Turning casters

[MGs]

Boy us this a tricky thing, in the cold weather we are having. One of the venues I fish gives the best results if you feed hemp and fish casters, particularly in the winter. Getting hold of casters locally is not easy. Therefore, I have taken to turning them myself, as maggots are much more readily available. My wife isn't keen on me keeping bait indoors. For my last trip, it took 10 days to turn half of a pint, from the pint of maggots I started with. I don't think the temperature in the garage got much above 7 degrees C during the whole time.

Fast forward a few weeks, I have a trip planned for this Thursday, to the same venue, in the company of Wandle1. I picked up a pint of maggots on Friday. I persuaded my wife to let me keep the bait box, in our porch, providing I placed it inside a bucket with a loose fitting lid. We have a thermometer in the porch. Despite the outside temperature not reaching double figures at all, inside it has hit 25 most days. Mostly thanks to the sun hitting the large glass windows.

The difference in results has been amazing. Just about a full pint turned and in the fridge, in less than half the time at ambient temperature. I wonder if there are optimum conditions for quick results?

I'm a happy chappy. Just got to catch some fish now.

[Duckett]

This is great! By practical experimentation, I reckon you’ve got to the conclusion I got to by reading. Having had the same problem as you, I did a spot of googling about this a couple of years ago. If you follow links related to hobbies that may need live maggots as food - such as lizard and amphibian collectors - the sweet spot for keeping maggots fresh and wriggling is 20-24C. As refrigeration slows everything down, I reasoned that a bit over 24C and they would pupate, too much over and they may simply die, as I have had happen on very hot days.

This seems to work more often than not. I also read a couple of scientific papers regarding flies/maggots that are a pest such as blow flies. From these (which I did not fully understand) I gathered that the substantial amount of heat that can be generated by maggots en mass may be a confounding factor.

I was rubbish at science at school!

Phil