Sweetcorn is one of the regular baits that anglers now carry all year-round, and this month I've decided to offer a few top tips to better sweetcorn fishing.

1 - Hooking. There are several ways to hook sweetcorn on, but one thing you should try when the fishing is hard is burying the hook away in the middle of the corn. Believe me, this really can make a big, big difference on days when the fish are not responding easily.

2 - Try squeezing the kernel out of the corn. Again, this is a trick that I have successfully employed for a number of years now. This can make all the difference when fishing close to islands or in shallow water. When fish are suspicious, seeing a piece of corn fluttering about can be very attractive to them. When fish do feed on a corn skin, the bites are difficult to miss. It is also worth trying in winter and can bring you a few extra fish.

3 - Keep Your Corn In Water. The first thing that I do when I get to my peg is open my tins of corn and tip them into a bait tub. I then wash the corn in the lake water, and I keep the corn in some of the water.
Why do I do this? Well, firstly, I like to keep the corn in water because it makes the skin go a bit softer. Secondly, washing the corn gets rid of all the sticky juices the corn comes in. This sticky juice can be a real pain when it gets on to your pole, making shipping in and out very difficult!

4 - Use Corn To Keep Fish On The Deck. When you fish deeper water, carp will start to come shallower for baits like pellets, casters and maggots if you loosefeed regularly.
But corn is a great bait for keeping the fish on the bottom. In deep water I tend to use corn to create a 'bed' for the fish to stay over. There is nothing to stop you from fishing a big piece of meat over the corn, but corn does keep fish on the bottom.

5 - Try Flavoured Corn - It's No Gimmick.
Flavoured, coloured sweetcorns do work, and I have had success in years gone by with red, strawberry-flavoured corn, especially where bream and carp are concerned. You can always try flavours from the Sonu Baits range such as pineapple, monster crab, scopex, halibut, tutti frutti, CSL and strawberry, to pep up your baits. A good tip when flavouring baits is to put a few drops of flavour into a sandwich bag then give the bag a brisk rub to spread the floavour out. I then add the corn, blow some air into the bag, give it a good shake, so the corn soaks up the flavour, then freeze overnight. Freezing the corn also makes it much softer.