Natural-water specialist Kelvin Tallett says spicing up your grubs with pungent flavours will give you an edge over the competition this winter
THE SUBJECT of flavouring baits is a bit of a contentious one among anglers. Some believe it works, others think it’s just a gimmick.
Personally, I’ve always gone down the route of thinking that anything that could give me a little bit of an edge is worth looking at.
In years gone by lots of anglers put turmeric on their maggots to gain that little ‘boost’, and there’s no doubt that there are days when it will still produce the goods. But with such a huge array of liquid flavours at our disposal these days, it seems silly not to give some of them a go to find out if they can step things up another level.
For example, experimentation has
shown me that caramel and molasses work a treat for bream, with vanilla being a winner with roach. Trial and error had never got me to a place where I was happy when it came to chub though, until recently that is…
Deadly discovery
The Birmingham AA stretch of the Warwickshire Avon at Fladbury has brilliant chub fishing potential and is a place where I’ve learnt a lot about targeting the species.
It was here where I first noticed the emergence of trends in my bait experiments, and these definitely pointed to the fact that meaty flavours rarely fail with chub.
Generously coating my maggots in a liquid that oozes this unmissable scent led to an instant spike in my catches, and there has been no let-up since.
I was keen to prove the effectiveness of my attack and so teamed up with the IYCF cameras on the venue, despite a sharp overnight frost providing testing fishing conditions. Armed with three pints of bronze maggots that had been flavoured the night before, I soon found a spot that looked ideal for a bit of floatfishing.
Bait preparation is simple, but as I have already touched upon, ideally it n
