How your bait can really make a big difference to your catches in hidden and very obvious ways!
Scientific tests on carp feeding and nutrition often involve protein-rich foods based on casein and gelatine, but you have to ask how many of these tests involve bloodworm, zooplankton, algae, mussels, snails, all forms of insect larvae and aquatic weeds fish etc that fish thrive on. Such natural food items are easily detected by carp due to evolutionary adaptation through millennia and carp can derive maximum nutrition from these foods and digest them very efficiently indeed, and we can exploit all this in our bait use and design! We can certainly improve our catches by exploiting not only the nutritional impacts of natural food items and their profiles of stimulating substances, but by how we apply our baits and manipulate natural carp feeding behaviours also!
Many anglers think about their baits in terms of nutrition but really miss the other points about actual feeding stimulation processes and mechanisms. In the real world, what if you have raised the level of natural food organisms available because of the abundance of fishing baits fed into a lake? What if the fish can pick and choose whether they actually need fishing baits to supply any needs at all at any particular point in the year?
How things have changed in carp fishing since I began in the 1970's when most carp anglers caught single and double-figure fish and a carp weighing over twenty pounds was very special indeed and a thirty pound fish was a fish of a life-time and something of an object for closer scientific scrutiny! Where a can of luncheon meat or a loaf of bread used to catch carp, now many anglers will throw into their swim a couple of thousand boilies, many kilograms of pellets or particle baits and still expect to catch without waiting a week for all this to be cleared before getting a bite. The impact of the general trend towards use of more bait as free bait, chum or ground bait is often to do with improving angler confidence, but it can very much improve fish confidence too and when done appropriately seriously multiplies catches.
When I look back to the 1970's and 1980's, often carp catches composed of single and double figure fish because much of the time was spent fishing waters that had yet to grow fish to over twenty or thirty pounds. It seems mad that today on the right waters, you can pretty easily catch perhaps 5 twenty pound fish in a day plus many other big double figure carp, when 25 years ago such a catch would be the total for a successful season on the vast majority of UK waters! Because bigger carp simply did not exist in anywhere near the huge numbers and exceptionally bigger sizes found in UK waters today, it is very difficult for those newer to carp fishing today to imagine just how incredibly hard carp fishing used to be in the UK.
It is funny to think that once upon a time catching twenty individual twenty pound carp in a (UK) carp season fishing from June to March was a very tough goal, even up to 2 decades ago on most UK waters. But I know for certain this can be achieved in under a week on the right UK waters today. Bait know-how does make a great difference to potential results without doubt.
One 1991 milestone catch for me was of 23 carp caught over 5 days from an Essex reservoir, topped by the biggest in the lake (a mid-thirty,) and these fish averaged just under twenty pounds each; this provoked much jealousy from other members at the time, yet today such catches are pretty commonplace. Unique homemade bait design and regular effective bait application was the secret to my milestone catch back then and probably applies even more so today! Bait is often the last consideration today in the age of the instant carp angler who can buy everything except experience, but getting educated on the secrets of bait and how to exploit its power is a very big edge that can make your catches far better than ordinary, (even if you are a carp angler of average talent or experience!)
Bait design is very important and the nature of the free baits you use in order to get fish into an excited feeding state and drawn into your swim, hopefully to make a mistake with your hook bait is crucial; even in exceptionally prolific French and Spanish waters where 60 fish of over twenty pounds has been achieved by my friends in just 3 days. In the UK high-profile anglers are very much promoters of innovative baits and applications and the leverage of various bait substances and forms of recipes is a very big part of their ongoing success. Bait is important not merely as an edge in itself but as the whole basis of your ongoing success and so belittling the subject is rather missing the point that carp senses can be manipulated in our favour over and over again big-time...
By Tim Richardson. - 16003
Scientific tests on carp feeding and nutrition often involve protein-rich foods based on casein and gelatine, but you have to ask how many of these tests involve bloodworm, zooplankton, algae, mussels, snails, all forms of insect larvae and aquatic weeds fish etc that fish thrive on. Such natural food items are easily detected by carp due to evolutionary adaptation through millennia and carp can derive maximum nutrition from these foods and digest them very efficiently indeed, and we can exploit all this in our bait use and design! We can certainly improve our catches by exploiting not only the nutritional impacts of natural food items and their profiles of stimulating substances, but by how we apply our baits and manipulate natural carp feeding behaviours also!
Many anglers think about their baits in terms of nutrition but really miss the other points about actual feeding stimulation processes and mechanisms. In the real world, what if you have raised the level of natural food organisms available because of the abundance of fishing baits fed into a lake? What if the fish can pick and choose whether they actually need fishing baits to supply any needs at all at any particular point in the year?
How things have changed in carp fishing since I began in the 1970's when most carp anglers caught single and double-figure fish and a carp weighing over twenty pounds was very special indeed and a thirty pound fish was a fish of a life-time and something of an object for closer scientific scrutiny! Where a can of luncheon meat or a loaf of bread used to catch carp, now many anglers will throw into their swim a couple of thousand boilies, many kilograms of pellets or particle baits and still expect to catch without waiting a week for all this to be cleared before getting a bite. The impact of the general trend towards use of more bait as free bait, chum or ground bait is often to do with improving angler confidence, but it can very much improve fish confidence too and when done appropriately seriously multiplies catches.
When I look back to the 1970's and 1980's, often carp catches composed of single and double figure fish because much of the time was spent fishing waters that had yet to grow fish to over twenty or thirty pounds. It seems mad that today on the right waters, you can pretty easily catch perhaps 5 twenty pound fish in a day plus many other big double figure carp, when 25 years ago such a catch would be the total for a successful season on the vast majority of UK waters! Because bigger carp simply did not exist in anywhere near the huge numbers and exceptionally bigger sizes found in UK waters today, it is very difficult for those newer to carp fishing today to imagine just how incredibly hard carp fishing used to be in the UK.
It is funny to think that once upon a time catching twenty individual twenty pound carp in a (UK) carp season fishing from June to March was a very tough goal, even up to 2 decades ago on most UK waters. But I know for certain this can be achieved in under a week on the right UK waters today. Bait know-how does make a great difference to potential results without doubt.
One 1991 milestone catch for me was of 23 carp caught over 5 days from an Essex reservoir, topped by the biggest in the lake (a mid-thirty,) and these fish averaged just under twenty pounds each; this provoked much jealousy from other members at the time, yet today such catches are pretty commonplace. Unique homemade bait design and regular effective bait application was the secret to my milestone catch back then and probably applies even more so today! Bait is often the last consideration today in the age of the instant carp angler who can buy everything except experience, but getting educated on the secrets of bait and how to exploit its power is a very big edge that can make your catches far better than ordinary, (even if you are a carp angler of average talent or experience!)
Bait design is very important and the nature of the free baits you use in order to get fish into an excited feeding state and drawn into your swim, hopefully to make a mistake with your hook bait is crucial; even in exceptionally prolific French and Spanish waters where 60 fish of over twenty pounds has been achieved by my friends in just 3 days. In the UK high-profile anglers are very much promoters of innovative baits and applications and the leverage of various bait substances and forms of recipes is a very big part of their ongoing success. Bait is important not merely as an edge in itself but as the whole basis of your ongoing success and so belittling the subject is rather missing the point that carp senses can be manipulated in our favour over and over again big-time...
By Tim Richardson. - 16003
About the Author:
See contents of these proven big carp bait making guides: "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS" "BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS And "FLAVORS And FEEDING TRIGGERS SECRETS" Visit: carp bait
