Groundbaiting have often been thought to be the secret weapon in fishing. Many fisherman tend to keep their groundbait recipes a secret as they believe it gives them an edge on there fellow fishers. Although certain mixes have been known to be very productive towards particular fish, it does not guarantee you a successful fishing trip. Keep in mind that groundbaiting is only effective as an additional weapon in a fisherman's arsenal.

Using groundbait when fishing is effective because it helps to attract the fish to your region and therefore improves your chances in catching one or many fish. How does it do this? Frequent fisher, P. Kuortti, explains:

• visual effect: Visual effect refers to the cloud that a ball of groundbait makes in the water when it melts at the bottom or while falling down.

• taste/smell: It is arguable whether it is the smell that we humans smell, or the taste that we taste or a combination of both, that attracts the fish to the groundbaited area. I like to think that since smells are airborne and there is no air in water, then it is the taste that attracts the fish. So seeing people sniff at my groundbait makes me smile, since I know that it tastes completely different from what is smells.

• loose offerings: It is almost compulsory to use live/loose bait in groundbait to get good results. Typical live bait in groundbait are joker, bloodworm, casters, maggots, chopped worm and not so live are for example several different seeds and sweetcorn. As you can see, the things that you put in your groundbait are the same ones that you use in the hook.

• food property: For some species like bream, the food property is important to be able to keep the fish in one place long enough. In general it can be said that the bigger the fish, the more food property they require.

• color: The color of the groundbait affects the size of the fish caught with it. It may sound unbelievable but it works. If you target to catch small roach use a dark groundbait. If you want to catch big bream, use light colored groundbait. This works so that the small fish are afraid to come on top of a light colored groundbait where they would be clearly visible to predators like perch and pike. The bigger aren't so afraid because of their size so they dare to come to even white groundbait. The dark groundbait for small fish is most efficient when there is only a few fish present and they cannot trust on the safety of a shoal or when they cannot trust on their speed to escape the predators (cold water).

Now that you have a basic idea of how and why groundbaiting works when fishing, let's look at some examples for using grounbait for different types of fish. Lets use the Bream and Roach fish as our examples. The Bream will represent those fish that eat mainly from the water and the Roach will represent the ones that prefer to eat about midwater. The grounbait that we will use will differ in how they break up or dissolve in the water. Since we will find the fish like the Bream at the bottom, it is important to make the mixes nice and sticky so they take a longer time to release the bait. However, for fish that feed like the Roach, we will want a mix that breaks within a couple of minutes. Once again we will rely on the knowledge of P. Kuortti to show us some examples of mixes:

"Over the course of the years I have developed these two mixes that I rely on today. The best advantage for me in making my own groundbait is that I can avoid ingredients that I am allergic to. These include fennel for example, the worst ingredient to me. I like this sport so much that I want to be able to do it in future too, so I do not want my allergies to get any worse from what they are now."

"My basic mix for Bream is the following:"

• 8 parts of white breadcrumb (binding)

• 2 parts of brown breadcrumb (not binding)

• 2 parts of PV1 (binding)

• 2 parts of Copra Melasse (binding)

• 1 part of biscuit flour (binding)

• 0.5 parts of coriander (taste)

• 0.25 parts of vanillin (taste)

"That recipe creates a rather binding mix that takes rather long to break on the bottom and is capable of carrying lots of loose particles down to bottom. It is a sweet tasting mix with a light brown/yellowish color. This Mix needs to be wetted preferably an hour or two before fishing to prevent it from popping up like a cork when you throw it in water. This mix sucks lots of water in it and if you wet it too hastily then you get floaters."

"For Roach I use this mix:"

• 10 parts of brown breadcrumb (not binding)

• 2 parts of PV1 (binding)

• 2 parts of grinded hemp (not binding, greasy)

• 2 parts of walnut flour (not binding, greasy)

"This mix gives a light, dark brown color groundbait that breaks up fast in water. The greasy ingredients make particles of the groundbait to rise upwards from the bottom and thus attract fish (cloud)."