Jolly Green Giant

Warmer weather is on the way, I think it might be time to get the tackle out again.
Hi,I was reading last week about how tackle shops are having a hard time and many are closing down. They'll probably manage to hang on longer than your local boozer but they all seem to be going down the same pan.

Anglers we are told, are not buying as much tackle as they did before the recession and maggot sales have also slumped to an all time low. So whats going on? Is it just the recession or are there other causes?

It could be that angling is being affected by it's own success, you only have to look at the number of fisheries that have sprouted up over the last few years. It is no coincidence that the reason that so many new ones have been established is because it is seen by many an entrepreneur as easy money. I won't go into the cost of day ticket versus versus joining a club in this post but I will give you my views in my next blog on fishing.

Let's go back to bait because that is where a lot of tackle shops make their money. If anglers aren't buying, maggots, pinkies and squats what are they buying and why?

Well the answer is everything else. Go on-line and stick "Fishing Bait" into google and you'll come up with over 4 million results. The choice is endless so it's no wonder the sale of maggots is going down. In the eighties when my fishing career was at its peak all of my fellow anglers and myself included used maggots, pinkies, casters and squats almost exclusively especially if we were fishing in a match.

I don't fish as often as I used to but it is a long while since I bought a maggot, in fact it's over 10 years. So if I'm not buying them I'm not surprised other anglers aren't either.

So what am I using and why? Well I've gone back to basics and now I usually only take three baits with me. Bread, luncheon meat and sweetcorn and I use the latter more than the other two. The reasons for using sweetcorn so much is that my fishing habits have changed. I no longer fish matches and I am no longer excited by catching a succession of little fish. Indeed I fish only for pleasure now and the last thing I want is a bite every 30 seconds like it used to be in the old days.

I have mellowed with age and don't mind waiting a couple of minutes for a bite now. And I'm not after monsters either, fighting big fish always gives me arm ache. I don't know if I'm alone in this but I'd much sooner catch 4 carp weighing 2 pounds each than catching 1 of 8 pounds. There are other reasons for using sweetcorn, it's cheap, it stays on the hook, it's easy to loose feed and last but not least fish love it. Just make sure you use the tinned variety, the frozen stuff it isn't half as effective. If you want proof about how tinned sweetcorn catches more fish than the frozen stuff, you can read more about it in my fishing book.
Click here to see more details about my book and how to get a free sample download

For now I'll leave you with a picture of a nice carp coming to the net. It was unable to resist a single grain of Jolly Green Giant.