and mabye even a hinderance. Just buy two rake heads lash em back to back on to a rope and stir up the silt where youre fishing. Throw in a small handful of corn and youre set.

The raking wont spook fish as Ive caught them literally on first cast , the tench just seem to love it. Ill go along with Pimp Ninja too all the bait you need is a tin of sweetcorn. Its easy to use, stays on the hook, is tidy and cheap too.

Furzy

adonis

red maggots are also quite good for tench, especially if you are gonna do the rake thing....

i believe they look like bloodworm..

Pimp Ninja

Its also got something to do with the fact that fish can only see in black and white.

Red stands out more for some reason..

beer enigma

And try adding a drop of red food colouring to some of the sweetcorn - I had a session up at Knockanninig Reservoir in Cork last week & they went for the red in a big way.

Likewise, I tend not to groundbait for Tench these days, but do occasionally fire out a bit of liquidised sweetcorn - just to create the scent to draw them in.

uch

A good scattering of casters will have them blowing like mad in your swim, and use a double caster on a size 12 hook

ButcherOfNog

first tench of the season for me this morning. got up as early as i could (5:30am) and headed out .. only to get a punture on the way to the lake. got there in the end but later than i'd hoped. groundbaited with a mixture of breadcrumb and liquidized sweetcorn. was float fishing on the bottom using lift method, with either sweetcorn or worm. got a number of roach, all a decent size, biggest was just over 1/2 lb, and more importantly, hooked and landed a hard fighting 4 1/2lb tench which took 2 sweetcorn on a #12 hook.

ta for the advice

ButcherOfNog