Session Blog - The spring bait comparison

Alternative baits are on everyone's lips! The possibilities of what you can ultimately hook are very diverse, but in my fishing, fishing with dew worms and dead bait fish, i.e. deadbait, have proven to be particularly effective in recent years. Now, of course, the question is which of the two baits is the "better" one and whether there are phases during the year when one bait catches better than the other.

During a session last week, Sascha Kral and I wanted to get to the bottom of exactly this question. The plan was to fish for two days at two completely different locations, each of course with a dew worm and dead bait fish.

At the location in the early afternoon, we noticed that the water of the Rhine was about 1 degree warmer on the calm side than on the opposite side. So we opted for the calm river bank and the choice fell relatively quickly on a shallow groyne field with a moderate current and a water depth of 1.50 - 3 metres. We chose the lowest groyne of the groyne field because we wanted to fish with 4 rods and here we could also fish the stone pack below the groyne, where the water broken by the groyne meets again at the baffle slope of the stone pack.

Now it was time to work! Two rods with juicy dew worm bundles on the Tree-U-Pose and the other two with Deadfloat, prepared with our Deadbait Puncher and cork sticks. As I said, we put the bottom rod on the baffle slope of the pack, the top rod went straight into the groyne pot and we staggered the other two in the groyne. It was mid-April and the water of the Rhine was just under 13 degrees. In the weeks before, the dew worm assembly was the undisputed top bait. We caught almost all the fish in the cold water exactly on this bait. As the water temperature rises, however, the whitefish become more and more active and this naturally leads to their interest in our worms. This also makes fishing with worms in warm water a bit difficult. From our experience, however, we know that the deadfloat rig works well then. After the mounts were set and we had set up our little camp, we were of course very curious to see what the night would bring. Because we were in a phase just after a high tide, we had absolutely no idea what the fish were doing and so we went to bed at around 10 o'clock in the evening without any fish action. The night was quite cold and clear, despite the warm daytime temperature, and we both fell into a deep sleep.

5.30 BITE!!! The Solid Bank, which we had set as a short rod on the groyne head, whipped forward and the HellsBells bells did their job reliably. After a short drill, our first catfish of the session finally appeared. 1:0 for the worm assembly! We were just sitting with our coffee when the sun started to gain power again and completely out of nowhere, Sascha's rod suddenly went crooked and the fish slowly ran into the brake, just the way you want it to. The second fish of the tour did us the honour and this time it was the deadfloat rig that brought success. So after the first night the score was 1:1 and of course we were very excited to see what the new spot would bring.

Changing places always means work and nobody likes it, but when the work is done and the rods are set in the new place, it always feels good. Our choice for the second night was a medium-deep rock pack with moderate current and a water depth of about 4 metres. Pack fishing doesn't usually allow for much creativity in the presentation, so we placed two mounts upstream and the other two downstream. We alternated the two different lures (worm and deadbait) on the rods so that we would get as objective a comparison as possible. When the sun had said goodbye, things went pretty quickly at the new spot. At around 8.30pm we got a bite on Sascha's Buster rod on a dead trout. Another half-strength fish showed up after a short but crisp fight and so we could set our score clock to 2:1 for Deadbait.

After that, events came thick and fast. We were setting Sascha's rod again when my worm rod showed another bite. Nothing wild but definitely an action. When we were over the fish and the wrecking stone that hadn't come loose during the bite came towards us, we already knew that the monster catfish wasn't going to appear here, but when we saw the stately-sized bream hooked on the side, we were actually speechless for seconds before we both laughed out loud. There was then a heated discussion about whether this fish was a "scoring fish" and we then agreed on half a point, because a fish is a fish, even if it was not the target fish.

The rest of the session is told quite quickly. Late at night we had another bite on the worm rod, but unfortunately the fish didn't stick. In the end it was a real result of two fish caught with dead bait fish and one target fish caught with dew worm. The result after bites was 2:2 and therefore even.

Every session is different, of course, and therefore no universal rule can be derived from our experiences, but we have seen once again that both work and the place is independent. In the coming weeks we will of course continue to trust both lures but we know from experience that now is the time for deadbait fishing!

If you feel like it, you can also watch the short video of the session, which you can find here directly below the article.

Many greetings, Sven