Bread mash
Bread mash is an old fashioned ground bait for rivers. It’s purpose is to disperse very small bread particles downstream to attract the fish up to where you are fishing. Use stale white bread to make traditional bread mash. Bread from a bakers, dried over a couple of weeks is the best, but here I’m using up all the left overs I have collected recently.
Making bread mash
Roughly break up the stale bread into a bucket, then cover in cold water and leave to soak for several hours. Completely soak the bread, it should not have any hard or semi hard lumps in it at all.
Next, drain off the water. I pour everything into the sink and leave it for a few minutes, the bread remains very wet after draining. I use a colander and squeeze out as much water as I can. Some angler put the bread into a cloth bag and squeeze the bag to wring out the water. Use whatever method you see fit, just squeeze out as much water as you can.
Now comes the mashing part of mashed bread. Mash the bread into a pulp with a potato masher. Keep mashing until there are no lumps left. Mashing can take some time, but the smoother the mash, the better it will work.
This batch of bread mash was made from stale bread with the crusts on, which I like to use for chub fishing. For roach fishing I will make mash from just the crumb which makes for a finer ground bait. I usually make more than I need for my next trip and freeze the rest for later.
Using bread mash
The finished mash is soft and quite sticky, wetting your hands will make it easier to handle. Throw small balls into the head of your swim, they will quickly break up on the bottom sending a cloud of bread particles downstream. The particles will be too small for the fish to eat, but the fish will follow the stream of particles to your swim, where hopefully you can catch them.
Related
Small river float fishing for chub
