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For many years pre-baiting for pike was a controversial subject. Some claimed that it caused pike to swallow baits on the spot and hence led to deep hooking. Others said that it overfed the pike and you couldn't then catch them. The second is totally wrong I'm sure. You cannot really overfeed pike in most practical situations. The extra food only helps them put on weight or, in waters where they cannot grow any bigger, helps distract the pike from the roach anglers' prey! Feeding the pike either before fishing (pre-baiting) or after fishing certainly gets them used to feeding on deadbaits. And you can, of course, try them with different species. I doubt whether this will give you an edge on your friends but it may well produce a bonus fish or a run on a poor day - even the discovery of a new bait.

Pre-baiting does encourage gulping down deadbaits on the spot - at least for some of the time. But today's techniques should detect a bite quickly whatever the feeding habit happens to be on the day. Equally often, however, the pike runs with the bait even on heavily pre-baited water. And there's much more to it than that - pike in their lair, or hotspot, will often swallow a bait without swimming off, even on waters which have never seen a bait before. As always, bite detection is crucial to proper piking whenever and wherever you happen to be.

Pre-baiting works because pike can smell it. I established many years ago (see 'Big Pike' for details) that pike are able to home in on a smell from quite some distance away. Very few waters lack a current of some kind, 'even stillwaters', and no doubt the scent is picked up that way. Even in totally still ponds there is probably slow diffusion and gentle drift of smells. The pike will also home in on the splashes of the bait going in, and by sight as they sink through the water - so all three main senses are involved, sight, sound, and smell. But especially smell.

Pre-baiting can take a variety of forms. I once discovered that heavy pre-baiting attracted hordes of jack pike. But this is only partly true it seems to me now. It also attracts big pike. Whether you catch one or the other depends upon what is on the feed on the day. I also thought that the offal/chopped fish might be overfeeding the pike, so I put the attractor in a wire netting roll so they couldn't eat it! Now I'm convinced that you cannot overfeed pike, in any normal circumstances, so I dispensed with the wire.

You can pre-bait some days before fishing, and on a regular basis, or after fishing (to get them used to free offerings) or you can feed on the day. I of ten do the last, either by pieces of chopped bait or by freezer balls! Freezer balls I prepare weeks in advance from leftover baits, mincing them, mixing with ground bait, and freezing with a stone inside the ball. Wrap them in cling film!) they take up to thirty minutes to thaw and release a steady smell and small particles on to the drift. Naturally you can add oils and flavourings at the time of making them. You do not only need to use them on the day of fishing - you can pre-bait with them too of course, even though they will not get the pike used to bait sized offerings. 

I think it is obvious from what I have written that there is considerable scope for pre-baiting. For example I have on several occasions caught pike, which have, had chopped up offerings in their mouths, still cold but not frozen - in other words they had only just sunk. This also shows that pike will readily accept small chunks of dead-bait, such as a disc cut from a mackerel or a mid-body chunk. Yet we do not fish these as baits, do we? Think how much easier it would be to decide when to strike - you could, without hesitation, strike immediately just as you can when using sprats or sardines. Quite what the effect of really heavy pre-baiting is I do not know -at least as far as making generalisations is concerned. On one water where I did it heavily, putting in stones of varied fish and offal, I am certain that the pike put on up to 2lbs extra weight per year! But as far as fishing results were concerned on that water there were never any problems; they were 'on' varied deadbaits from the word go, and they still are many years later. The hotspots still exist; the piking has never declined; I get no damaged fish at all; no pike seem to die, and I now encourage and maintain the hotpots by feeding them, by pre-baiting them. I'm sure that such a Heavenly situation could exist on other waters if anglers were not so cack-handed and, indeed, selfish, in their catching and handling of fish.

So, more power to your bait throwing elbow. Go out there and pre-bait. But do think about it, and do try to deduce theory from the results obtained.