Carp Fishing Tackle Online

Archive for the ‘Carp Fishing Tackle’ Category

Think about it – how many times do you read a fishing magazine only to be pounded with yet more biased nonsense about such and such a bait and method the masses are using?! Here are some unbiased tips that do not promote any company that are highly innovative, extremely well proven for big fish – but will be new to your carp! Read on to multiply your big fish catches right now!

If you use ready-made boilies, pellets and pastes it is more than likely your carp will have been practicing avoiding these very recognisable baits for years – if not decades. Despite claims of many bait companies a vast number of baits work to a great degree against your optimal success purely because they are so very recognisable as a potential threat.

Carp associate danger or potential threats using all kinds of cures. These may be the chemicals issuing from a boilie, or the over-used components of many pellets for instance. Carp soon learn by association what foods have potential for danger – and develop behaviours to avoid getting hooked. Some carp have the capacity for doing this far more than others because no carp is identical to another in terms of individual experience combined with genetic needs and preferences for example when detecting potential food substances.

But why keep on flogging baits that are far less effective than others? After all if you know that ready-made boilies have standard characteristics such as their shape, firmness and resilience and kinds of predictable movements in water in water it would be stupid to pretend that such baits are the peak of efficient objects to catch carp! What about the fact that far too many ready made baits contain exactly the same standard binders and protein ingredients – all of which act as potential signals of danger?

Think about it – when soluble substances are soon washed out of such baits they pretty much will taste and smell the same; and so offer the same old nutritional reasons for carp to eat them. But these reasons may well be as good as useless because so many baits like this are used all the time anyway and so carp will have drastically less need of such nutrients – especially as heavy baiting leads to higher levels of natural food availability in very many carp waters! Why not think like a carp and use something different to really boost your catch rate instead

Rod Hutchinson did not get into using so-called particle baits just for the fun of it. He found that on very rich waters fish were feeding in different modes and behaved in often quite different fashions to how most carp feed in well-stocked lower water quality waters. In very rich waters the old standard high protein boilie approach can easily be out-fished by using baits that replicate the items that carp browse on naturally on their travels. It is very noticeable from my eBooks reader feedback that using pastes to initially get fish onto a new bait is massively more successful – and very fast acting, compared to using boilies.

It is an excellent idea to make up ground bait based on your intended boilie base mix ingredients or ready made base mix powders mixture. I prefer to make my own because I can make them far more potent – at much less cost than it would be to buy base mixes. I have yet to find a boilie base mix that cannot be made far more potent – after all these are commercial compromises that have been produced to make money.

Such ready made baits potential for triggering feeding can always be more fully maximised in a very wide range of ways. You might think of flavours or dips or palatants for instance but you can exploit an incredible variety of properties, physiological impacts and even the ways baits and bait substances ionise the water, drop or raise water pH, or pump out even more soluble substances via diffusion and various simultaneous chemical reactions taking place.

You might make your homemade ready-made base mixes far more potent than the standard baits. One you get the know-how you can harness the massive fish-catching benefits of making your ready-made base mixes extremely potent. They can be made to be naturally highly bioactive in endless ways. You can make them enzyme-active and pre-digested in a vast number of ways too. These things are not secrets – they are readily available for anyone to discover right now but I have done my homework – to help you!

You can improve your baits by making them far more beneficial to fish by improving their prebiotic and probiotic impacts on fish too but these things among many others are just the tips of the ice-berg of what is potentially possible to do to improve your catches right now – and more and more ways and means are being discovered all the time increment by increment. All it takes for you to improve your catches is the desire to improve your catches – to resist group mentality (of most magazine readers for instance) and think more like a fish – like an individual and not like a fashion-following angler chained-up by a limiting conventional stereotypical mindset conditioned by popular thought!

It astounds me just how far behind most carp anglers on the bank really are when it comes to discussing details of their baits and how to truly maximise their baits impacts on fish. Just soaking or dipping or glugging baits is about as far as it gets from maximising baits because you need to really harness the basic ways substances behave in the water and how fish sense changes in the water. Anyone can discover these things.

