What bait for winter carp fishing?

[andywilson123]

Live bait or boilies?

[framey]

Define live bait I guess 

carp will eat other fish

[salokcinnodrog]

On 16/11/2023 at 07:06, andywilson123 said:

Live bait or boilies?

By live bait I take it you mean maggots or worms.

Saying that I've heard of carp eating small gudgeon or silver fish targeting perch or pike, along with deadbaits.

 

I've rarely fished maggots specifically for carp, although I have put maggots in my groundbait for them.

My winter baits tend to be boilies or sweetcorn. Normally I've fished the water all through and the fish are eating my boilies.

It will also depend on the water. 

[kevtaylor]

Half a handful of low oil pellets and a few squashed washed out boilies, maybe a few grains of corn, if not that single hook baits.  Works for me but you could go down the maggot route or include some as well.  I think the key is you are really fishing for a bite at a time not a haul.

Pints of maggots are literally 1000s of baits, less can be more, don't overdo anything bait wise.

[B B]

I can remember the 1s time I used maggots was on a 48 trip cat ice in the margins with 1/4 of the lake frozen over. I had half a pint of old maggots that were almost past their sell buy date, with 3hrs to pack up time put a maggot rig in a bag with a handful of maggs and bingo a low 20, nx cast a mid double… me and my mate was gobsmacked  😳 

The most maggots Iv used was almost a gallon on a prolific runs water 

[salokcinnodrog]

17 hours ago, kevtaylor said:

Pints of maggots are literally 1000s of baits, less can be more, don't overdo anything bait wise.

 

9 hours ago, B B said:

The most maggots Iv used was almost a gallon on a prolific runs water 

I believe that 1pint of maggots is 3000 grubs for some reason, I've not counted them, but now I might have to, to be sure.

 

I've seen it both ways, a couple of mates were fishing a lake in winter for roach, baiting up with half a pint of maggots in small swimfeeders and getting 'plagued' by carp disturbing the swim. A 20lb carp takes a while to land on a size 16 hook and 2.6lb hooklink to 5lb mainline on a feeder rod.

Then as B B says, other places really respond to heavy baiting. Spodding in maggots and fishing PVA bags of them over the top.

Not my favourite method but a couple of pole anglers at Suffolk Water Park match lakes were fishing massive pole floats and continually firing in maggots over the float. It may be prolific but they were catching some fish to double figures.

[B B]

2 hours ago, salokcinnodrog said:

believe that 1pint of maggots is 3000 grubs for some reason, I've not counted them, but now I might have to, to be sure.

 

More like 4,422  🤔

[B B]

0

5 minutes ago, B B said:

More like 4,422  🤔

Multiple the above number by the 7 pints I fed works out around 30,954 …thank god for spoding  😏

[kevtaylor]

7 hours ago, salokcinnodrog said:

I believe that 1pint of maggots is 3000 grubs for some reason, I've not counted them, but now I might have to, to be sure.

Think you probably got that from the Terry Hearn video when he said the amount of casters per pint 👍

[ouchthathurt]

I’ve got great faith in maggots when it’s cold, I’ve been very lucky with my autumn/winter captures whilst using maggots in the past, so I’ll keep them in mind once the water temps drop. 

[salokcinnodrog]

5 hours ago, B B said:

More like 4,422  🤔

 

33 minutes ago, kevtaylor said:

Think you probably got that from the Terry Hearn video when he said the amount of casters per pint 👍

I googled it, 3552

I might actually have been bored enough myself to play with the mathematics so came up with 3000.

 

[B B]

Got my total for the maggs from this guy he seems to look like the right sort of guy to count a pint of the maggs