The most useful thing I ever learned about bait is that the right answer changes with water temperature, and that most anglers keep using their summer bait into November and wonder why it stopped working.
This is roughly how my choices move through a year. Treat the months as shorthand for temperature, because a mild January and a cold March do not behave the way the calendar says they should.
Spring: March to May
Water is warming but still cold at the start, and fish are recovering from winter and moving towards spawning. Appetite increases fast through this period.
Early spring I stay on winter baits: maggots, worms, bread, small baits fished carefully. As the water warms past about ten degrees, everything opens up and fish will take larger baits again.
Worms are outstanding in spring. Rain washes them in, fish expect them, and they work for almost every species. See worm fishing.
By May, boilies, pellets and meat are all back on the menu and feeding can be heavier.
Summer: June to August
Warm water, high metabolism, fish feeding hard and often high in the water. This is when big baits and heavy feeding work.
Boilies, pellets, meat, particles, corn. Feed properly rather than tentatively, because fish will clear it up.
Surface fishing comes into its own. Bread and floating baits for carp and rudd, and dry flies for trout. Our surface fishing guide covers the carp side.
Early mornings and evenings out-fish the middle of the day by a distance in a hot spell, and bait choice will not rescue a session fished at two in the afternoon in a heatwave.
Autumn: September to November
The best fishing of the year and the period I would pick if I could only fish for three months.
Water is cooling from a warm base, fish are feeding hard ahead of winter, and they are still active enough to move for a bait. Big baits still work and the fish are at their heaviest.
This is prime time for barbel, big carp and pike. Deadbaits come into their own for pike as the water cools. See deadbaiting.
Keep feeding at summer levels through September, then start cutting back through October and November as the water drops.
Winter: December to February
Cold water, slow metabolism, fish that move very little and eat very little. Everything changes.
Go small. A single maggot, a piece of punched bread, a small worm. A large bait sitting on the bottom in January is often simply too much food for a fish that does not want much.
Feed sparingly. This is the hardest habit to break. A pouch of maggots that would be nothing in July can kill a winter swim.
Prioritise attraction that travels. Cold water carries scent poorly and fish will not search far, so baits that leak, like paste, and bright visible baits like bread and corn earn their place.
Drop the oil content. Oily pellets and high-oil boilies are much less effective in cold water because the oil does not disperse.
Location matters more than bait in winter, by a wide margin. Finding the fish is ninety percent of it, and no bait choice compensates for fishing an empty swim. Our winter carp guide and pike in winter cover the two species where this matters most.
The short version
Warm water: big baits, feed heavily, fish will find you. Cold water: small baits, feed almost nothing, you must find them.
Get that one distinction right and you are ahead of most anglers on the bank.
Dan Whitfield started fishing aged seven on the canal at the end of his road and never really stopped. He spent his twenties and thirties on the match circuit – club level rather than national – before deciding he’d rather catch one decent fish than a net of small ones.
These days he mostly fishes the River Trent for barbel (personal best 14lb 2oz), the Oxford Canal for roach and skimmers in winter, and the occasional gravel pit when tench are spawning and the surface fishing is too good to miss. He’s a former club secretary and still helps with junior coaching at his local angling club in Nottingham.
At The River Bend, Dan writes the coarse species guides, river fishing technique articles, and the match and pole content.
Covers: Barbel, bream, roach, tench, carp (coarse context), river fishing, canal fishing, feeder, float, match/pole