Those little wrigglers are just so effective. I don’t know of any species that doesn’t love a maggot - or two or three……. Here are a few tips to make the most out of your maggots
Give them a boost
I’m not talking about the popular chocolate bar! There are so many different ways you can boost your maggots. This not only adds to their attraction but allows you to make your bait individual to you, while simply using standard maggots. You can add krill meal to them, as well as turmeric powder and any other powder based groundbait you can think of. Another great tip is boosting them with a bait spray or pouring liquid on them over night (just a small amount, and don’t forget to close your bait tub well) which they will suck up and flavour themselves. Next time you pick up a pint of wrigglers, think a little outside of the box.
Ball them in
Use Sticky Mag or other available products to bind maggots together to form a ball. This is great when fishing longer range, as the weight of the ball will allow you to catapult it up to 70 yards in some cases. The balls break down on the bottom, levelling little areas of maggots all over an area. This is perfect for fishing a maggot feeder or solid PVA bag of maggots over as it mimics the presentation on the bottom.
Dead Maggots
Either pour boiling water over them and drain or freeze them (careful there no domestic accidents caused by boiling water!) to ensure the maggots no longer wriggle. Then head out on the bank and give them a go. They are great at creating a carpet as they can’t wriggle away on the bottom and they are a little less together in the skin which makes them great for the hook.
Choose you colour
Red, white, green, bronze and even blue, it’s not just a case of catching the angler’s eye; there are certainly times at which one colour is way more effective than others. For example I have always found bronze maggots to be great on the river, while red maggots work brilliantly for all my specimen carp fishing. Don’t limit yourself: have a selection of colours, and see what works best on the day.
Winter wonders
In my humble opinion, winter is the time of year I turn to the wrigglers. You can slowly and consistently feed them on the river and get all manner of silver fish, chub and barbel feeding, as they don’t get as full as they would if you stuck to pellets and boilies. They come into their own in specimen carp fishing, where they have brought me bites on days where lakes have been almost totally frozen. The natural attraction mixed with their tantalising wriggle is irresistible, even to fish that wouldn’t normally be feeding .
