Chris Yates bread paste

[Olly]

The cheapest bread I can - 45p sounds good. It is mostly how you prepare and use it that counts! But I do like an uncut sandwich loaf!

A lump of whitest bread, no crust, from the middle of the uncut or cut loaf is to me flake, good for chub.
A compressed slice of white bread that could be punched or gently squeezed and placed on the hook. About 1/2 your pinkie finger nail size = roach bait.

Crust - cut into cubes/squares dependent upon size - large thumbnail or larger = chub. Whilst the pinkie sized nail piece to me = roach.

Before I had a motorbike I fished the Tidal almost exclusively with ledgered or trotted bread. 30lb bags not being uncommon with several fish about the 1.5lb mark amongst the fish. During September ledgered cheese was THE bait with perhaps 6 - 10 fish over the 1lb in a day. I have the old Kingfisher Guild certificates somewhere!

[Phil Arnott]

What I find interesting when using bread for bait is how many things eat it. When tench fishing on a local canal for tench, I often used to feed the tadpoles in the margins with bread. I’ve regularly found big black slugs eating it when I’ve laid a slice on the bank. While fishing for mullet I noticed that the mashed bread I used to attract them was slowly disappearing before my eyes. The culprits turned out to be shore crabs! I’ve also witnessed bass and coalfish caught on bread. The most unusual was a sand lizard I observed in Dorset with a liking for bread!

[Stathamender]

I use the cheapest white sliced from Morrison's (it's damp enough to form paste as it is), cut crusts off (save them and any unused bread for crumbing in the Magimix) then the overnight rolled out sandwich method with the smelliest blue cheese I can find in the middle (Morrison's is also good for blue cheese and sells past SBD - which is extra smelly - cheap). Roll it up in ball next day in some clingfilm and give a good squeezing all over. Have tried adding garlic (defrosted frozen cube of crushed garlic from the Asian section) but that didn't appear to add any attractiveness. Though I haven't tried it in France yet.

And as for approaching the waterside I always do the funky chicken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lCI63H1neY

[Dave Burr]

What I find interesting when using bread for bait is how many things eat it. When tench fishing on a local canal for tench, I often used to feed the tadpoles in the margins with bread. I’ve regularly found big black slugs eating it when I’ve laid a slice on the bank. While fishing for mullet I noticed that the mashed bread I used to attract them was slowly disappearing before my eyes. The culprits turned out to be shore crabs! I’ve also witnessed bass and coalfish caught on bread. The most unusual was a sand lizard I observed in Dorset with a liking for bread!

I holidayed in Cypress once and was interested to see the locals fishing from the rocks with a mashed bread loose feed. Their hook bait was interesting, a flour and water mixture, very wet and soft which they collected from the pot with a stick and would it around the hook. It stayed on the hook (just about) but must have been drunk by the fish rather than eaten. It was used on mullet, bream etc and highly effective. I've seen bread used in the sea in the Canaries too. The universal bait indeed.

[Tench Dreamer]

Many years (at least 25) I read an article about an returned to fishing angler who would only only use wholemeal bread ... it was a life story in a Mag . It intrigued me ...Probably the simplicity

[Stathamender]

Many years (at least 25) I read an article about an returned to fishing angler who would only only use wholemeal bread ... it was a life story in a Mag . It intrigued me ...Probably the simplicity

God only knows what one might find in these days of hipster artisanal non-gluten sour dough focaccie. I recall Richard Walker, in the course of an article pooh-poohing the attitudes of some people who'd forbid such baits as hemp as 'unnatural', setting out the process by which bread was produced. The Chorleywood Bread Process might have led to terrible sandwiches but it's very effective at producing ready to use bait.

[Ian]

Sardines mashed up with bread and egg,rolled into balls and put in boiling water for a minute.thats the original boillies.

[Woodytia]

I'll always give bread a try, all of my biggest fish have been caught using it in one form or another, I've actually watched Tench feeding in clear water ignore a hook baited with maggots but eat all of the free offerings, changing to bread on the hook resulted in an instant bite. As regards brands I used to think that Roberts was better than most but having tried supermarket value loaves I think it has more to do with how it is used and above all having confidence that it is still on the hook and will catch.

[Reedling]

I use bread more than any other bait and I always feel that I am catching as well as or in fact better than those I see around me using far more exotic baits. I like kingsmill as a straight hook bait. In the old days Kit e Kat Cat food mixed into the bread paste was a favourite and would probably work just as well these days.

[Michael]

I love using bread & bread paste in its various guises... We`d often have a competition where we would see how big a piece of crust, a chub would take/swollow, drifting it up to the weed raft...I`ve had them up to the size of a packet of 10 cigarettes plus.....

Sardines mashed up with bread and egg,rolled into balls and put in boiling water for a minute.thats the original boillies.

Maybe in the Uk Ian, though steamed or boiled ragi-flour paste (millet flour), has been used in India for hundreds of years as mahseer bait, would be the original boilie. The locals flavoured the paste with a aniseed smelling seed called somph.....