Maggots in their uncoloured, unflavoured form are often highly successful but a bright, enticingly flavoured bait will sometimes give you the edge.

It’s Obviously important when fishing that the fish can see your bait and they like what they see. For example when fishing on murky waters a plain maggot may be hardly visible, whereas a bright red or yellow specimen may show up clearly. There are a few things you can do to enhance their appeal.

Flavourings

Some anglers claim to have great success with flavoured maggots argue some fish prefer some tastes and smells to others. Whether true or not some maggots have a strong smell of ammonia which certainly seems to put the fish off. This smell is greatly reduced by cleaning. Any remaining odour can be masked with flavourings.

Its also been thought that anglers who smoke taint the maggot with the smell of nicotine. These effects too can be masked with flavouring.

But how do you know which smells will be the most appealing to the fish? some anglers argue that sweet flavours - like vanilla- are best during the warm months and spicy ones like turmeric are best during the winter. the best way to find out which flavours suite your style of fishing and the venue is to experiment.

Tackle shops stock a huge range of flavouring s in little bottles and atomizers. On the whole they are used by carp anglers to flavour boilies but on waters where these flavourings have been introduced, anglers have found that other species(such as roach and bream for example) sometime show a preference for them. Flavouring in powder form that are specially formulated for adding to lose feed and ground bait are available. Popular ones are vanilla, caramel, coriander and aniseed.

Clean the bait then riddle of any maize or bran before adding a sprinkling on the flavouring. or else the aroma and flavour will be observe by the cereal. Two teaspoons are enough for a pint of maggots.

Colouring

Maggots can be dyed various colours. the most usual are yellow, bronze and red. Other maggot’s you may come across are green and blue, and the ‘discos’ in fluorescent orange, yellow and pink.

Anglers can dye their own maggots but they dye that is currently available does not take well and is easily washed off. its is better to buy ready coloured maggots. these have had the dye introduced during breading at the ‘feed’ stage, so the maggots is coloured internally

Sinkers And Floaters

the rate at which a maggot sinks thought the water is an important factor in loose feeding. in some situations when loose feeding on fast flowing rivers, for example you need to get the bait down quickly. At other times a slow sinking bait is best. Whether your maggots are slow or fast it will depend on their diet. Maggots which have been raised on meet will sink faster than those that have been fed on fish(Which have a higher water content) most commercially bred maggots are fed on offal, but it is worth asking your dealer what type he stocks

Both fish fed and meat maggots can be made to float. Floating maggot’s can be fished on the surface to take advantage of service feeding fish like Carp, Bleak dace and Chub.

Floaters can also be used to slow down the fall of hook bait. as it is falling through the last foot to so of the water it is important that it should look as natural as possible.