This Winning Ways video was a welcome popup on YouTube over the weekend. Casters are a hot topic at the moment – and not just because we are coming into the summer!
There are few smells worse than minging, sour casters. Keeping them in bottles looks like a decent option and seems to keep them usable for a long time.
Looking at the ones in the clip, they don’t appear to get burn marks on them either. This is a common problem if you keep them in the fridge inside a plastic bag. On a recent trip to White Acres we put casters in paper bags and then inside plastic bags with all of the air squeezed out of them. This worked well, but took a while to pack up all of the bait we had with us.
Recent price increases have made lots of bait more expensive, and casters are no exception, especially on match days where 4 pints to a gallon might be needed. Lindholme Lakes caused a bit of a fuss earlier in the year when they banned casters in matches through the summer. The aim is to help make matches more competitive and cost effective. Not all match anglers want to spend so much money on bait, which seems reasonable.
In the past, I’ve tried quite a few other options for keeping casters. My usual method is to keep them in a white 5 liter bucket filled with water. The water needs draining off and replacing every day or so as it can start to smell a bit weird if you leave them. The bucket has a lid and handle, so can be taken to the bank. The white colour helps keep them cool by absorbing less heat from the sun. Ideally they still need to be kept in the shade and the water might need changing every few hours during the proper summer.
