What do you call heavy feeding

[Browner]

When I buy maggots, (not often) I only buy 1/2 pint. Usually throw 99% of those in the river/lake at the end of the session (an offering to the fish gods) as I find I catch better on bread. In a 3 hr session I will only get through half a loaf of likky bread and if I’m punch fishing 1 slice or 2 slices if I’m flake punch fishing. Very minimal bait costs.

 

[emmaemma]

I remember this being posted about a fisho qualifier at Lindholm a couple of years ago......

https://www.maggotdrowning.com/forums/threads/30-pints-of-casters.224538/

 

[Scribe]

Heavy feeding Hmmm............. @Dave & I at an all you can eat buffet ?

Seriously though I reckon I don't even get to medium feeding levels on stillwaters and according to some reports I have read about Barbel fishing my feeding is barely minimal.

 

[Robwooly]

I'll subscribe to Scribe's thoughts sub scribe (had to say that sorry too tempting)

My feeding wont even go as far as being as heavy as 'light' especially this time of year, when i'm trying to get rid of bait at the end of a session it feels weird, a dozen maggots feeling like i'm 'balling in'

 

[nejohn]

Like most others for me it is horses for courses, in the summer on a river it will probably be about 4 pints of maggot/caster and a loaf of bread (half liqiudised and the other half for hook bait) but in the winter it will probably be half of that. Still waters differ vastly depending on stocking levels and target species, one local venue I have fished a few times involves a boat and 3-4 buckets of groundbait laced with about 6 pints of maggot and hemp and that is before you start chucking a feeder over that initial feed and you then wait and hope, if the fish find your bait you are in for a hectic day but if the don't at least the scenery is nice. If I am fishing Wagg n Mag up in the water on a commy I can easily get through 6 pints of maggots however on the same venue on another day it could be 1 pint of maggots and a few slices of bread. When I fish my local club lakes I tend to feed 3-4 lines one will be feed heavily and the others no so heavily, generally there is lots of cover in the form of weed/lily beds so will feed one side of the peg with a constant stream of feed but the other side I will just trickle the feed in this tends to work quite well in the warmer months

 

[The Landlord]

I remember this being posted about a fisho qualifier at Lindholm a couple of years ago......

https://www.maggotdrowning.com/forums/threads/30-pints-of-casters.224538/

Oooooh!! I started that thread!

Seriously though, it's something I still struggle with. I feel like I'm constantly feeding when I fish commercials but I hardly get through any bait compared to what's been mentioned already.

 

[Zerkalo]

Can you feed Bleak off when fishing maggot or caster? I'd say no. I've had it when I've loosefed bait and there's an eruption of Bleak every time, and I think the only way around it is to use a different bait like hemp or pellets. Also, seems to make sense to me that on a fast river/peg, if you've only got a short trotting time, and you feed every run through, then it's easy to get through more bait compared to more leisurely paced swims?

 

[Robwooly]

Nothing's impossible but feeding off bleak must be pretty darn close, when you think you'll feed some off but draw more in then the ones you fed up will be back on the scene feeding again.

Can I just say all joking aside that I'll freely admit I cannot afford to use a lot of bait, if there's anyone else out there in the same boat reading this then rest assured you can still catch plenty whilst pleasure fishing without feeding heavy. More bait doesn't mean more fish after all

 

[Carp attack]

In a summer I'm in the bracket of keep feeding they will come brigade ,, I'm predominantly after the carp in th 5lb+ bracket and these can get through along of grub once they turn up,,, think nothing of big potting 8mm pellets every 15mins until start getting carp settle and feeding aggressive on the bottom ( find this better than pinging for shalla fishing cos am rubbish at that ) also big potting micros & maggots in edge,,, I've not really kept a tally of how many bags of pellets I can get through but it's quite afew when there having it,,,

 

[smiffy]

Can you feed Bleak off when fishing maggot or caster? I'd say no. I've had it when I've loosefed bait and there's an eruption of Bleak every time, and I think the only way around it is to use a different bait like hemp or pellets. Also, seems to make sense to me that on a fast river/peg, if you've only got a short trotting time, and you feed every run through, then it's easy to get through more bait compared to more leisurely paced swims?

I’ve found it i possible. The best thing to do is fish an olivette rig and try to get the bait through them. Just make sure the last 18” of the rig give you the best possible presentation. Feed hemp alongside your chosen hookbait.

As for heavy feeding? As has been said. It all depends on conditions and how much you think you’re going to catch. I remember feeding 10 babies heads on a stainforth National with very few squatts. So that was heavy light feeding.
Sometimes you can ball it at the start and feed nothing for hours. So what seems like heavy feeding doesn’t end up being a great deal.

 

[Zerkalo]

I’ve found it i possible. The best thing to do is fish an olivette rig and try to get the bait through them. Just make sure the last 18” of the rig give you the best possible presentation. Feed hemp alongside your chosen hookbait.

As for heavy feeding? As has been said. It all depends on conditions and how much you think your going to catch. I remember feeding 10 babies heads on a stainforth National with very few squatts. So that was heavy light feeding.
Sometimes you can ball it at the start and feed nothing for hours. So what seems like heavy feeding doesn’t end up being a great deal.

When we fished Junior Nationals on canals we practised balling it in and didn't work, then come the match we balled it in along with every other team as though we were fishing an International match, and it didn't work then either. Always thought it was a strange approach for a canal but it's what everyone did.

I'm hoping the Bleak don't present a problem for me this summer feeder fishing maggot and caster, but I can't be sure till I try it. The Bleak on the Severn seem sporadic and not on every peg, but it's sods law they often turn up on the peg you want to fish and think is alive with other fish.

