Fishing With Seeds

Prime Time

Hemp and tares used to perform at their best from the beginning of the elderberry season in September. Softer elderberries have always been rated as a good match up with hemp, although I’ve never been that successful with them, preferring more robust tares as hook bait. Faffing about trying to keep hemp attached to any type of rig is tricky, especially popular tinned gear that tends to be well cooked. In most cases, if fish switch onto hemp, they will readily take a tare. If bites are being missed because tares are bigger, smaller samples can normally be picked out from each batch, to tie in better with the seeds being fed. This venue had been producing hordes of small silver fish, which gave me the idea of trying an experiment, to discover if a hemp and tare attack still had the ability to sort out better quality samples.

Punch Starter

Past experiences taught me punched bread ties in particularly well with seed baits, helping to get them working much faster. I would often begin sessions by feeding crumb, experimenting with different punch sizes, to find out what gauge the fish responded to best. Once I started catching well on compressed pellets of bread, I would begin to introduce small and regular helpings of hemp seed, to try and wean bigger fish onto it. I’d know when it was time to change baits when my landing net was needed more often. If a grain of hemp or a tare on the hook brought a response, chances were a good catch could turn into an even bigger haul. Hemp tends to attract a better stamp of fish, so sacking the bread at some stage shut out the small stuff, boosting catches substantially. Punch has become another largely forgotten bait.

Top Tin

It used to be easy to prepare hemp, soaking the seeds for a day, draining them and then pouring on boiling water. They would normally become perfect within an hour, turning darker and sprouting uniform white shoots. Another option was using a flask, but gradually things changed in an era dominated by pellets, making good quality hemp harder to source. Even packets of the stuff that looked right, especially size wise, became much trickier to prepare. You could bring to the boil and then simmer for hours, stinking out the kitchen, yet the seeds still refused to sprout shoots. I eventually gave up, binning a fair amount of what was becoming an expensive bait. Turning to the ready cooked variety, much on offer was too small. The best product for my needs turned out the smaller tins of Frenzied Hemp Seed Natural, which Dynamite do.

New Ways

Purely relying on hemp is less likely to work in these pellet dominated times. The resident stocks in many venues might only ever see immature and over-cooked seeds being fed heavily in spod mixes by carp anglers. Smaller amounts can take ages to pull a response. Quality hemp was used a lot more widely before the pellet revolution, not just by match and pleasure anglers, but also by specimen hunters. It was piled into rivers for species like chub, roach and barbel, to the extent many thought it was addictive, resulting in bans in some instances. That’s not the case anymore. Mostly you need to kick-start swims before switching to seed, keeping everything tight. Cupping in balls of groundbait, heavily laced with casters and micro pellets is a good way. This emulates spodding, but on a much smaller scale, just enough to pull a faster response.

Little and Often

Feeding small, regular amounts of bait with a light actioned catapult is a great way of stirring up lots of bites. This technique is called dinking and is essential to get hemp working its magic, working at getting quality silvers competing for free grub. This requires two types of rig: a positive one for presenting hook baits at full depth and a lightly shotted shallow tackle for up-in-the-water work. I use my Cadence CP2000 Competition pole for this, kitted out with Edge Latex Hybrid Solid 3-4 Orange elastics. It’s never easy to predict which rig will see most usage. I start with the full-depth set-up over initial groundbait, trying red maggots, or casters to bypass tiny fish. It normally takes a bit of time before it’s worth trying hemp or a tare on the hook. Often with the deeper set up, bites tend to occur on the last part of the drop, just as the rig settles.

Usual Suspects

Roach love hemp, to the extent they will often feed on it while ignoring everything else on your bait tray. It’s a bait that can wake up the dourest of venues, even in winter when fish are shoaled up tightly in sheltered areas. Once you get “stamp” roach competing, as match anglers call them, a busy time is almost guaranteed. Seed baits are a brilliant way of blocking out tiny fish, something it’s almost impossible to do with maggots, casters, pinkies or punched bread. Stamp roach may only average 2 – 6ozs but catching them fast soon builds good weights, possibly even match winning ones. Bigger bonus samples are likely to turn up as well, along with other species like rudd, hybrids or skimmers. Selectively feeding hemp and using tares on the hook, is a brilliant way of getting through hordes of problem bleak and small dace on rivers.

