Q. - Where do you get the best casters?

A. - For good quality casters turn your own. If you have great faith in your tackle dealer then all well and good, but I trust nobody to do mine.

Always turn casters from fresh maggots and they will turn out to be crisper and plumper,and you will be in control as to whether you produce white/light brown/dark brown or a mixture of all of them.

Most casters come from white maggots. When you buy maggots they will be in different batches from the maggot farm, and your tackle dealer may place some older maggots in with fresh maggots. They could be half a day apart which means your maggots will turn at different times.

I also turn casters from red maggots but I always do them separately.

As soon as your maggots start to turn you must take care to run them though every hour even though to start with you may only get between 10-50 casters at a time. Make sure that you remove all skins/dead maggots and damaged casters all the time.

Most anglers don't have time to do their casters this way, so here is a way round it.

Buy your fresh maggots on Saturday and leave them in the fridge until Wednesday night. Then run them through a riddle and remove the dust, whether maize or sawdust, and any skins etc. Then put the maggots into fresh SAWDUST and very slightly dampen with a few finger flicks of water - too much and the maggots will crawl every where - and leave the maggots out in the open with lid on, just in case, until Thursday morning. Then run them through before you go to work. Take off any casters and then put your maggots back into the fridge with the lid on until you come home from work. Then take them out of the fridge and run them through the riddle 2 or 3 times before you go to bed. Then put them back into the fridge and repeat this until Saturday. If your not working of course you can leave the maggots out all day and run them through as many times as possible.

There are a few ways to keep your casters fresh and crispy

• Place casters in a bait box and place some damp newspaper over the top of them and put them in the fridge
• I prefer to place them in a good quality self seal bag and take all of the air out of the bag and place this inside a bait box for protection against fridge burn which can damage and shrink your casters.

Remember casters are alive,and you must keep them alive,so by turning your casters regularly, and filling up your plastic bag, you are continually giving them fresh air before resealing the bag. Every time you open the plastic bag give your casters a shake.

Wherever you get your casters from you must refresh them daily or they will go sour and this will kill your swim.

Bob E