 

[Robwooly]

I'm hoping the Bleak don't present a problem for me this summer feeder fishing maggot and caster, but I can't be sure till I try it. The Bleak on the Severn seem sporadic and not on every peg, but it's sods law they often turn up on the peg you want to fish and think is alive with other fish.

A couple of seasons ago I tried an experiment at Highley with rice in one of the bleak swims on the float, feeding turmeric rice and fishing maggot, the results were pretty inconclusive as I ended up getting pike problems and landed a decent esox. Couldn't really get through the bleak and the pike took the first decent fish I hooked, then the swim was pretty dead after even after releasing the pike downstream I ended up scratching for bits which were mostly bleak still.

It was a strange old day that one,

 

[NoCarpPlease]

I’ve found it i possible. The best thing to do is fish an olivette rig and try to get the bait through them. Just make sure the last 18” of the rig give you the best possible presentation. Feed hemp alongside your chosen hookbait.

As for heavy feeding? As has been said. It all depends on conditions and how much you think you’re going to catch. I remember feeding 10 babies heads on a stainforth National with very few squatts. So that was heavy light feeding.
Sometimes you can ball it at the start and feed nothing for hours. So what seems like heavy feeding doesn’t end up being a great deal.

Adding to this
1. where bleak are not super prolific (such as the middle great ouse) you can "catch them off" by going for them for an hour or so - leaving 4 hours to catch other species. You could probably feed them off in those circumstances as well - but risk overfeeding anything else in the swim!
2. Where bleak are prolific - the bait dropper is your friend ... if you're within distance. Don't loosefeed, not even hemp, put it all in through a dropper.
3. Bleak love flow ... so if you can ping some attractive morsels out in the flow, whilst fishing the crease or inside ... you will experience fewer problems

 

[smiffy]

Thankfully they’re not a species that flourish over here in East Anglia. Many rivers have them in but they don’t get to the numbers I’ve experienced on the Wye for example. I’m surprised they don’t thrive on the tidal Broads rivers.
Too much colour?

 

[Zerkalo]

There are no Bleak on the little river weir I fish, but it seems there comes a time most summers when all the little 1oz Chub invade. Sign of a healthy river maybe, but the sport you get from there depends on their numbers. Too few and they're just a nuisance like Bleak, it only takes a few and they will smash every bait including big lobworms, but if there's loads and a variety of other silvers with them it's good fun.

 

[Dave Spence]

Lots of interesting replies here folks. My original point was more, what do you call heavy feeding, without taking into account the venue. I was not thinking of feeding with respect to venue or conditions, rather to what amounts would you consider heavy. If I used a pint of maggots and a kilo of crumb on a canal it would be heavy for the venue but I would not say I had fed heavily. I consider anything upwards of 20 big jaffas and a gallon of maggots heavy. Some people, however, would consider half of that to be heavy. I was just interested in peoples perspective. What prompted it was, I was talking to a Yorkshire angler many years ago and he was saying that Bob Nudd had told him he had fed heavily on a Trent match and he went on to say “ if Bob says he fed heavy then by god he put some bait in”.

 

[Silverfisher]

It’s virtually impossible to avoid bleak on the Thames whilst the water temperatures are still in the teens. Best way is obviously to feed and fish hemp/tares etc as whilst you’ll still get the odd in bleak on it literally is like a couple to a handful of them a session so bearable. With baits like maggot and caster it’s about damage limitation you simply aren’t avoiding many unless you get incredibly lucky which might happen like once a season. Damage limitation methods are things like just balling groundbait and bait droppering with tops the occasional pouch of loose feed (hemp not maggots or casters!) if float fishing or if feeder fishing using a multi maggot or caster hookbait on a short hook length or big baits like worm or bread to a packed that won’t deposit any feed on the drop. Feeding them off certainly won’t work maybe unless you have a mega budget although if employing one of the damage limitation methods you can sort of feed another spot to keep them away a bit.

. Also, seems to make sense to me that on a fast river/peg, if you've only got a short trotting time, and you feed every run through, then it's easy to get through more bait compared to more leisurely paced swims?

Yes exactly that. There’s no way here I could feed the amount of bait you do as whilst a trott might be half the distance for me as you it’ll probably take twice the time so even if feeding every trot you can’t physically feed as much. Plus if you put more in the catapult to feed more as there’s not much flow or depth to move the bait on you tend to just end up messing up the peg by either feeding off the fish or bringing them too high up in the water column or too far upstream. The key is finding the sweet spot by feeding to the bites to get them regularly and in the right part of the peg and the amount to feed often fluctuates through a session let alone session to session. Sometimes you’ll have to feed a little more to keep the fish coming other times you have to cut it down. I’ve said before many times I’ve had near identical nearly back to back sessions in the same place maybe times and fed like a pint and a half on one and well over a couple pints on the other for pretty similar results. Plus I might feed uniformly on one and in peaks and troughs on the other or say more in one half of the session than the other or any other fraction.

By comparison on quicker rivers it seems to be a case of just keep chucking it in as a lot of the bait is in the next county before you know so have to get a lot in just to put some in front of the fish

 

[smiffy]

Heavy locally would be something like the river Yare. For Roach on the pole you could feed six kilo of groundbait alongside 3pints of caster. On the feeder it would be 2kilo of groundbait, 2 pints of caster and a half kilo of worms. Because those amounts are put in during the match it could well be more on a good day or less on a bad one.
The Yare would be a venue where I’d consider the feeding to be heavy.
When we go away to the Severn or Wye it would be a gallon of bait for a day, including hemp. That’s considered very heavy in Essex but probably average for the people who fish those venues all the time.