An Attempt to Breed Gozzers

There were one or two matches fished on the Longleat Lakes in the late Autumn and Winter months. From the first frosts onwards the bream became quite finicky. They would just suck at the end of your maggot without really registering a bite and inevitably you would end up striking any movement whatsoever on the float and the tip. We talked of the problem amongst the local Warminster matchmen and we discovered that the anglers who were cleaning up on the pools money, were in fact breeding their own gozzer maggots.

The eggs of these type of flies would develop into maggots that were half as big again as the normal shop bought maggots. Because the breeders used hearts and possibly livers of chickens the gozzer maggot was also much softer than ordinary maggots. Because they were softer, bigger and more delicate, the fish would hang on to them longer and that resulted in better bites, which would result in more fish being caught. In those days you could not buy gozzers from tackle shops and you had to breed them yourself. They were normally only produced in small numbers to insure the larger size and as such were only used as hook bait rather than being loose fed to the fish.

So that we could keep up with the gozzer men we decided to give it a go at breeding some gozzers. It was a bit of a challenge and so I decided that I would try it.  I asked many other anglers how to go about it and also I read as much as I could in the angling press. There was no internet in those days to refer to for advice like we have today. It was all shrouded in secrecy and jealously guarded by those who had done it successfully, so I had my work cut out gleaning the information I needed. I soon found out it was just throwing any old bit of chicken in a box at the bottom of the garden. First you need a heart of the chicken or if not at least a liver. Secondly, the flies that produce gozzers only lay their eggs in the dark. If you allowed your heart to be accessible in the daylight hours all sorts of flies would quickly lay their eggs on your meat and it would become useless for gozzer breeding.

You needed to place your heart on top of a small sieve inside a box with fine wood shavings or maize meal set underneath it. A small hole had to be left in the side of the box so the fly could enter.

 You could not put it out in the garden as animals would be able to get at it, so it had to be in a cool place in your garden shed. A few incisions or slashes had to be made in the heart so the fly could crawl right inside it to lay its eggs.

Through the darkness hours you had to periodically check the heart to see if a blow had occurred. As soon as you realized that the eggs had been laid; you needed to scrape off around 75% of the eggs to ensure that you did not end with loads of small gozzers. You needed just enough large gozzers for hook bait.

With that plentiful supply of food and few other maggots to compete with it would allow them to reach the size you wanted. After that time you must not allow any other flies to contaminate your heart so you have to close the box up entirely.

When the gozzers have eaten enough they will start to leave the heart. At that time you will need to ensure that the hole sizes of your sieve are big enough to allow the gozzers to drop through onto the sawdust or maize meal.

If you do not keep an eye on the gozzers at that time and they do not have enough stuff to clean themselves they will just froth up and drown in their own sweat. This would be a bit of a catastrophe if you have got to this stage. Maize meal is very good to give them a clean shiny soft coat and will allow them to sink better in the water. It does work, but takes a long time to produce a few gozzers. It involves a lot of work and you will lose a lot of sleep doing it properly.

With regard to my own efforts, I failed miserably. After 4 nights of waiting for a blow on my chicken heart, nothing happened. I was told later that it was a bit of a hit and miss sort of thing and depended to a great extent on the weather and temperature. Gozzer breeding is not for the faint hearted and involves a lot of disappointment before you can get it right. I aborted my attempts and thought that those other breeders were welcome to their pools money.

After a while the fad did die away and was replaced by wasp grubs, but that is another story. I found that getting wasp grubs was a really risky business all round. Over time, the advent of the red, yellow and chrysodine bronze maggot took over as the bait of the future. That is before the boilie revolution came about. Again, another story!!