best out of bread in small to medium sized rivers.

Baits such as elderberry, hemp and wormsare used less often. Ignore these baits though at yourperil, particularly the most versatile of them all,the humble loaf of bread. The beauty of a loaf ofbread is that it can be fished in so many differentways. From a piece of crust torn from the loaf to aball of paste made from the soft innards, bread cancatch almost all species of fish in any number ofways. Try using boilies, or other more technical baitsin the same manner and you will soon see theirlimitations. Bread also has the great advantage inthat it breaks down quite rapidly. Small pieces becomedetached, the flavour leaks out and the bait becomessofter. Again, modern baits lack the versatileattraction of bread. It seems amazing really that many anglers have beenbrought up without using bread, as when I was youngerwe always carried a few slices around with us. The slicedmedium cut white loaf is the anglers standard. Fromfishing tiny pieces on a bread punch, to a largerflake for chub, a sliced loaf gives you lots ofalternatives. For hook baits make sure that the breadis as fresh as possible. Fresh bread is stickier andholds together on the hook much better the stalebread. I tend to just break a piece of bread from theslice, rather than using a punch. The larger baits Iuse are designed to catch bigger fish, but if youwould prefer a bag of fish, then go for the compressedpellets produced by a punch. Flake is quite a softbait and I prefer to use it on the float, rather thanwhen ledgering. I expect to re-bait every cast, aseven if the bread is still on when I retrieve it willbe soggy and likely to fall off on the cast. Any bread that is left over from a session can betaken home and allowed to dry out for a few daysbefore having the crusts removed and then broken up ina liquidiser. The resulting fine crumb is ideal forusing as groundbait when fishing bread on the hook.Just mix with water to produce a nice dry groundbaitand you have the perfect accompaniment to bread on thehook. For ledgering I tend to use the tougher outer crust.This is a chub bait par-excellence, a large lump ofcrust the size of fifty pence piece or bigger willsearch out any chub in the vicinity. Roach are notsuch lovers of the tougher crust, although they willtake small pieces. When trying to target roach I lookfor part of the loaf where the crust is thin, so thatI can use a mixture of both crust and flake. This is anice tough bait, yet with the soft inner bread whichthe roach so love. Next week I will look at what rigs to use to get the

best out of bread in small to medium sized rivers.