Keeping it soft

[Old-CodJA]

Perhaps I can add something that might be useful to someone.

I'm in my 60's now and recall that as a youngster when my late father used to take me fishing every weekend, we used to catch a hell of a lot of Roach, Rudd, Bream and occasional Tench on a paste he always made up the night before fishing.

By the middle of each week he would be putting any sliced Bread that was beginning to go 'dry' in a drawer in the kitchen, wrapped in a clean teacloth.

On Saturday night the bread came out to make the bait for Sunday morning. First, he would cut off all the crusts, then place one slice on Mum's baking board, sprinkle it liberally with a heaped teaspoon ful of Birds Custard powder and put another slice of Bread on top. This second slice would have a light sprinkling of Demarara Sugar and a third slice of Bread added, another generous dusting with the custard powder, a fourth slice of Bread and then the 'sandwich' was wrapped in an old, but clean tea towel and soaked for a minute or so in cool water.

He would then squeeze out the excess water and knead and mix the pulp in the towel until it was workable by hand without sticking to your palms. The kneading continued until the paste was like a light pastry mix, a nice uniform deep yellow colour and soft, but not sticky. This big lump of paste would be divided into two halves and we put it in two halves of an old tea towel, kept for the purpose and washed out weekly. If the day turned out to be warm, a quick sprinkle of water on the cloth, just enough to make it damp, but not wet, kept the paste in perfect condition all day.

Hooks were usually size 12 or 14 and a piece of paste was put on just big enough to cover the hook, but always leaving the point clear. If fishing was slow it might be a case of going down to a size 16 and fishing for bites.

Sometimes he (and his mates) would floatfish with two hooks! I have even seen him netting a Bream on the bottom hook with a Roach of 6 ounces or so bouncing around 10 inches or more above it on the top one.

[Julian]

Any ideas on how I can keep my bread from turning rock hard on the hook? After a while in the water the bait goes really hard so I was wondering whther there was something one could mix in like say eggs or honey that would prevent this. Alternatively, perhaps I should give up on the bread and make a dough-type paste. Any thoughts guys?
Thanks, Bull

I don't use breadflake a lot but I used to have the same problem. It is definitely caused by the tendency to press it too firmly round the hook. The reason many anglers do this is the instinctive feeling that if you don't press it firmly on ( and sort of knead it around the hook) it may come off on the cast or before it has sunk to final position.
So you need to, by trial and error, stop pressing the bait firmly around the hook and just do as others have indicated - pressing it reasonably firmly to the shank leaving all the rest of it fluffy. Pieces will fall off when it hits the water and you may find that initially you haven't quite done it right and sometimes it falls off, but you will soon succeed.

[Davyr]

My flake baits seem to stay on for longer if I squeeze them just in the middle and pass the hook once through that, rather than the usual method of squeezing around the shank of the hook. :think: