by David Ewing

I believe that heavy groundbaiters in the UK are still regarded as risk takers - aggressive anglers who 'break' the rules a bit. What makes us different from French anglers is that we have to think about heavy feeding and then make a conscious effort to do it, the French philosophy is totally different, for them heavy feeding is completely natural - it is how you fish!

...to illustrate this point 'I wanna to tell you a story'...
Every year I spend a week or so in France with Nicolas Béroud, the editor of Declic, along with a few anglers from my home town of Godalming. Earlier this year we fished the River Sarre, in Eastern France. The river was 3 metres deep, 40 to 50 metres wide and screamed bream. We were told that all the bream were big, averaging 2 kilos, with larger fish not uncommon.

Nicolas fished the downstream end peg next to English anglers Grip Knight and Perry Grey. The rest of us stretched out upstream and we all had a great day out. However it was what happened on these three end pegs that proved fascinating.

Grip is a typical cautious UK angler and is an expert at long range feeder fishing having done a lot of festivals in Holland and Germany (see Jan Van Schendel's Far Horizons article to learn more). Dutch and German anglers fish way beyond catapult range so Grip is not used to feeding a lot of groundbait from a catapult so he mixed up 3kg of groundbait to fish through his feeder. Perry is a discreet angler at the best of times and followed Grip's approach. Nicolas passed both anglers as he walked to the end peg and said simply 'not enough' and then proceeded to mix double the amount of groundbait.

Nicolas balled in 10 balls at the start and then cast a feeder and fired a ball every chuck. The others fed only through the feeder. They all had some fish to start with but as time went on Grip and Perry caught less and less whilst Nicolas started to build a big net. Nicolas had drawn an end peg and you would expect him to pull fish from downstream. What was interesting was that he succeeded in drawing the fish from in front of his two English neighbours as well.

What had happened was that Nicolas had made more noise by feeding the feeder and a ball of groundbait every cast. They all had fish to start with but Nicolas drew the fish from the other two because of the regular splashing of his groundbait. What was amazing was once he stopped feeding (he had to leave early) the fish quickly moved back upstream following the noise made only by the feeders. Noise, it would seem, was critical in attracting and holding these fish.

Noise or Vibration?
Noise is of course a rather misleading idea, we hear groundbait going into the water as a noise, a sploosh or a splash (soft balls or hard balls). Underwater the fish will not hear the same thing as water slows sound waves and any noise will be greatly muffled. What the fish will feel more are vibrations which they will pick up on. However I will still refer to noise attraction, as it is a term we can easily understand.

We hear a loud "sploosh" when a big ball hits the water. The fish do not hear the same thing. They will pick up on the strong vibrations passing through the water. The only noise the ball makes under water is a muffled thud!

All feeding involves some element of noise attraction. Feeding hemp creates a rattle on the surface as do casters. There is less noise attraction with maggots but fish will sense some form of slight vibration, even from a couple of pinkies dinking the surface. It is of course when we talk about groundbait, and especially balling in, that the noise factor - our underwater vibrations - really come into their own.

Even a few maggots dinking the surface will set off vibrations through the water.

Vibration as an attraction
I am convinced that this is a strong part of the attraction of groundbait. Of course groundbait is a source of food for fish, a nutritional attraction. Groundbait will form a cloud and create colour, a visual attraction, and will possibly help present bait in a better way on the bottom, again a visual attraction.

But a percentage of what goes into a groundbait is soil - therefore of no nutritional attractiveness at all. In winter groundbaits can be as much as 100% soils'. I agree that some groundbaits create a cloud and light groundbaits are used for certain species to stand out on the bottom - skimmers are attracted to light yellows and beige's, for example, however great care is taken with roach groundbaits to get their colour as close to the natural colour of a lake or river. The visual attraction is perhaps not always as important as one might think. Groundbaits are also a way of controlling the release of feed through a swim, particularly on rivers. Even so, the idea that groundbaits create some sort of false bottom on a lake or river is completely misleading.

Yet with or without soil, light or dark in colour, and with or without jokers, groundbait always makes noise when it is fed and the vibration from groundbait must surely be a vital part in its attractiveness.

I spent a long time talking to England International Steve Gardener about this subject and he was insistent that it is important to make sure that when groundbaiting at the start of a match you get a ball in quickest. When the whistle goes you need to be standing with a ball in your hand ready to throw so that straight away you are sending off these vibrations which fish seem to translate into feeding signals.

Noise is not always the answer
To read this article so far you would think that to win matches you have to chuck in more groundbait and make more noise than anyone else - nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, in many circumstances noise can be the kiss of death to a swim. Let me give you two examples.

The first is a story that Nicolas tells about his first visit to the Leeds Liverpool canal. This is a rock hard canal (as some of you know) where you usually drip feed casters for quality fish - anglers are said to have killed their swims because they have fed EIGHT casters instead of SIX!!!
Nicolas arrives with a groundbait bucket and two kilos of France's finest flours. He draws a peg, with a long walk, and sets off down the bank. I am not sure if he intended to fish with 2 kilos of groundbait or not, anyway, whether he couldn't face the walk back with that weight or not he mixed it up and balled it in. The anglers either side of him looked in disbelief, packed up and went home. Nicolas of course caught nothing, the local anglers knew this because of the bombardment!

