The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

I paid an early morning trip to my local tackle shop many years ago, clutching my Efgeeco maggot pot, to be encountered by the owner talking to two other gentleman who I recognised as the proprietors of the other tackle shops in the local area. These persons (I won't call them gentleman) were discussing the price they should charge for maggots. So annoyed and disgusted at this blatant price fixing, I turned on my heals and have never bought maggots since and in fact I have not fished with any living bait now for nearly thirty years.
Over the years I have come to thank them, it turned my attention to bread in all its forms, paste, cheese, couscous, pearl barley, artificial flies, elderberries, hemp and tares, borlotti beans, marshmallows free lined for carp/chub, the list is endless. Who needs maggots.

Stour Otter

I think that if you had to invest in property, equipment, breeding stock and feed and the staff to run a insect breeding company, you would look at the price of a pint of maggots and the profit it yields for the investor through different eyes.

Compare the price of a pint of maggots to pellets or other shop bought baits....quite a lot of work goes into maggots and whilst prices have gone up, unless your buying gallons of them they are still a cheap bait.

Breed your own, do it properly and you'll get some nice juicy soft bait. I bread my own in the summer and use other baits when I haven't got any home bred, I rarely buy them, if I do I freeze any maggots I haven't used.

Sour bran specials: I use layers mash soaked in milk. Let it blow in a cool dark place like a garage or shed with the window left open. Keep some of the maggots back, leave them in the garage and let them become flies. You no longer need to keep the window cracked and have a perpetual source of specials as long as you keep leaving a saucer of mash out. You'll get maybe 50 maggots on the saucer but they'll be 1.5x the size of anything shop bought and are deadly for bream.

Gozzers: Chicken or fish if you want them soft and juicy, leave the meat in a cracker box with the lid slightly open in a corner of the garden, keep checking and it will get some little fly's eggs on it 'blow'. Wrap it in newspaper with some bran and then let the maggots eat the meat, keep checking that its not getting wet, to much 'blow' on the meat and you'll either get tiny maggots or they'll die.

Hearts/liver, usually gives you tougher skinned maggot, the meat can also go watery and the maggots will drown or crawl out of the box. I use a piece of wire mesh in a large stack and store box, once the heart blows I wrap it in newspaper, add bran and then it sits on the mesh. Any fluid can drain off but the mesh is too fine for the maggots to get through.

If you leave the meat uncovered outside in the light (i.e no lid on the box) you will get a different type of maggot and generally different types of fly won't blow the same piece of meat.

I produce around two pints a week in the summer and as your buying bran/meat its probably only halving the cost compared to shop bought. I do it because the tackles shop is shut before I have left work.

They are £2 a pint at Sue's Angling in Hereford

Troydog wrote: ↑Thu Oct 05, 2017 8:24 pm They are £2 a pint at Sue's Angling in Hereford

....but I'd spend 100 sobs in juice there and back to Dave one and a half squid

Olly wrote: ↑Mon Jun 13, 2016 1:42 pm Look up 'sour bran specials' for maggot breeding!

I used to breed these for matchfishing canals many many years ago mixing milk in with the bran would produce a wonderful white colour. You could also breed them on stale hempseed.

I too bred them - jam jars with sour milk & bran seemed the way to go! At the bottom of the garden!!

casters have gone up to £4 a pint in my local tackle shop.