It is far from true that everything is known about carp baits. To say that there is nothing new in carp baits is obviously completely ignorant and downright misleading! The leading fish scientists in the world have not even discovered all there is to know about very major aspects of how fish detect various vitally important substances and water changes – so it is totally ignorant and very arrogant of someone to bluntly state that everything about carp baits is already known!

This is quite apart from the fact that carp, like us humans are constantly evolving beings, whose DNA changes not just from one generation to another but actually within individuals while they are growing and maturing. Just ask yourself for example why it is that we can adapt our palate, improve our eyesight, re-sensitise our nose and tongue to a whole new range of substances – and how this can alter our preferences and behaviours.

This kind of thing is a major cornerstone of the profitability of the food industry and their tricks to make you buy more food by genetically altering our senses by keeping us ignorant to the impacts of all kinds of substances and their effects. Countless food products contain added substances that will genetically alter your and your preferences in various ways.

Part of the obesity and diabetes epidemics are related to vast volumes of refined sugar added to foods and drink that effectively make them more palatable and habit-forming – but the more you eat the higher the risk of diabetes for instance. I had a curry the other night and it contained an added 5 grams of sugar.

Added to all the other subtly added sugar in other foods my sugar intake is far higher than is healthy yet all this is just so food companies make fat profits – literally! Through my knowledge of carp bait substances I can use various foods to multiply my metabolism and maintain a healthy level of metabolism-boosting type of muscle I can burn off far more sugar than most people normally would. By comparison my brother is the same height as me but is 5 stones heavier than my 12 stone bodyweight.

The link between substances exploited by the food industry and ill-health is just not well known enough to be front page news as much as I would like to see, but some aspects of food industry practices to make us eat more of particular foods can be applied when putting together baits of many formats that have proven to catch more carp!

Watch out for food labelling – for instance in many health food products that are stated as being all natural there is a very high level of refined sugar added. More often than not, lactose, glucose, fructose and other additives are included – all called natural but with very big impacts on senses and on actually genetically altering taste specific preferences related to your human food buying behaviours!

Beware if you are on a diet and trying to wean yourself off crisps. For example some low fat crisps contain much more salt or contain the toxin MSG (it over-hydrates brain cells making them explode – causing minor but progressive bleeding on the brain – yet another food industry cover-up! I do not recommend it to be used in any food. Natural form glutamate found in protein-rich foods does not have ill effects! I recommend using things like L030, pre-digested fish protein, fermented shrimp and other natural glutamate-rich substances instead to enhance your baits if you truly care about your carp health!

I tried buying lower fat crisps only to discover that not only did they have a higher than normal level of salt – they also contained dextrose! You might learn what you like from this but do keep your bait head in gear because it is very important in its implications! You might think that carp syrups are new but nothing could be farther from the truth – honey is the most well-known carp attractor on record throughout history!

If you are still in doubt about the fact that you can make your carp baits alter carp and their preferences genetically, consider how the average height of humans in the western world has risen dramatically over the past 50 years.

In the same way a myriad of nutritional and other factors are growing carp to sizes that UK anglers who began carp fishing in the seventies or earlier never dreamt was ever possible! The average size of carp in most waters in the UK during the seventies was somewhere between single and double figures, yet in some UK waters today the average can be as much as 35 pounds or more – yet in the seventies and eighties, to catch even one carp well over thirty pounds was nationally significantly newsworthy! Today more and more forty pound carp are being caught – yet most anglers forget that very many of these were the double figure so-called pasty or noddie fish that no-one took any notice of during the eighties!

In fact it is my certain belief that we humans have in the past been taller than we are today – by quite a margin. But the genetic evidence for this has been covered up because to conventional science this fact cannot yet be explained. Just one aspect of this is plain to see – at times in the past the atmosphere has been more beneficial to growth in all creatures.

At various epochs in history competition among humans or between humans and other animals has been less important so capacity for growth has been different. Many factors come into why growth rates of animals can alter up or down through time but it is a fact that burial sites of races of humans such as indigenous Indians have been found with skeletons well over 7 feet tall; some races much taller still.

We take for granted that some African races are particularly tall, yet low ceilings and 5 feet high doorways of many medieval buildings in the UK for instance show that humans have certainly changed up and down in size over periods of time for a wide range of combined reasons. Ultimately all this change shows up in the genetic record and the fact is that carp are dynamically changing genetically even through their lifetimes in response to factors such as the food substances they consume!

We can harness this power yet most anglers seem to be completely oblivious to the potential impacts upon catches this really truly has!

I could list very many substances I can guarantee are never used in commercial carp baits and probably never will be either but this does not stop individuals like you and me exploiting substances that have the kinds of impacts on carp that literally drug them. I could put together a number of carp bait recipes that you could easily say are simply a list of substances with actual drug or drug-related impacts on fish.

Think about it – we are what we eat right? OK so consider this; not all the substances in foods get excreted or detoxified from our cells and tissues whether they are bad or good for us; this is the same for carp. The body is an incredible storage vehicle but it really is what it is made of. Over time the impacts of consuming certain substances will build-up – for instance the positive antioxidant impacts of carp consuming a higher than normal consumption of carotenes and carotenoids.

A range of potent naturally derived pigments are well known to be beneficial to carp in both the short and longer term. Consider those in sweetcorn, maize and eggs, or shrimps or spices for instance! Such impacts can induce changes in specific carp sensitivities that make them alter their behaviours so that when regularly introduced substances within baits change carp feeding behaviours in your unique favour. This principle has been proven again and again for particular bait substances and combinations over the years but the list is growing as more substances are being utilised by creative forward-thinking individuals – like you perhaps!

You might think that hemp is a prime example of a classical carp bait and it is true it has many potent characteristics and nutritional and bioactive features etc that influence carp feeding and associated carp behaviours. But the active compounds that are presently known on hemp seed can be found in different strengths in other natural products if you bother to look!

The same is true of many forms of compounds found in herbs and spices. Chilli is a very fashionable word in carp fishing right now but the variety of active compounds associated with many forms of hot spicy compound-containing plants is huge and impact on carp in many ways that make them easier to catch including stimulating increased protein-feeding for example.

One major point of make about certain bait substances and ignorance of them on the bank is that some can prevent other baits from catching fish. This is no joke because once this effect is witnessed – and you are the one who knows which substances and effects on carp have produced this highly advantageous effect your will never think about carp baits in the same way again!

Revealed in my unique ready-made and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information – look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to multiply your big fish catches for life with this unique series of fishing and bait secrets bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” For these and much more free information now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com The home of the worldwide proven homemade bait and ready-made bait success secrets bibles and more original free articles by Tim Richardson!

Technorati Tags: baits, Drastically, fishing, Improve, Ready, Recipes, Secrets

Winter and spring carp fishing is really exciting because the biggest fish in a lake are at their most vulnerable and anglers on the bank competing and baiting-up for those fish are fewer than any other time of year! Revealed here are crafty, unusual and very potent tricks to reliably catch you more cold water carp!

How much do you know about your bait? In winter and spring the cold temperatures really sort out the best baits from the average. Most usually, those baits that perform best in winter also reliably catch fish all year round, but many baits that catch well in summer may not catch well at all in the cold. But even if you believe that your baits have been optimised for peak performance in low water temperatures you can easily do things to improve their catch rate and boost fish responses!

If you are one of those anglers who stick to their tried and tested methods and tend to struggle in the winter and spring you need to consider why you are fishing using the techniques and methods you use. Very often carp will be sitting or moving around off the bottom in layers of water that are more comfortable. A lot of the time one of the major reasons cold water carp do not get caught is not because they are not willing to take a bait, but because so many anglers use tactic that do not suit the fish.

How many times have you fished a swim where you have seen fish on the surface showing fins for example, but failed to catch while fishing bottom baits or pop-up baits just off the bottom. Much of the time fish in cold temperatures appear to be suckers for baits presented in the upper layers of the water but do not wish to feed in the lower water layers.

Many anglers fish with long hook links with a bait in mid-water for instance. It used to be that most carp were carp by float fishing for them and I am glad I was one of those anglers in the seventies still doing this before getting into the static multiple rod and bite alarm method which just relies on carp self-hooking themselves! This newer form of carp fishing really is less skilful – you can buy all the tackle, baits, rigs, etc and cast out on a commercial water stuffed with over-sized foreign fish and call yourself a good carp angler.

One of the problems for the average carp angler today is excessive expectations. The fact is that if you are an averagely skilled or averagely talented angler you will most usually catch average amounts and sizes of fish. Commercial readymade baits just keep going around in fashionable cycles yet the same old 20 percent of anglers carry on catching 80 percent of the big fish. Average anglers need to remember the way the game is rigged!

The vast majority of high profile faces you see in the magazines with big fish are thinking and doing things that ordinary anglers would normally never do. Think about it; anyone with half a brain can fish almost full-time, tune into a water, pre-bait and establish a going bait using maybe 100 kilograms of boilies or more and hook many-times more big fish than average weekend anglers. Terry Hearn does this kind of thing like many other figures in the tackle and bait industries. Another fact is that most of the big fish in the UK come from those waters which hold the highest density stocking of big fish!

These days the majority of these waters are syndicated and very difficult to get into. So many times in the media you will see the same old faces with the same old fish from the same old syndicates. It is far easier to catch big wary fish from a water that only has 50 to 100 members where swims are nicely widely spaced out where you and your mates are monopolising as few swims and baiting them regularly all year round to hold the majority of the fish (and if you are not in the clique – bad luck!)

This is most often the reality although really talented anglers will catch big fish without spending every week on the bank and without piling 100 to 200 kilograms of bait into a lake over months and months. It might be obvious but carp are energy-efficient creatures of habit and they are pretty lazy.

This means that the bulk of the big fish will monopolise protein-rich food areas over a period of time in the age-old classic baiting pyramid way. Almost any old rubbish bait based on wheat (i.e. semolina) and soya flour can catch most of the big fish out of a lake if anglers pile enough of it -some lakes literally receive a tonne or more of such bait in a year. This has happened for example on Darenth big Lake where such simple bait has actually been dominant in the past despite some anglers still putting in quality fish meal baits for example.

Basically big carp will exploit easy food. Have you ever noticed how most fish seem to come out on whatever bait is put into a lake the most at any point in time. You can see this effect all over the place over the years. Of course some fish respond more to some baits as opposed to others for a wide range of reasons from genetics to specifics of water quality and natural food abundance or scarcity etc through a year.

Much of the reason bait companies keep bringing out new baits is not because their baits have blown – far from it. It is simply that anglers respond strongly to new products on the market and it can really boost sales and even market share to keep announcing new wonder baits in the fishing media.

It is a strange quirk of human nature that we want to exploit lazy-mans short-cuts in the form of any new or different edge that comes our way. These days the majority of good quality food baits simply do not blow; the fish just feed more cautiously on them or adapting how they feed on them to avoid getting hooked.

In the days when fishing over massive beds of boilies was the in-thing, after a while on many waters it was noticed that fishing away from the beds of bait caught the bigger or more wary fish. One trick I use based on such experiences in the Eighties is to fish balanced mini boilies to the side of a bed of big boilies (25 millimetre homemade ones that were highly digestible.) Many buoyant baits like this are fashionably called wafters these days and negate the tell-tale weight of fishing hooks – but you might as well say that Dick Walker caught his record carp from Redmire on a wafter bait (paste-balanced crust!) Just to show how Mr Walker thought about his fishing, after he landed his big common he became focussed on other forms of fishing and I definitely get the impression that part of the attraction of fishing for carp was for him the process of problem-solving and successful fishing solutions by design using measured scientific thinking!

Winter fishing is all about confidence. I see so many anglers jumping on the bandwagon of methods popularised in the magazines. Again you might have noticed how the majority of anglers are followers not innovators. Many times, by the time Mr Average gets on a method or new bait it has already done the business for those in the inside track as it were and used it before it was popularised.

It is a bit like those who claimed they invented the hair rig that revolutionised carp fishing along with boilies and bolt rigs. But I know for a fact that anglers were using many versions of hair rigs with success on the quiet having created these rigs using their own brains. Hair-rigged snails have been used to catch carp in Asia for God-knows how long now, and bass fishermen have hair-rigged live baits when fishing from shore for many decades.

If you want the best from your baits, rigs, fishing methods etc in carp fishing it is a very good edge to always strive to analyse what the fish are doing to adapt and avoid currently fashionable rigs, baits and fishing methods. These days the impacts of fishing pressure caused by anglers certainly causes many fish to behave, feed in highly unexpected and unnatural ways and be in locations that can make all the old classic carp fishing lore about fish location totally wrong. For example, on one water I winter fished most anglers would fish popular swims to the central island margins and deeper water features.

I noticed that there were some areas of bank that nobody seemed to ever fish in the winter and the water there was very shallow with quite exposed banks. Following a hunch and fishing for liners I found that fish crept in the margins there on occasional winter afternoons for a very swift browsing session maybe only lasting 5 to 15 minutes per 24 hours (when the sun had warmed that margin.)

Instead of messing around with copycat spods, stick mixes and Zig-Rigs etc, I used the fish as my prime reference to determine what was going on and how to exploit this new behaviour. Usually doing that takes patience and plenty of experience plus sometimes following gut instinct. All it took was some preparation to exploit this situation.

A plan was immediately hatched using the knowledge of when the fish arrived, how close in they fed and what direction they travelled in from. They were feeding right next to the bank in thick silt that normally would not be fed-in because anglers would have their rods right over the top in that exposed swim.

I had made some very odd-shaped homemade buoyant baits. These baits were used directly on each hook on the top of the shank and I moulded a small amount of specially made resilient paste bait directly onto each hook above and below the buoyant bait so the hooks only just sank.

Each rig was made from 10 pound multi-stranded hook link and was around 2 feet long. I retrieved a heavily water-laden twig from the margins and cut this into short lengths to form safe natural sinking weights. Each rig was tied to short using elastic bands and these I attached a big PVA bag of free bait to each hook.

I had prepared 3 batches of special homemade baits. I had buoyant baits and 2 sets of specially-boosted pastes. The homemade hook bait paste was made so it took a very long time in low temperatures to dissolve, while the other homemade paste was formulated so it literally started dissolving immediately it was immersed. These special paste free baits are a trick I came across by accident while making baits. (Even mistakes are never mistakes in homemade bait-making; most of my baits that did not perform as expected have formed the basis of most of my most effective homemade baits!)

On arriving back at the lake the most popular winter swims were all taken as usual which pleased me. It is sometimes so hilarious to see anglers simply turn up at a water and without any thought of their main reference (i.e. the fish) they set up their bivvies, tackle-up, bait up with their readymade baits and expect miracles – then complain when someone else catches instead!

The rods were no the ground in the mud as the fish could have seem them on sticks and the baits were literally only 3 to 5 feet from the bank in about 4 feet of clear water anyway. Only the main lines protruded from the top of the bank and the rods were kept well back with line in clips, reel clutches set and me in my one-piece thermal suit flat on my bed chair set low.

The free bait pastes were scattered widely around the entire area of the swim and were well broken down to sediment and solution by the time the fish were due to arrive. On cue, the fish arrived and all my free baits had by now melted (including in my PVA bag baits) so there were no whole or crumbed baits to alert the fish. The only whole baits available were the hook baits and the first fish took one of the baits straight way – at 32 pounds it was one of the biggest fish that winter from the lake.

Sometimes it is very entertaining to actually be fishing instead of camping especially when you get action immediately as a result of being far more proactive in your fishing and getting more innovative and thinking about the fish, baits and their potential for getting around angler-conditioned caution successfully in different times of year and in diverse fishing conditions!

As you can appreciate, making unique homemade baits is a controlled and reliable edge in presenting fish with new and unusual baits they can have less reason to be cautious of plus and giving them more reasons than normal to take hook baits with confidence! (For much more valuable information see my unique website and biography right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!”

For these and much more unique revealing information now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and more free completely original articles on carp and catfish fishing and bait success – make this year your best ever!

(The innovative bait and fishing author and bait consultant Tim Richardson has been writing articles for 5 years and has helped anglers in over 50 countries catch new personal best fish.)

Technorati Tags: Edges, fishing, Irresistible, Success, Tricks, water

When you are thinking about choosing new readymade carp baits, where is the best place to start? With so many baits and choices, choosing is very confusing unless you have a much bigger picture, really understand baits and have had decades of experience. Fortunately for you I have written this very revealing 9 page article to help you choose the best carp baits for you – so read on right now!

