Preparing Hemp Seed for Fishing

Hemp seed, there are few fishing baits around that attract fish like hemp. Hemp seed is an outstanding fishing bait for most species of fish and you could be a specimen carp angler, a barbel angler, a bream or tench angler, a match angler or a pleasure angler just enjoying a day’s fishing, whatever branch of angling you participate in, this article on preparing hemp seed for fishing will be of use to you.

At the time of writing I’ve paid £30 for the 15 kilo sack of Hemp Seed that features in this article, hemp seed isn’t the cheapest fishing bait by any means but it is certainly a very effective one and fish like Carp, Barbel, Tench, Bream, Roach, Dace and Chub just can’t resist the magic seeds, hemp seed seems to have an almost drug-like attraction to all of these fish.

A sack of hemp seed for fishing, currently around £30 for 15 kilos

Obviously you can’t use hemp in its raw form straight out of the sack, it has to be soaked and boiled first, this can be a long and laborious task specially if you are carp fishing with hemp seed and require large amounts of the seed. Many carp anglers completely overdo hemp seed and they put so much in that the carp get pre-occupied on the hemp seed to the exclusion of all other baits, I’ve had this happen to me in the past and I’ve sat there with a swim that resembles a jacuzzi as the carp root out every last grain of hemp whilst ignoring the hookbait I’m fishing over the top. With this in mind I limit my hemp seed to one third of my spod mix these days and I make up the other two thirds with trout pellets, sweetcorn, chopped boilies and whole boilies, this gives me the best of both worlds as far as hemp seed fishing goes, I have enough hemp in the swim to hold fish but it’s not the dominant bait so the fish will feed more on the pellets, sweetcorn and boilies and these are the baits I want the carp to be picking up because one of them will have my hook in.

Click here to watch a step by step Guide on how to prepare hemp seed for fishing

The correct way to prepare Hemp Seed in a pan is to soak it for 24hrs then boil it for 20 minutes until the grains start to split, as I only require enough hemp seed to do one third of a spod mix I can use a Thermos Flask to prepare it instead. I’m limited to about 3 pints of hemp using the flask method but this amount is perfect, by the time the spod mix is made up I’ll have in excess of 9 pints or over a gallon of bait, this is a good bucket full and easily enough for a carp session. Using a Thermos Flask also allows me to cut out the laborious task of slaving away over a hot stove cooking up pans and pans of hemp, I simply put my 3 pints of hemp in the flask, add boiling water, seal the lid and leave the hemp seed in the flask overnight to cook. Next morning the hemp seed can be emptied out into a bucket and it will be perfectly split and ready to take fishing so that's perfect hemp seed for fishing with minimum effort, it takes as much of your time as boiling the kettle!.

Preparing hemp for carp fishing, use a pint glass to measure/pour the hemp into the Thermos Flask

As well as being a perfect amount for a bucket of spod mix, 3 pints of hemp is also perfect for a day’s barbel fishing on the river, it’s also twice as much as a match angler or a pleasure angler would need for a day’s stick float fishing on the river for roach, dace and chub, you can split the 3 pints up and freeze one half for your next session if you are preparing hemp seed for just pleasure fishing.


So that’s it for preparing hemp seed for fishing, whether it’s hemp seed for carp, hemp seed for barbel or just hemp seed for a pleasure fishing session, using a Thermos Flask is a very cheap way to prepare these magical seeds and hemp is certainly well worth buying.
Hemp seed also works really well in combinations with other particle baits, specially for carp, the 'hemp and pellet' I've covered in this article but hemp seed also goes well with Sweetcorn, Maize, Tiger Nuts and Maple Peas. I've already covered preparing and using some of these particles and they all work brilliantly when fished over small beds of hemp seed, you can check out some of these carpy particles below, each article has a youtube video to go with it and you can watch it from the blog or better still pay my youtube channel a visit, there are loads of fishing videos on there and they are all split by category so it's easy for you to browse them.
How to prepare Maize for Carp Fishing
How to prepare Tiger Nuts for Carp Fishing
How to prepare Maple Peas for Carp Fishing
Fishing How to prepare Pigeon Conditioner (Cheap alternative to hemp)


A big river weaver carp caught fishing with hemp seed as feed

Until next time.
Tight Lines.
Mark.