Hello everyone!

Got in from lake fishing a little while ago and i have a problem, I was float fishing with sweetcorn, trust me it works, when i realised there were several fish rising along the bank of the long island in front of me, i don't know how far it was away but with a small ledger weight you would be at risk from landing on the island unless you used a medium strength cast.. wow, that's clear!

Now the problem is i was using sweetcorn which sinks and these fish were feeding on the surface, they are also the biggest fish in the lake, averaging 6-7lbs i would say with some a little high and sme a little lower. So i got some bread, reasonable idea you might think but thats where the distance was a problem, i obviously couldn't free line cast that far, no way, so i stayed with my float setup which luckily had no weights on it as the float was self weighted so the bread would float nicely and the float would give me a little indication if i needed it. I squeezed some of the bread to hold the hook and left a bit fluffy to attract them and make it float, but i couldn't cast far enough like that, when i tried bigger bits of bread i covered the hook so much that the fish simply stripped the loose bits of bread letting the hard bit sink with the hook still hidden.

So i tried adding some weights but they sunk the rig and that was useless. so there is my problem, i need a heavy rig that will allow me to cast a fair distance with fragile bread but it also needs to all be light enough to let the bread float and because the lake is fairly deep its not possible to use a ledger with floating bread. So is there a solution that will give me the weight i need to cast as well as the buoyancy to keep the bait on the surface?

I thought perhaps fake bread, you can buy it in tackle shops and its made of rubber and looks like a perfect piece of bread torn from a slice. If anyone has used it can you tell me roughly how much it cost, and importantly, does it work? Also the weight would be nice to know but im thinking because it will give me a much more secure hook hold i should be able to cast stronger without tearing it from the hook and i can sort out some sort of rig to hold it up, the main thing is how it holds n the hook and how well it works.

Thanks people!

Not sure how deep the water was where you were fishing, but I imagine that if you lengthened the leader on your hook and maybe used a float to keep the hook and leader above the water and then a heavier weight to allow you to cast the line farther? If you see what I mean...

I did think of that but im not sure how deep the water is by the island, it could be straight down or a slope but the problem with having a long hook length is that when it comes to casting the bait and hook sometimes lands ahead of the weight and that would put the hook onto the island and into the bushes and the weight would be in the perfect place but without the bait the fish wont be tempted. Perhaps i should cheat and swim out to the island and just drop my line in the water

Although the water might not be that deep so perhaps it will work, ill have to find something big, bright and floaty, like a big bright float, and a heavy weighted object, like a weight, to test how deep it is there! Hopefully its not too deep, and if i can avoid spooking the fish with the line then thats a good idea.