Single or double maggot or casters are superb waggler baits because they fall slowly and enticingly through the water, aided only by two No8 dropper shot. Take your two pints of white maggots and put them in the container alongside the four pints of sawdust. Older sawdust, as I touched on earlier, is preferable but it doesn’t matter if it is fresh, as long as you have enough. Old, dark sawdust is preferred for turning casters. Another aspect of the Basia X45X that I was in awe of , was just how lightweight it is. For a rod that can generate so much power, it does really seem to defy the laws of physics how something you can hold on your little finger can cast 200 yards in the right hands.

Empty the casters into a bottle of cold water and freeze them that way. Take the bottle of water out in the morning before you go fishing and after a few hours your casters, the water would have defrosted. Empty them out into a maggot box or riddle them off. Are they as good after freezing?That memorable day with Benny was spent on the Bridgewater Canal at Plank Lane, Leigh, near to his bait farm. Once casters start appearing in earnest you are in business. Keep the measuring going, equal part maggots to dust - this tells you exactly how much maggot is left and how many you will need for the following week. Don't mix! In bygone years, waggler fishing was the nation’s number one form of float fishing, though today it is arguably under challenge from pole fishing in terms of popularity. However, research suggests that it’s still the favourite tactic for older anglers. Now for the bait itself. You need to start with fresh maggots, fresher the better. Don't worry about shops telling you that old maggots turn better. They may turn faster but the casters will be rubbery and shrunken. If you need casters for a weekend, I'd buy the maggots on the first week on the Wednesday of the week before, allowing ten days.

He suspects the larger fish are sitting on the bottom so two big pouches of casters are fired to the target area 25 yards out.The titles of rods are often just about marketing to different audiences, in this case a bass fishing one. In reality, this rod casts up to 8oz and is 13ft which means it’s ideal for a huge range of fishing situations. That ‘bass’ focus basically just means the tip is going to be more sensitive than in some other rods that will be a bit stiffer. This rod would be great for beach or estuary fishing. It’s a bit too long to be used comfortably on a harbour wall and the sensitive tip would not be ideal for pulling through snags over the roughest ground for fish like conger or buss. How long should my rod be for the types of mark near me? Casters vary in colour depending on how old they are but the mixture of shades of a caster, particularly the lighter ones stand out a mile off and this makes them very visual, so they are an easy target for carp to detect. You must, however, remember that though they don’t actually move, they are a living organism and they are not dead. Casters are simply part of the life cycle in between a maggot turning into a fly. The problem being that a caster is a chrysalis that wants to turn to a fly and all we can do is slow that process down to ensure the casters stay fresh. This means they require a little attention when keeping them. If you expose them to too much air they will go dark and float but if you give them no air at all they will die. You have to remember they are a living life form and need to breathe. If they get too warm it speeds up the process so you need to keep them cool and in airtight bags but they must be taken out of the bags and re-bagged every couple of days so they can breathe.

Bristled pole floats come into their own when you are only fishing a few inches overdepth, let’s say anywhere from a couple of inches to six inches overdepth. I like a bristled float in this situation because I find the bites more “readable”. Don’t get me wrong, just because it has a bristle does not mean you do not still need sensitivity and the float needs to be shotted down so that no more than 2mm to 4mm of the bristle is proud of the surface, but you do get better “readability” with a bristled float. I think it would be foolish to blindly think you will only catch fish on the caster tight across to features such as overhanging bushes, boats and man-made features such as bridge parapets, etc.

For distance casting, as you’d expect, the 13-foot version of the TX7 performs especially well. I was particularly impressed with the rod’s blank, too. With its core of high-pressure carbon fibre, it’s able to offer a tremendous amount of power while remaining remarkably lightweight, which is no mean feat.