Buying carp baits is often the last thing on the list for a great number of anglers but it should be at the top of the list for many reasons because bait can make your name or lead to endless frustrations and disappointing session where promised expectations are not fulfilled!

You might expect that big bait companies are the only ones producing quality baits. But remember that in business and especially in the bait industry just as in other businesses, economies of scale provide massive advantages regarding the profitability of a company. For this reason bait companies do aim to get larger and more profitable pretty quickly. Competitive advantages of getting big include buying power and efficiency in production and the cutting of cuts of many kinds. But many bait companies sell a huge amount of bait but may appear smaller – however they choose to have big companies roll their baits for them – due to the advantages of economy of scale.

You might be looking for a good deal and put your faith in maybe Solar Club Mix or Mainline Cell for instance. But there are very many other choices just as good. Just because a bait company is less well known or because they have been established for less time does not necessarily mean that the quality of their baits ingredients additives and flavours etc are lower – far from it. The impacts of their chosen additives for instance could very well have the edge over those of some better-known companies.

Compared to the internationally-supplying big bait companies of today you could well consider that very well known bait companies of the past were small – Bait 78, Catchum, and various companies that specialised in selling sold the high protein pastes especially; including the highly effective Slyme baits of Duncan Kay but also the flavours for instance sold by Geoff Kemp may be argued to have been small companies.

These days the smaller bait companies get quite a bit of unwarranted negativity – but being a small company does not mean untrustworthy. At various points in time you might well have said that names like Rod Hutchinson, Premier and Mainline were small in terms of scale or production and turnover – but obviously this does not mean trust and confidence did not develop in anglers buying and using their readymade baits and ingredients.

You might think that small bait companies make crap baits – devoid of the quality of nutritional attraction and stimulation that you are looking for. But consider this; when Richworth brought out their freezer baits back around 1983 nobody could argue that against the most nutritional high protein baits of the day they certainly proved that highly-flavoured instant attractor baits caught fish.

In fact I found them even better if I made a solution that included the nutritional benefits and impacts of nutritional boilie base mixes either of my own design or readymade ones. I used these solutions in many ways – as bait soaks and dips, as bases for ground baits, in particle preparations, in soaking meat and marine baits and even foam baits in the early nineties.

In the early eighties I even soaked Richworth baits in them to great effect and this was even after the original highly flavoured readymade baits had effectively blown when catch results had slowed down considerably for other anglers using these baits. Applying these and many other kinds of unique bait soaks meant that my baits certainly offered far more nutritional attraction when fishing against the extremely potent marine and milk protein enzyme-active types of baits I was competing against on my local syndicate lake and certain others at that time.

Yes there are many things you can do to improve the impacts and prolong the lives of attractor style baits. However it might be noted that very many baits today are based around both instant attractor and longer-term nutritional value bait design concepts – as well as other concepts and approaches besides! I noticed decades ago when doing some bait testing for Rod Hutchinson that in some cases he was combining the impacts of instant highly flavoured type baits within very high quality nutritional bases. Attractor baits do not have to be semolina and soya flour, limestone powder and other cheap ingredients after all!

The fact is that even if you get a cheap low protein readymade bait – or have doubts regarding the effectiveness of your readymade baits there is a wealth of substances and approaches and methods that can turn such baits into winners against practically any other bait – if you get this kind of information and get creative. Doing this can easily top the best most popular baits on your water; this has been proven time and again!

It might surprise many people that often bait companies will combine their financial power in order to source larger quantities of highly expensive ingredients and additives etc.

A fact little known by many anglers on the bank is that the big companies are frequently tied up with very many of the same suppliers – or if they control supply of certain ingredients and additives into the UK (literally or in effect) then they supply other bait companies with ingredients and additives that they are using in their own baits. For example it might be noted that CC Moore is a supplier a huge number of bait companies in the UK and around the world.

Another interesting example of how bait companies are often connected very much behind the scenes. This means that many work symbiotically and not just competitively against each other. Just one public example is the sharing of the special additive that both the big company Nash Baits and the small but fast-growing company A Baits are using.

