Anyone recommend a good roach groundbait?

[Cool_Duck]

Hello all - can anyone recommend a good groundbait to use for targeting roach? I am fishing close in on a canal in about 2ft of water, planning on using maggot and worm as hookbait.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

[apak692000]

Hi There,

When i used to fish for roach at my local canal i found a good ground bait made by dynamite baits and the flavour was spice, always turned the roach mad for me. i got a few i used to make myself that worked really well to but i need to dig out my bait book with my recipes in as soon as i do i will send you some.

Andy

[nodrog48]

i do very well putting left over bread in food proccesor----its good for roach and its cheap---lol

[tightlinesdaz]

I find breadcrumb of any flavor or color they seem to like the most and recently I've been using worm cast which they seem to love.

[northern eye]

If you want to buy it, I find the sensas red is a good one, especially in winter used with maggots or chopped worm on the hook. In summer I have recently used Dynamite Swim Stim Original mixed with crushed hemp, although it is advertised as a carp bait it works a treat for big roach with a strawberry jelly pellet on the hook. You may find the odd nice tench will take your bait too using this combination, if you're up early enough. I use the Van den Eynde jellets which I find stay on the hook well and dont split, especially if using size 16 Maver Match This hooks which I tried out recently and worked very well.

[peakoverload]

By far the best groundbait for Roach I've ever used was:

2 parts breadcrumb
1 part Sensas Red
1 part crushed hemp
several drops (around 15-20ml per 1kg, let your nose guide you) of almond essence

Yeah almond essence.

When I was a kid you used to be able to buy little vials of flavourings to pour over maggots and casters and one of them smelt just like marzipan and was green in colour. The Roach would go absolutely ape sh1t mental for it almost without fail. Several times I put it to the test and would have two pints of casters one laced with this flavouring, one without. When switching between these baits the flavoured one out-fished the unflavoured by at least 2:1 and only if I hadn't already got them feeding on the loose flavoured casters that I'd been throwing out. If I had only been throwing out unflavoured casters then the introduction of flavoured ones would out-fish them more like 3:1 or 4:1. There were of course days when it just made no difference at all but mostly these were days when the Roach weren't feeding on anything. I'm also convinced the flavouring attracted the bigger specimens.

Whenever I go Roach fishing now I always mix up this groundbait and add the almond essence until it smells quite strongly of Marizpan and then add 5ml per pint of casters. I start the swim off with 2-3 orange size balls of groundbait, followed by 3 catapults full of flavoured casters. I do this before I've set my rod up as this gives the Roach time to get their heads down and feeding freely. Typically I use a waggler and fish it on the bottom as I find a feeder crashing through the swim just causes too much disturbance but I shot the waggler so that the hookbait sinks fairly quickly as the smaller Roach are typically up in the water with the specimens keeping to the bottom.

Making me want to go again now!

HTH

[northern eye]

After reading peakoverlords reply there, it reminded me of an additive I have used that has caught me a few decent sized roach. Its a powder called Atomic Cloud. It's been 'bigged' up in the press recently as a sloppy bait to cup in on the pole but I used the Aniseed flavour as an additive to my maggots & casters and this attracted some nice roach using a tiny open ended feeder with the holes blocked up and maggot and caster on the hook. I basically tipped a load of it into the maggots & casters the night before and by the morning they were nice and smelly and dusted with this powder. I put a few of the flavoured grubs into the feeder and plugged the ends with Sensas Red to keep the freebies in place till it hit bottom. My hope then was that the groundbait would slowly release from the ends of the feeder, freeing the grubs which would also, let off all the aniseed powder coating as the water hit them. I also put some putty on the hooklength so that it sunk and stayed on bottom. Never tested this in a water tank or anything and I have'nt used the method since but it caught me roach and all of them over a pound and I didnt get hassled of the tiddlers at all.

[Riggerz]

I have a few dynamites silver x bream , dynamites silver x canal , sensas red magic and van den eyndes superlake. Hope this helps I like to mix the two dynamite baits togethers aswell.