Years ago, when you talked about ‘slop’, you meant groundbait wetted down into a soup for catching surface feeding fish like bleak on rivers. How times have changed!
The arrival of commercial fisheries has seen anglers taking commonly-used baits like pellets and meat and playing about with them to make a form of slop for tackling shallow water on the far banks of snake lakes or in the margins.
F1s have helped make slop fashionable, as this is a fish that in summer loves feeding in shallow water, but which won’t always settle over a small pile of particles. Pot in a bit of slop, though, and tails come up in seconds!
Sloppy groundbait works well on commercials, but instead of the bleak mixes of 20 years ago, meat, pellets, worms and even corn have been fashioned into deadly slops for bagging up in the shallow water.
Classic groundbait
This is the type of slop we’re most familiar with, but I don’t want the groundbait to hang in the water too long – I still want to catch fish on the bottom. I’d go for a fine-textured mix, adding water until it becomes overwetted, but not a soup. This will give off a cloud, with the bulk of it sinking fast to the lakebed.
Micropellets
As a slop, wetted micro pellets still retain their shape, but they give off a cloud and their breakdown process begins a lot earlier. This means that I can fish an expander pellet over the top to mimic the softness of the feed. Don’t overwet them, though, or they will quickly turn to mush!
Worm slop
I remember Fish O’Mania semis at Cudmore when fishing worm slop across was the tactic. It’s still good, but it’s at its best just after spawning. You need a very fine chop of worms to create a mush, and then add some water and the soil that the worms came in to create that soup-like consistency.
Finally, meat
Meat may have lost its appeal in high summer, but it’s brilliant fed as a slop, offering the fish thousands of tiny particles to grub around in while also creating a bit of cloud. I put the meat through a cutter twice, then add some water. Without water it becomes an unusable paste.
