Bottom Fishing
Techniques and Considerations

Bottom fishing places your baited hook directly on, or within a few inches of the seabed, just where demersal fish will be looking for it.

In the temperate waters around the UK, bottom feeding fish species include the various flatfishes (plaice, flounders, dabs, soles, megrim, brill and turbot), skates and rays, cod, pout whiting, gurnard, dogfish and conger eel.

The primary food that these fish will be looking for are marine worms, shellfish crustaceans and other smaller fish.

Fishing Methods for Bottom Feeding Fish

The main methods of fishing for these species are:~

• With a Running Rig either from the shore or an anchored boat, a technique known as ledgering,


• With a Paternoster Rig, either from an anchored boat or a pier and a


• With a specialised rig for flatfish that's best fished on the drift.

Bottom Fishing with Live Bait

There's one version of it that's often overlooked - bottom fishing with a small live fish bait.

Fishing with live bait is seen by some people as being unnecessarily cruel, but there's no doubt that it's a very effective way of catching predatory fish. The concern is that the live baitfish suffers twice - once as a result of being impaled on a hook, and again in being unable to attempt escape when a predator is around. The debate continues, but the decision is yours to make.

Cod is a bottom feeding fish much sought after by UK anglers. Lugworm and crabs feature strongly in its diet - and so do small fish. Pout whiting (or pouting) frequent the same type of ground as cod, and hence this is one of the small fish that often finds itself on the wrong side of the food chain - from the pouting's viewpoint anyway. Consequently, if you catch a small pouting and aren't adverse to livebaiting you should try it as livebait for cod, using the pennel rig to attach it.

But there is another way ...

Using their normal cod terminal rig, some anglers attach to the hook another smaller hook on a very short trace - not more than an inch (25mm) or so. They bait this with a small piece of bait - fish strip or worm - leaving the main hook bare.

The idea is that a pouting is caught on the small hook, and in its struggle to get free, attracts the attention of a cod. Said cod swallows the unfortunate pouting, engulfing as he does so the main hook.

A good plan, but there's a flaw ...

In practice, not having read the rules, a dogfish or a codling gets the small bait and the angler, believing he's got a pouting about to do its job, leaves well alone.

Result? A long wait and no cod.

The same technique works equally well (or equally doesn't, for the same reason) when livebaiting for conger eels.