Simple Match Fishing Forum

Food for thought here as I honestly dont know what feed is more filling but Roy Marlow gave me a good analogy the other day: If you eat a cow pat whole or cut it into 10 pieces to eat it is still the same amount of cow pat!I still think finer bread is less filling though...

Yes but cow pats do come in different sizes and also have differing contents.

Food for thought here as I honestly dont know what feed is more filling but Roy Marlow gave me a good analogy the other day: If you eat a cow pat whole or cut it into 10 pieces to eat it is still the same amount of cow pat!I still think finer bread is less filling though...

that about right for roy the amount of sh#t he normally comes out with

taking about sh#t i wonder how choppie is today

Yes but cow pats do come in different sizes and also have differing contents.

Agreed. I would like to think drying out and grinding down bread could possibly have less food content for its volume than fresher, moist stuff but I dont honestly know for sure.

I remember when I was first playing with bread and THE bread man in my neck of the woods was Johnny Haynes from Rugby (Staffs and Rugby must be twinned as both full of bread heads!) and there were all sorts of rumours flying around as to what he used eg. special breads with no yeast content, french sticks, a groundbait called pin head etc etc. Much later, the other guy doing the business was Alan Robinson and his bread was 'pig feed' which was basically rusk/scrapings for feeding livestock. Think he just uses likky Warburtons now, though. Then there's your Hubert Noars and several others in my neck of the woods...

John Haynes was well into bread and more often sometimes pinched it on the hook rather than use a punch. He did very well in these parts, (at the time he was the acclaimed master), when matches were much better attended than they are now. On the canals he carried three totally different mixes with him, made from basically any type of bread.
I remember him coming down for a day, pleasure fishing at Little Onn. He fished directly opposite the overflow by the bridge. He caught that many skimmers and roach on pinched bread he emmptied his net once and carried on catching, something I had never seen before and since.

Well before John Haynes day, Alan Round will remember this, there were a small group of Stafford anglers that were almost unbeatable on the local canals. They all fished home made bread paste on the hook, fished mainly shallow, under self made antennae typed home made floats. The paste was stuck to the 'butt' of the rod/pole (yes the odd one did use a pole!) and the hook was smeared through the paste. These matches had massive attendances, sometimes 300 or so, even more. This tactic was lethal fior small roach and they caught virtually all their fish in the first 90 minutes; you have to remember 3 lb was a top weight then.

Anyway the bit you may find interesting from this was the groundbait. It was called 'fine white' but it really was nothing but sausage rusk. There was and still is a company that supplies sausage rusk in very fine powder form; you can buy it in a local Stafford tackle shop but it is relatively expensive. You don't have to sieve it or anything just mix it as it is, it is almost as fine as flour but I found that is has exactly the same reaction as feeding licky bread

Most of these 'old boys' have now passed on but they won loads but were very secretive and it almost as easy to get a pint off Rocco as it was getting any help from them!

As far as I am concerned bread is just another canal 'method'. It is still very much underused today because I believe there is a lot more to it that nearly everybody thinks.

In recent years I don't see anybody catching more fish, not always roach, than Fred Cheetham. He (and Eric Gardner) literally spend hours getting their 'mix' right, they use household waste and use it the same week as they make it!

but it is relatively expensive

What amazed me Bill was how much just a mug full would fluff up into, but you have to spend some time and 'care' on it - I found it easy to do it the night before in the kitchen, rather than 'rushing it' on the bank.

Yes TK, with sausage rusk it is much easier to do it at home.
Best to use a sprayer than the tap, adding a blast at a time.

To be honest I don't use rusk at all now though but it does have its merits and there is nowt wrong with it.

I bet if you asked twenty different anglers how they fish the punch, you would get at least ten different slants on the subject; some may only vary a tad but they are all interesting.

This is a really good thread, -- until cowpats were brought into it

I remember fishing a match at Polesworth once, tackling up at my peg, got ready for the whistle (all the usual). Ten minutes before the match started, up pops this bloke with a little creel and a rod and plonks down at the next peg. He gets his rod set up (everybody had just changed to poles) and then sorts his bread out.
In his gudgeon mesh keepnet goes a tin loaf and this is then dunked in the cut. Out comes the loaf and squeezed through the mesh into a tub !
It was only when the match started did I realise this was no numpty as his accuracy with the casting and a dollop of bread landing on the float every time proved that.
Needless to say I got a battering ! and met JH.
That bloke won some serious money on the cut circuit and I remember talking to him about poles and he was sure it spooked the fish and would only use rod and line.
You would deffo put him in the ' the character class'.
The total cost of his kit would probably be a quid and he won thousands.
I think he once challenged anyone to take him on at punch fishing for £500, 25 years ago !! I am not certain about this but maybe Bill might remember !!

