The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Mole-Patrol wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2019 7:08 pm

Dave Burr wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2019 11:04 am I've used a lot of baits and have happily impaled small fish in the pursuit of something bigger, but I don't think I could bring myself to put a cockchafer grub on a hook. It's such a magnificent creature.

I take it that you do not grow your own potatoes? They can decimate the crops so in our book, death by roach is the sentence they get when caught.

I've grown potatoes for more than forty years and on quite a large scale when the family was larger, but I can't recall ever digging up a Cockchafer grub when harvesting. I've certainly found them in other parts of the garden though again never in the compost heap. Maybe something to do with our soil, a heavy and stony clay/loam?

I don't know the answer. Just quoting from experience. We have some friends in Dordogneshire who grow lots of potatoes in their garden and they find loads of them damaged by grubs in their potato patch. The soil their is rich, black and crumbly. Here I have a wife that does the gardening stuff fortunately so I don't actually come across them in the potager, but Little Wife puts loads of grubs on the bird table when she is harvesting. Our soil is more sand / clay. I find the grubs in the compost bin and compost clamp, also some in the leaf mold clamps, and transfer them to more comfortable quarters in my wormery. They are a listed pest regards farming, particular potato and other tubers.

Old Isaac knew his grubs: "Of grubs for a Grayling, the ash-grub, which is plump, milkwhite, bent round from head to tail, and ... both beetle grubs, and any beetle grub will do for this purpose, particularly the grub of the cock-chafer,............"

I used to walk a couple of miles to the “local”manure heap.brandlings are a great bait and worked everywhere,but were unbeatable on a farm pond,for obvious reasons.