Why do so many people eat MacDonald’s hamburgers? Are they the best? Do they taste better than the ones you can make at home? What’s the difference between a boulette and a frikadella? In essence they are all made from the same ingredients, meat, bread and so on. But which tastes better? The ones you can buy in Burger King, MacDonald’s or the ones you made yourself at home? I guess home made is nearly always better. Everybody’s knows the facts but nobody can or will take the time to make them at home; it’s easier to eat at MacDonald’s!! So I guess the answer to the question in the first sentence is…….because 99.9% of people are lazy! What’s that all got to do with maggots? Well, without doubt the number one barbel bait in
Have you ever put your head into a bait box full of maggots and taken a deep breath? Phew, they STINK of ammonia. But guess what so do Bob’s who is sitting in the next swim and his friend Colin too!
The good news is you don’t have to be like the others you can use home made bouletten!!! You can make the best better! It takes a bit of time and organisation but anybody can do it and therefore have better tasting and smelling bait. You will probably say that maggots are maggots and you can’t make them different. But believe me you can.
When I was 12 or 13 I joined a match fishing club and until this time I had just used worms or maggots as bait. I soon learned that I needed to get the edge over the others and started to read all I could about match fishing. I soon realised that the best anglers always had the best bait! Wow it was a revelation, but how could I make my maggots better. Step one: dye them, sadly no longer allowed. Step two: additives, not bad! Step three: clean them…. better, but how? I once read use washing up liquid, I tried it my maggots died plus I didn’t like the idea of using it on my bait. It was also recommended in the last edition of blinker, you’ve got to be crazy to do it!!! There’s a better way to make your maggots the best and you don’t have to wash them in Prill. To prepare a litre of maggots takes a few minutes but can give you the edge on days when others are struggling!
When I buy maggots I always ask for no sawdust, I want maggots not sawdust, they don’t like it in the tackle shop, but they try to give me what I want and still I get approximately nine hundred ml’s maggots and 100 ml’s of sawdust. Normally I put a handful of maize flour in the bucket to start off the cleaning process before I get home.
So let’s take a look at what we can do to make things a whole lot better. Firstly you need to get prepared. You will need two sieves; one normal maggot sieve and a fine meshed kitchen sieve for removing sawdust and excess powders, turmeric, maize flour and a few containers or bait boxes. You may want to add flavours but I’ll come on to that later.
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When you’ve got these things together you’re ready to buy your bait. It doesn’t matter how many maggots you buy the process is the same, more just take a little longer.
The photo below is of 11 litres of normal tackle shop maggots. If you look closely you can see not only sawdust- lots of it, but a number of dead maggots too!
I normally make a point of asking for the freshest maggots that they have because I hate it when I open the box next day and it contains ninety percent casters. Casters are good bait but I don’t always want them.
When I get home the first job is to remove the sawdust and dead maggots.
For this I use the fine sieve. The results are better when you only sieve small quantities; I find a large handful is ok. The reason for this is you get rid of more sawdust. Believe it or not sawdust keeps the maggots dry, or not, but also makes their skins hard and I want soft, silky, attractive maggots. It’s really amazing sometimes how much sawdust you get out of a litre. My record is around 250ml’s per litre!! Be warned. Put the sieve over a bucket, add your maggots and shake until all the sawdust is gone.
This is over a litre of sawdust removed from the above 11 litres of maggots. Why do I do it? Just take a sniff and see! The next step is to clean the maggots.
For this you need the turmeric.
Add at a rate of two heaped teaspoons per litre. Leave the maggots in this for a couple of hours. They should look like the picture below.
They will already look better than the maggots you bought!! Turmeric is used to clean off fat and dirt from the maggots also it give them a bit off a different taste. Sometimes when I have not time I will sieve the maggots at the tackle shop, outside of course and add turmeric to them on the way to the river!
After two hours you should sieve the maggots once more, using the fine sieve again. The picture above is a before after shot! The next step is to remove all the dead and dying maggots.
Add the maggots in small quantities to the sieve, they pass through quicker. Remove all dead and dying maggots after each batch.
The finished product will look like the next photo.
Now we add 4 teaspoons per litre of maize flour. It keeps the maggots soft, clean and smelling good!
Your now finished product should look something like this.
Store the maggots somewhere cool. I have a fridge especially for my bait, for some reason my wife doesn’t like bait in her fridge. Top quality bait! It can and does make a difference. Try it!