Good groundbait mixing, is an essential thing to learn if you want sucess with groundbait. If you are a beginner and want to know how to mix a good groundbait, then you are on the right page. Here is my beginners guide to mixing a perfect fish catching groundbait mix!

What you will need:

• Groundbait
• A round mixing bowl or bucket
• Water (Water from the lake or river is best!)
• Hookbaits to put in the mix e.g Maggots, casters, corn, pellets etc

The first thing to do is to pour some groundbait into the round mixing bowl or bucket (See below)... All the DRY content (except loose feed and colouring) should go in at this point.

Now mix the dry content together, no water at this point!

Once the dry content is mixed together, now slowly add some water to the mix, stirring vigrously with your hand. Remember to mix the whole mix, making sure all the mix gets contact with water.

Keep adding water until the bait can bind together. Remember it is very important not to overwet the mix. The mix should still feel light and fluffy.

Now let the mix stand for 15 minutes to let the groundbait soak up any water that is left. This is a good time to start making up any rods etc. If its raining, remember to cover the bowl to avoid overwetting the mix.

If you have followed the guide properly, then you should now have a mix that has soaked up any remaining water, and is probably a little harder to make into a ball. This is perfectly normal at this stage, the solution is to add a little more water.

It is important to remember that the amount of required water at this stage depends on how you are going to use the mix.

If you intend on throwing groundbait balls out to your float this will require more water than if you are going to use a Swimfeeder.

For throwing groundbait, the ball needs to be able to stay together without falling apart during the throw or being a wet messy and unattractive lump. When you can make a firm ball that can be thrown the distance required without breaking up you have added enough water. For a feeder mix very little water will be needed at this stage. Just enough so that it can stay in the feeder during the cast.
Top tip: The deeper the water you are fishing, the more water will be required to get the ball down to the bottom before it breaks down into a flat bed of feed. This is also the same for feeder fishing. By not adding enough water the groundbait will break up as soon as it hits the water meaning that all those lovely particles will take longer to get down to the bottom possibly resulting in the fish moving upto the surface.

At this stage you will have small lumps in the mix. These need to be "taken" out of the mix, but I don't mean one by one as thats a waste of bait and would take a while!. You can get rid of them in a few ways, firstly you can rub all lumps out of the mix with your hands or you can buy a "Maggot Riddle" which would work in the same way as a sieve. In the summer months its not as important getting the lumps out entirely because the fish are more active and will feed more regular. Cooler winter months when the fish do not feed its extremly important to get the mix as fine as possible to avoid overfeeding. Remember in the winter months fish can go days without feeding!

The color of the groundbait affects the size of the fish caught with it. It may sound unbelievable but it true. If you are targeting 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 are not as afraid because of their size so they dare to feed over a lighter 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 in cooler water such as in the winter time.

If you only happen to have a light mix, and want to make it darker, then you can buy groundbait colouring which enables you to change the colour. These are fairly expensive to buy, but because they are so concentrated, only a very small amount is required.

Once you have mixed the colour into the mix (if applicable), it is now time to add samples of your hookbaits, this gives your mix that little extra pulling power, aswell as helping to give the fish more confidence. By not adding loosefeed in your groundbait, the fish will become nervous of any bait you have on the hook, as there will only be one of them on top of your feed, resulting in less bites! So add small amounts of each bait you intend on using during the day. Don't overdo it, you can always add a little more later!

Adding too much and too many different types will result in it being harder to bind the bait good enough for throwing. If you intend on float fishing and feeder fishing then have 2 mixes, one for each. The feeder mix could have that little loose feed in. Mix the feed in to spread it around the mix!

If you have followed my advise correctly you will have the perfect groundbait mix.

This one is my float fishing mix and as you can see the end result was a perfect SPLASH right next to the float!