Dare to be Different

On many of the lakes we fish, the fish have become used to standard boilies, and it can pay to do something a little different. There are several ways to do this but one of the best is to glug your bait. Glugging is the name given to the technique of letting your boilies soak for a long period of time in a liquid attractor, so that they soak up and get coated with whatever you’ve picked. Several bait companies make ready to use bait soaks/glugs or you can design your own. The best ones are thin enough to soak into the boilie but also thick enough to provide a coating that doesn’t wash off to quickly.
Preparing glugged baits is simplicity itself. Just take a small plastic pot (make sure it has a good leak proof lid. I prefer the screw on type rather than push on, as the glugs can make the push on ones less reliable. I had a mate who glugged a very expensive pair on binoculars in the bottom of his rucksack a few years ago.) and put a small quantity of boilies in the pot. If you want to keep the glugged baits for a long while use shelf-life boilies not from frozen. Cover with the glug, put on the top, and shake well …. Job done. Over a period of time the glug will soak into the boilies. As a high attract bait they will just get better and better. One slight disadvantage is that the glug will tend to soften the boilies, so bear this in mind if you want to leave the bait out for long periods of time, or if the water is stuffed with nuisance fish.
Glugs can be very effective at any time of the year, but can really come into their own in the winter, when they work best as single high attract hook-baits. Don’t be tempted to put extra free baits out, it just cuts down your chances of a pick up. I like “fruity” glugs in the warmer months and “spicey” ones in colder water.
To cover all situations it can be a good idea to create a glug bag which has a range of glug pots in it. Another variation on the glugging theme is to wash your baits in glug. This is ideal if you are fishing a river, or a large expanse of water, where you need to get the maximum amount of attraction into your swim. Again it is very easy to do. Just put your bait into a tub or bait bucket, pour a small amount of glug into the container and shake them up so all the baits get coated. They can go straight into the water at this point. A lot of the glug will wash off as the baits fall through the water, but that’s a positive, as the attraction covers all the layer of the water, hopefully pulling fish down to your bait. In the case of running water, it is washed off and gets carried downstream again hopefully encouraging fish to move upstream to your bait.