The second story concerns a match I fished recently on a lake where tench and crucians are the target fish. The crucians usually come to the groundbait and I drew a reasonable swim but in very shallow water so I fished a maggot feeder and fired a ball a cast from the start. The anglers either side of me just fished small groundbait feeders. I was not worried when they caught the odd tench as I was fishing further out than they were and totally confident in my approach. Unfortunately for me no crucians showed on my bank at all - it was all tench. This was unusual but I had been roundly beaten off the pegs either side, one side had 10 kilos of tench, the other 12 kilos while I could only muster 4 kilos. What made it worse was that crucians were being caught in large numbers on the other side of the lake and 20 kilos weights were being registered, but only by the anglers feeding heavily with groundbait and making plenty of noise. I discussed this at length after the match with my friends and what we reckoned was happening was that the tench were not really settling on feed in the same way as the crucians would have done. The tench averaged well over a kilo so my neighbours only had 8 or 9 fish during the 6 hour match because they were just cruising around grazing on a little feed and moving on.

What I was doing by feeding balls of groundbait was constantly spooking them out of my swim so whilst I was confident of drawing crucians into the swim the noise I made had exactly the opposite effect on the tench. Now had the crucians been on my bank (which they often are), it might have been a different story!

Noise is definitely NOT always the way to attack margin fishing in lakes and canals. Much better to cup the feed in on a softly, softly basis!
If you have any doubts that noise will kill your swim... KEEP IT QUIET!!!

Types of noise
There are two distinct types of noise attraction used by anglers. There is the loud one off noise of an initial groundbait bombardment which undoubtedly disperses fish instantly but sees them return (surprisingly quickly in fact) to investigate what has caused so much disturbance in the water. You only have to chuck a stone into a clear river to see the fish in a swim shoot away from the stone only to return shortly after and swim around the spot where the stone fell in. This is partly because noise often signifies natural food - elderberries, for instance, falling on the water - and partly because fish are curious animals - or most are! It is worth just pausing to think about why you sometimes struggle after an initial balling in. Is it because the fish were scared off by that initial noise or because they came back over your feed and did not want or like what they found?

Bream respond well to regular feeding with balls of groundbait. No one knows this better than French bream magician, Diego da Silva.

Balling in at the start of a match is THE "noise" strategy used by continental anglers. The reason why they do this is to get the fish feeding as quickly as possible as they only have a three hour match window.

Top up feeding is the other key aspect of "noise" angling.

The second type of noise is the regular noise of top up feeding. This produces a different effect than an initial bombardment as the repeated noise will excite some fish and spook others. There are of course different ways of top up feeding. Roach are often more responsive to an initial bombardment with perhaps three or four balls every half hour than a heavy sploosh every cast. Bream on the other hand respond better to this regular ball approach.

Stories and anecdotes set the scene but we need to be more analytical if we are to understand noise better. We need to look for some factors which can explain when noise is likely to work and when it might work totally against you.

The first of these is:

Species of fish
There is no doubt that some species of fish are drawn to noise whereas others are repelled. The species which seem most noise friendly are undoubtedly carp and bream. Carp are so tuned into noise that I have watched Will Raison catch carp up in the water in the middle of a lake without feeding a thing in winter. He said to me 'give me five minutes' and he just cast a 25 gram doodlebug waggler and wound it in, cast again and wound it in, about six times. On the seventh cast the float settled and went straight under - why? Because he uses a 25 gram waggler, not for distance, but for noise. The carp immediately associate splashing with a feeder or a ball of groundbait landing and they then swim in to see what's on offer! Incidently it took less than his promised 5 minutes.

Nicolas stole Grip and Perry's bream on the Sarre because he made more noise and the fish thought that there would be more to eat in his swim. Of the fast river fish, nase are the most responsive to the 'ball a cast' approach.

Crucian carp are another noise positive fish, as I have already mentioned. Regular noise in a swim also attracts small fish. Gudgeon and bleak are particularly fond of a splash a cast to keep their interest.

There are other fish that respond to noise, but not constant noise. This is the difference, I think, between roach and bream and I would also include perch and barbel in this category. They do respond to a bombardment and will take top up feeding but not every cast. This is a general observation and there will be exceptions but I would certainly make less noise to attract roach and perch than I would to attract carp or bream.

Finally there are fish who are definate noise avoiders. Into this category come dace and to a lesser extent chub. All fish react to noise of some sort and chub respond well to the noise of hemp but loud noise will send these wary fish scampering. Tench are strange fish and often are caught at the end of a session when all the activity has died down. As I know to my cost, noise is not the best attractor for these fish.

Noise works well on hard fished waters, so long as there are plenty of fish present.

Fish density
There is no doubt that noise will work best where fish stocks are highest and the fish are competing and looking for food. These fish will react to noise as a food signal quickly in a bid to get there before the rest of the competition. This is why, strangely enough, education is not really a factor. You can fish the most heavily fished waters in Britain and catch making a lot of noise. These fish know that: noise = anglers = the chance of getting caught - but they also know that: noise = anglers = food - and because the waters are heavily stocked they accept the risk of getting caught as a price to be paid for eating, the same is true on natural rivers. The swims we fished with Nicolas on the Sarre were not heavily fished by locals yet there was a large head of fish which had mostly not seen a hook before but who quickly associated noise with food.

Where fish densities are low then a lot of noise is likely to work against you. This applies to fish-poor waters and also to heavily stocked venues on days when the number of fish likely to feed are low (think of winter fishing after a hard frost). If you are unsure that you have a lot of fish likely to feed in your swim then I would advise against making a lot of noise when feeding.

Water conditions
Noise works best in cloudy water and less well in clear water. The reason for this, I believe, is to do with the fact that in cloudy water the visual attractiveness of a groundbait is greatly reduced so the fish will be drawn more by the audio vibratory effect of groundbait. In clear water the visual attractiveness of a groundbait cloud or even the sight of feed falling through the water will possibly be greater.

Also in shallow water noise can run the risk of generating more panic than in deep water. This is why the type of noise you make on lakes is especially important. A soft over wetted mix makes a sifter noise when fed off a catapult, a sploosh, as opposed to the hard splash of a firm ball.

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