Firstly this is chopped worm fishing for silvers not carp which is a different ball game but that is not to say that my way won’t work for carp. Chopped worm fishing can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be but I am going to outline what I do in three different scenarios- canal, lake and river. Before that -the worms. I now use medium denrobenas as it gives a wider variety of thicknesses but chopped lob worm in the winter can be devastating especially in very clear water.

Canal

This is in respect to normal canals not the deeper canals as found in Yorkshire or the Gloucester canal. I differ in many respects to most who fish chopped worm on a canal

both in terms of tackle and approach. I have two main approaches but both involve the pole, the first when the water is coloured can see me use a float of anything up to 1.5g depending on depth and tow with a long bristle- usually one of my Paster floats, the second when in clear mode (mainly winter) sees me using a 0.4gfloat with a standard bristle – the “Peatmoor”. Line in summer is 0.12mm to 0.10mm, in winter 0.10mm to 0.08mm, hooks are usually 18 or 20 with occasionally going to a 16 in deeper areas. Shotting is bulked with one no8 or no10 dropper(winter).

I do not set up a separate area for the chopped worm, generally I set up a line down the deepest part of the canal starting with groundbait and loose feed, usually not introducing any very finely chopped worm for an hour or more. When introduced it is cupped in on the same line neat (NB I do not wash the worms first) along with the medium it comes in. The thinking here is that the worm juice is soaked up by the medium rather than just being washed away.

The key element of this type of fishing is finding what size/thickness the fish prefer – size matters! I start with about an inch of the head of a thin

worm and if bites are not forthcoming I will use an inch from the middle of the worm before trying the tail segment. I rarely use more than an inch as I find anything longer results in the end being taken without the hook being anywhere near the fishes mouth so a strike at what appears to be a positive bite just results in the worm being pulled of the hook! I will try different thicknesses of worm until I find what the fish prefer.

Fishing the worm can fall into two distinct approaches. Bream and roach I tend to try and keep the worm still, perch I try to give movement by very carefully and slowly dragging the float either against any tow or then with the tow, occasionally lifting just the float out of the water and letting it fall back down. In both cases I tend to be 2-3 inches over depth. Worm on the canal tends to be viewed as a bonus fish approach but I try to use it to maintain catching while also having good chances of picking up bonus fish. One word of caution as regards feeding- I tend to feed the equivalent of two pinches of chopped worm initially and will not introduce any further until bites slow down/cease I then will cup in the same amount and fish that out while expecting fewer bites in winter from the second introduction, after this I will reduce the amount I put in as I find in winter especially it is a case of diminishing returns.

Lake

Tackle is similar but if there is a good head of bream I will mix micro pellets with the chopped worm 50-50, this is handy if on a commercial where they insist on the worms being cleaned first. Again the thinking is that the micros will soak up the worm juices as well as being an obvious attractant for the bream. Generally I will fish it the same way as the canal with the recognition that the depth is likely to be greater and I will try movement even after bream often moving it against the tow. Depending on the depth I will for deeper areas mix chopped worm in with the groundbait especially if there is a lot of tow on the water as I do not want it drifting out of the swim.

River

Depends on the flow! Basically two approaches, chopped worm in groundbait cupped in or bait-dropper used for neat worm. Often the bait-dropper is used after the initial feed as a top up. Floats are anything from 1g to 4g+ depending on flow and depth with line upped to 0.14mm to 0.12mm or 0.10mm in winter hooks anything from a 16 to a 20 depending on size of fish expected. I will try letting the float trot through at speed of flow, then try holding back and letting go and finally holding it dead still to see how the fish want it. Worm size is where it may surprise you – it stays at an inch even when after big fish on the river. I remember a winter league match on the Bristol Avon at Sutton Benger when I was well up the section (may even have won it) and had a bream, an eel over a pound and some perch . The guy on the upstream peg was telling his companion after the match that I was fishing just like him with “a dirty great big worm” but he couldn’t catch anything on it. I did smile to myself as the dirty great big worm was a segment from the middle less than an inch long!

That is my approach to chopped worm fishing, not saying it is right or the best way but it seems to work for me.