Get the Best Out of Your 8-Millers!
Dynamic match duo Kev Grout and Luke Church reveal their eight preferred ways of using DNA’s 8mm boilies.
Luke with a mid-twenty common caught while fishing over a bed of 8-millers
- Catapulting over zigs
We do a lot of zig fishing, particularly in matches, and have found that on waters that are heavily stocked with fish, the regular sound of bait being applied can often result in a quick bite. The 8-millers are perfect for flicking out over zigs on a little-and-often basis, like a match angler would do with maggots or pellets, as they make a lovely little ‘plopping’ sound when they hit and water, which undoubtedly attracts fish’s attention and brings them up in the water.
Two or three boilies every 30 seconds can often bring about a quick bite on well-stocked venues
We like to use 10mm PB pop-ups for our zig hookbaits
- Inside solid bags
Like most people, we tend to use pellets and groundbait to make up our solid bags, but when fishing at range and wanting to get a small parcel of boilies around your hookbait, a solid bag packed with 8mm boilies can be a fantastic alternative. We tend to use the smaller PVA bags, but it’s surprising how many 8-millers you can fit inside while keeping the bag nice and tight. A tightly packed solid bag of 8-millers will easily fly in excess of 100 yards in the right hands.
You can fit a surprising amount of 8-millers in a small solid bag
A 10mm Milky Malt amongst a parcel of 8mm boilies will be difficult for most carp to resist!
Kev and a lovely original mirror caught using a solid bag containing 8mm boilies
- Filling gaps in a spod/Spomb
When baiting up a range with larger boilies, there is often quite a bit of wasted space in the spod/Spomb, which means more casts are required to get the required amount of bait to the spot. Mixing the 8-millers with your larger boilies will mean all the gaps in the spod/Spomb will be filled, helping it to fly truer and ensuring it always opens on impact with the water. We always add a bit of matching Hydro Spod Syrup when spodding; it’s another great edge and can be used all year round.
The 8-millers fill the gaps in the spod
We always add a dollop of Hydro Spod Syrup to every spod load
- Used in conjunction with wafter on fluoro D-rig
This might sound quite specific, but this particular presentation has been hugely effective for us, doing us fish close to upper thirties. It doesn’t seem to matter which food bait we use, as they have all been as good as each other, especially when tipped with a Milky Malt wafter. It is possible to trim the wafter down so that it sits enticingly above the lakebed, and such is the nature of the fluoro D-rig, the fish are nailed every time.
Used in conjunction with wafter on fluoro D-rig
- Adding to spod mixes
Most spod mixes are essentially made up of small bait items, such as hemp, pellets, maggots, corn and chopped boilies, mixed up together to get the carp grubbing around your spot until they find your hookbait. The 8-millers are absolutely perfect for this, and when offering matching hookbaits over the top, it’s impossible for the carp to determine which 8mm boilie has a rig attached.
The addition of 8-millers make this the perfect spod mix
- Used as double hookbaits
As fans of small hookbaits, it’s very rare, if ever, that we fish two boilies on a hair, but with the 8-millers now in our armoury, we’ll often give them a try and, more than not, they work! When combined together, they are only 16mm in size and look very enticing when sitting on the bottom of a lakebed amongst a mesh bag of freebies.
Simple but deadly effective
7. With flatbed feeders
We tried to keep this one under our hats for as long as we could, but now people know about our love of flatbed feeders, we are happy to share our findings. Normally considered a coarse match angler’s tactic, we’ve had dozens, if not hundreds, of fish of all sizes on the flatbeds and use them for a large part of our fishing. We use a groundbait of Krill Meal, Stick Mix, Crayfish Mini Mix and Tuna Oil and plug the hookbait into the mix before casting. Once the mix breaks down, the hookbait is the only sizeable item of food amongst the pile of bait and often is the first thing to be snaffled by any inquisitive carp.
Flatbed feeders have caught us loads of carp
A tasty morsel for the carp to home in on
8. With larger hookbaits
If you aren’t confident with the idea of using smaller hookbaits or have problems with nuisance fish in your venue, then you can always put on a bigger hookbait, such as a 16mm or 18mm, and use the 8-millers as feed. What might sound surprising, though, is we’ve found the 8-millers don’t tend to get picked up by the smaller fish anywhere near as often as larger baits, so we are happy to use them at any venue.
A larger hookbait with a bag of 8-millers often does the business if there are nuisance fish present
