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.
What kind of bait is it?
Whether a bait is alive decides most of what follows: how it is obtained, whether it has to be kept, how long it lasts and what handling it properly involves. Which fish take it is on the fish's own page, where the evidence for that connection lives.
Live, and it has to stay that way
Obtaining it is a job of its own, keeping it alive is a second one, and the record for each says how both are done. This is also where the welfare questions are.
Natural, and dead
Fresh, frozen or salted. No keeping problem beyond the cool box, and the quality of the presentation is mostly the quality of the cutting.
Natural, and prepared
Something that was alive, turned into a bait by cooking, curing or mixing. Keeps well, and the preparation is part of the method.
Manufactured
Made for the purpose. Bought, stored on a shelf, and consistent from one session to the next — which is the whole reason it exists.
Already in the kitchen
Baits that cost nothing and catch a very wide range of fish. The most underrated group here, and the easiest place for anybody to start.
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.