Yes, I'm pretty sure you are right about John and his challenge, CWH. He, or his mate did, used to get all his bread from a bakers he knew, near where he lived (not sure if it was Bedworth, somewhere near there).

He was that clued up on it there were times he used to ditch his 'mix' mid match and produce another pot of feed. We used to talk for hours on end about bread fishing in those days.

He did actually end up buying a pole . His comment to me was that he ought to have bought one earlier, they were much better for feeding via cups! I don't think I ever saw him fish with one though

Best to use a sprayer than the tap,

Yep - every time 

This is a really good thread, -- until cowpats were brought into it 

You mean I aint stumbled on a new top secret bait  - there I was conjuring up images of having to feed a cow with 1/2cwt of tares..............I mean who first thought up using pigeon sh!t   

Enjoying the reminiscences too Bill and CWH - keep 'em coming 

Changing tack slightly, before I move onto actual punches, anybody remember those plastic 'oval' shaped things in the late 80s/early 90's where you could press out a zillion pieces of punch in one go.

Presume this was in the days before liquidisers - I never had a liquidiser then or used lickie in those days, just crumb then. I also never had one of those press things, wasnt actually sure whether they were designed to produce millions of punch just for the hook or for loose feed to 'match' the hook bait.    

Yes TK, they were useful gadgets called a Multipunch.

Contrary to comments on other websites I believe they were introduced by a chap named Bill Spragg, (Nuneaton area) ironically a former mate of John Haynes.

Bill, if I have his name right, used to work with BWB and passed away not too long ago.

I had a Multipunch, I think they came in two sizes, but give it to a chap who was 'desperate' for one.

What did you use it for Bill - just hookbait, or did you ever feed the 'pellets' as well?

The only times I use it was for hookbaits; must admit I didn't use it very often, dunno why.

It looked a bit like a flying saucer but it worked well.

You are right about the multi-punch Bill, it was Bill Spragg and I am pretty sure he came from Hinckley. He used to fish the odd match at Shackerstone, another good bloke gone (oh dear the trouble with all our yesterdays is that alot of the people we talk about have passed away !).
At one time Hinkley must have had the best cut team in the country ! , Billy Makin, Ray Mills, Bill Spragg, Doug Dimbleby to name a few !
I remember getting an invite to fish a 25 a side match between Shackerstone / Measham and Hinkley at the Kilns section at Hinkley. Out and out bread punch match ! and came second to Bill Spragg ! This was on a Wednesday evening if I remember with a waiting list!!
This is around the time I heard of the sausage rusk !!
I can't remember if it was any better than bread but definately finer if you could mix it right !!!!
No atomisers or blenders then and if you added too much water you ended up with clag !!!
Alot of the cracks used it when it was hard due to the fine cloud but as a young kid, I could not get it to mix right !!!! therefore no confidence.
I had completely forgotten about it until this thread brought it up.
Happy days.

i thought spraggy was from Tamworth ..but didnt realized he had passed away...sure he started a little tackle shop at the end of our road didnt last long but was full of good info,,behind the spa shop....or am i losing it

TK...

The problem is the venue!...the has few boats so lacks in both movement and colour.

You could be right Larry but he deffo fished under the Hinkley banner that day, come to think of it he did run a tackle shop many years ago but as you said I don't think it was long term.
I do remember having a multi-punch but crappity smack knows where it is now !!!

Larry,
I hope I am right with the name as being an old crappity smack it is easy to get people mixed up.

OK he may have been from Tamworth but it ain't too far from Nuneaton so I was in the right area. He certainly used to fish in that area a lot.

Did he have a mate named Pat Donachie (mexican moustache)? If I am right about that they both passed on within a couple of days of each other.

CWH Hinckley, - You missed off Tony Horton, he had a tackle shop and was a top notcher; he captained Hinckley in the 80s I think.

TK...

The problem is the venue!...the has few boats so lacks in both movement and colour.

Been at the pop have we Wudowse. Is this an anagram?