I have lost count of the amount of people who've asked me how to deal with crayfish attacking their baits. Well, here's just one of many ways to cope with them and definitely my favourite by far.
We've all seen the bait cages and numerous ways to get around the crays' pincers. The only trouble with these is that many carp have wised-up to these already. This method is along the same technique but using slightly different kit.
Of course you could swap your hook baits for one of the many plastic alternative baits now available and these have caught some massive fish worldwide. If you still like to use boilies and are not yet converted to plastic baits then read on as this should help you.
First thing to do is obviously choose your rig, and for this instance Ive chosen to tie up a fluorocarbon stiff link with a standard knotless-knot and hair. The choice of hooklength material is obviously entirely up to you.
Don't forget to make sure that your hook is married up to the size of the hookbait; ie, don't use a size 12 and a 22mm boilie as this has little hooking potential for obvious reasons! In the picture shown I have used a size 8 hook to a 14mm hookbait.
The material we are going to use is available from most good haberdasheries or material merchants. It retails at around .60p - £1.20 per square metre. Just ask for some netting material. It's available in a variety of colours to suit most situations, including red, green, white, brown and yellow.
Start by taking a section of dental floss, coloured to suit would obviously be best but not essential.
Tie a basic loop into it and then leave it ready for later.
Now, take your chosen hookbait and position it into the middle of a piece of mesh. Next, between your first finger and thumb twist the mesh around the bait until it's nice and tight fitting.
Now with the aid of the floss and your pre-tied loop which now needs to be positioned over the top of the bait and pulled up tight.
Now its safe to remove your finger and thumb and tie up a couple more knots in the floss to secure it.
Once this has been done you then need to take some sharp scissors and trim the tag ends of the floss off to about 3mm and of course the mesh too.
Cut this flush at about 3-4mm from the knot. This can now be torched with a lighter and blobbed with your thumb.
Take care not to take the flame to close to the bait as this will burn through the mesh around the bait. Obviously also take care not to burn your fingers!!
Now push your baiting needle up through the meshed bait starting at the blobbed end first.
Pull the hair loop back through and now use the blob on the end as a stopper by just pulling the loop over the top of the blob. This works fantastically and also gives less for the pincers to work at.
You can use this method with a couple of hookbaits too, if you want a snowman set up or even with pop-ups.
With the advantage of numerous colours being available, the mesh can clearly be matched up to the hookbait colour. This is a massive advantage.
The mesh has kept my baits out in the water for a good 16 hours and the other obvious advantage this technique has, is that bait leakage is not compromised due to excessive packaging around the bait!
Courtesy of Nuts about Carp
Tight lines
Vast variety of colours available
Place bait into mesh
Tie a loop into the floss first
Twist the mesh between your first finger & thumb, pinch tight
Pull floss over bait and tie a couple of knots
Cut away tag ends on floss & mesh to about 3mm
Use a lighter to blob off tags. Mind your fingers!
Pull hair loop through bait with a needle & loop over the blob
