Bait
Natural and manufactured baits, covered across the whole lifecycle: finding and obtaining them responsibly, keeping and storing them, preparing them, presenting them, and disposing of what is left without harming the water.
Boilies
Boiled paste balls designed to survive small fish and stay on a hair rig — the bait that made modern carp fishing possible.Bread
A single loaf provides four genuinely different baits, catches a very wide range of species, and costs almost nothing.Casters
The pupal stage of the maggot — a bait that sinks rather than floats, has no wriggle and outfishes maggots for better fish more often than most anglers expect.Crab and shellfish
Peeler crab is the best sea bait there is for several species and the most demanding to obtain, keep and present — three separate problems, none of which is optional.Fish strip and cut bait
Fresh fish cut into strips or chunks — the cheapest, most available and most consistently underrated sea bait there is, and the one most improved by knowing how to cut it.Lobworms and worms
The oldest fishing bait there is, and still among the most effective for almost every freshwater species — and one nearly everybody can obtain.Lugworm
A soft, deep-burrowing marine worm that is the standard bottom-fishing bait for cod, whiting and flatfish through the winter.Luncheon meat
Tinned processed pork: dense, oily, cheap, and one of the most effective baits for barbel, chub and carp.Maggots
The larvae of blowflies and houseflies, and the most widely used coarse fishing bait in Britain — small, mobile, and taken by almost everything.Particle baits
Small seeds and pulses fished in quantity — hemp, maize, tares and tiger nuts — which hold fish in a swim by giving them a great deal to look for and very little to eat.Peeler crab
A shore crab caught in the act of moulting — soft, defenceless, and among the most effective sea baits there is, for exactly that reason.Pellets
Compressed fishmeal feed pellets, originally made for fish farms, and now among the most effective baits on commercial coarse fisheries.Prawns and shrimp
A near-universal bait that almost every fish in salt water eats, available everywhere, and better live than dead by a margin most anglers underestimate.Ragworm
A large, active marine polychaete that is among the most effective and most universally accepted sea baits.Sand eel
The forage fish that most of the North Atlantic's predators actually eat, and consequently the bait that most reliably imitates what is already on the menu.Sea deadbaits
Whole or part sea fish used as predator bait in fresh water — oily, strongly scented, and free of freshwater disease risk.Squid and cuttlefish
The most useful sea bait there is: tough enough to stay on a hook in a tide, oily enough to be found, and eaten by almost everything.Sweetcorn
Tinned sweetcorn: cheap, bright, visible, and one of the most effective and most accessible coarse baits in existence.
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