Pole Catty

Although there’s lots of fancy catapults in tackle shops these days, I still prefer this old Fox Match design, which continues to perform well after two decades of heavy usage. Its kitted out with thin elastics that are on the soft side, attached to a small plastic Preston pouch. I keep the lengths of hollow latex fairly short, which makes it easier to load the catty one handed, also helping with gauging pole distances more accurately. A compact and lightweight catty like this performs well when regular close-range feeding is required, although it’s even better if you can draw fish within throwing distance. Some anglers feed tares as well as hemp, but I’ve never found the need to do that when fishing close range. The only time I used to feed tares was with a more powerful catty, employed with waggler tackle, before pellets became so widely used.

Proper Ones

Seed baits were famous for scoring heavily for big roach on rivers. Back in my club days, a few of us would hire a cabin cruiser on the Thames and go exploring. All we took bait wise was a couple of big sacks of hemp and enough tares for the hook. We caught everywhere we moored up, not just quality roach, but also loads of dace, chub, barbel, skimmers, even stray double figure carp. I doubt if that would be the case now, with so many pellets being fed. Big roach are much harder to find as well, being a prime target for cormorants and otters, predators that are far more prevalent nowadays. But find a venue where roach have managed to mature to a good size and hemp will be worth including in your bait menu. Even if you can’t catch using it on the hook, hemp attracts red fins into having a go when combined with other baits like casters.

How Much

It’s rare to use more than a pint of hemp feed wise, unless an attacking approach is being employed for big fish like chub, barbel or carp. For normal silver fish sessions, once a swim has been brought to life, if you put in around 30 grains every cast it will equate to around a 350g tin of cooked hemp. That’s less than a pint. Feeding that much or slightly more might be required in running water, but on venues like canals, drains and lakes, around a dozen grains of hemp introduced regularly will be enough to keep a shoal interested. A small handful of cooked tares, for hook use only, will be adequate for situations like this. I bag up ready prepared tares into small quantities and freeze them. Small portions thaw out quickly and then you normally only need one can of hemp for each outing, maybe having another in reserve for red-letter days.

Big Difference

My experiment with hemp and tares began to reap dividends once I got this swim producing plenty of bites. Initially, after feeding groundbait, the response was immediate. But it was difficult to get a maggot or caster down to the bottom. Small rudd were grabbing those baits, frustrating because on odd occasions when the tackle settled properly, some better roach turned up. Loose feeding casters often pulls in bigger fish, but trying this only made the tiny rudd more active. Switching to a lightly hooked tare on a wide gape size 18 opened up a completely different world. The bits were bypassed, replaced by stamp roach and better sized rudd. In weedy venues like this one you often have to set a deep rig just off bottom, but in this instance I found a clear spot. Somewhat unusually, most bites were coming slightly over-depth.

Up and Downs

Once tares begin to produce lots of action, it’s always worth trying a lighter shallow set pole rig. I use a slim wire stemmed float for this, which hardly takes any shot. When set between 2 and 3 feet deep with spread micros, the tackle sets itself upright, rather than having to coax it into that position. On a tight line, bites are often so savage bigger fish sometimes hook themselves against the pole elastic. That’s what happened with this much better sized rudd, but after that, shallowing up was less productive than usual. Switching back to a deep rig, it continued to produce better, with tares nailed hard on the deck. This was unusual, because normally with this method up-in-the-water tactics work well. That could be at mid-depth, shallower, or with hook baits suspended just off bottom. You need to keep experimenting to find what’s right.

Keeping Busy

I enjoy hectic sessions, in this case involving mostly roach. On previous visits to this venue, I tried fishing a whip to-hand, also a top kit with two sections added. I caught plenty of small stuff, but going out slightly further with hemp and tares was better. This resulted in less fish, but the average size went up, producing a heavier haul. I still didn’t feel I got the best of what was out there. It often takes time with seed baits to work out tiny things that can make a big difference. It could be as simple as changing depth by a few inches, or how much hemp goes in, or the size of tare that goes on the hook. The main thing is it was great to enjoy catching again on seed baits, which many might class as old school these days. I’m glad I discovered the smaller tin from Dynamite contains the perfect bait for my needs. I have a good stock of these cans now.