Intro
Over the years the mealie-bomb (ground feed) and the hook baits has changed a a lot and has evolved. In todays market place there is quite a lot of manufactures in the market place and most of them produce excellent products and they have quite an extensive product range that covers ground feed, hook baits and dips. And all of them has their own opinion.
Ground Feed
Let’s start here, the other term here in bank angling is a “Mealie-Bomb”, its is made up of grounded mealies, binder and particles, you combine them by adding water to the dry mixture and it becomes a feed that you can mould into a ball that can be casted to create a feeding area for the fish. Super Cast for example has a whole range of ground feed of extremely good quality.
I am not going into every manufacture’s product range, but the one that I used is “Kolletjie Bou” there I mix one feeder and two normal bags together the reason for this is that it binds extremely well together and this allows it to be casted quite a distance, also then the feed to particle ratio in the water is extremely good.
The other factor that it attracts the fish due to the smell of the feed, so when the mealie bomb dissolves it releases its flavour and the particles in the water and this assists to attract the fish.
The other function of the mealie-bomb is to get your choice of flavour into the feeding area and to attract the fish and to keep them there. Read more…Ball Dips. Try then and see what works for you.
Just a word of advice, don’t try and make your mealie-bomb as big as possible it will influence your rod by unbalancing the rod and it will also have a detrimental effect on your casting distance, make also sure the mealie-bomb is balanced on your trace an unbalanced mealie-bomb will affect your casting distance and would probably break-up mid cast and will fly all over the place.
Hook Baits
For the bank angler there is a huge variety of floaties, flavoured mealies and backing products available.
The only advise I can give is here keep it simple. My go-to is a yellow floaty with a sweet dough as backing. I have 10-12 types of floaties in my box, that are my go-to in any dam. I trust in them to land that fish for me.
Again, here I feel that is more of a marketing ploy by manufactures to keep anglers interested in their products by developing new products and offerings. How many floaties and flavoured mielies must there be and how many must you have?
Also remember sunlight disappears the deeper you go and so does the colour. Therefor colour does not matter but the flavour can make a difference.
Also remember keep your hook bait light, remember fish has a sucking action when it comes to feeding, they will pull particles in and blow it out again, so the lighter it is the easier it is for the fish to pick up the kook bait and for the hook to set.
The other important hook bait is of course earthworms , maggots, they make excellent bait during the months for Muddies and Barble.