Certain flavours made for newer bait companies can be strikingly similar to certain discontinued flavours that were very popular in past decades. This is no exaggeration because the same flavour house is employed in making these popular custom made flavours are still being used today. Many flavour formulations may remain secrets of the flavorists involved in the production of flavours although they may well be working to a very specific brief given by a bait company.

For instance Phil at CW Baits has had unique flavours made which involved in one case for example, 5 different flavorists – each being an expert in a particular aspect of a flavours components profile and impact. Like I said; very many smaller bait companies seriously do their homework too and many seek a wide range of outstanding professional help. Some even get help in formulating their baits with help from some of the more well known bait maestros behind the scenes. Do not take it for granted that any bait company is static in what it does and the potential it has to develop.

Many carp anglers seem to develop a weird mental fixation for one brand of readymade bait. Brand loyalty is one thing, but to stick to one brand without hardly a clue about how those baits actually impact upon fish externally and internally – and then criticising other readymade brands is just not logical is it? I have met anglers who have sworn by their brand of bait – and then just because another bait – maybe homemade has out-fished them, then they change the brand they choose to use, just based on one such experience. That to me is a big problem with the readymade bait market; it is largely built upon blind faith of the buyer because so few anglers genuinely understand in depth how their readymade baits are designed and why such and such a bait differs from another in its effect and impacts on carp.

When speaking with a fellow angler on the bank last week I questioned him about his choice of readymade baits. I asked why he chose the formula of bait and brand of bait he was using. His very simple answer was that a group of guys on his lake had been catching fish on this bait so he found out what it was and bought some.

Now forgive me for stating the obvious, but if you are targeting a few big fish in a pressured water, the last thing you want to do is get on a bait that other anglers have already been fishing with. These guys might well hook (and even inadvertently lose) the few fish you are aiming to catch instead of or before you. What impact does this have on wary fish and where does this leave your chances of catching the fish you want – are your chances raised or in fact lowered considerably? It can be extremely costly to get onto a popular bait without thinking hard about the fact that the biggest advantage a bait has is if it is totally new to pre-programmed fish caution!

Dave Lane wrote in an article once that (as he was a bait-sponsored angler) he had been baiting very heavily with a readymade bait. But like most readymade baits, this one was available to anyone. The result was that he did the baiting and someone else using the same readymade bait benefited by banking the fifty pound carp he had put so much effort into catching. Surely anglers would see the massive lesson in this example?

Some bait companies do obviously keep offering bait formats and bait recipes that seem mainstream and standard to say the least. They may just add extra chilli, or Robin Red, or squid, or betaine, CSL or a new flavour such as Maple Pineapple or whatever currently fashionable extra to provide a new angle on a popular bait. But in general all bait-making individuals are passionately involved in what they do and are dynamically learning all the time, developing their skills and honing their practical knowledge using their customers feedback.

It is the advancement of knowledge and practical developments and improvements in baits of smaller bait companies that have put pressure on the larger companies to improve their baits quality and performance too. For readymade-buying anglers this is a very positive thing because in general it means that in very many cases you can easily have easily as much trust in the smaller companies as the larger ones. In fact in some cases even more because lets face it – not all of the larger company products are their flagship baits (to put it mildly,) and all companies have to compromise to a degree to make profits!

Countless smaller bait companies that I know have really done their homework in sourcing their bait ingredients, flavours and other products used in the production of their own boilies and base mix products ranges. Examples include CW Baits, Newfields Baits, Formula-Carp, Essex Carp Baits, and AA Baits. But there are many more companies that are certainly not ignorant when it comes to bait design and producing baits that can easily match many baits of the kind much larger companies are offering.

You must have noticed the relatively recent appearance of companies such Quest Baits, and Baitcraft. Smart marketing and well-considered promotion is all part of the formula for success in business so credit to them! Ultimate Carp Nutrition and their Enzyme bait is an excellent example of a small company coming up with a very seriously technically proficient bait tested and refined over many years before release to the market. Another bait company on the rise is Vision Baits who to some might appear to have come out of nowhere but in fact have some very experienced people involved in their bait design and product development.

Dynamite Baits have grown and leveraged the fame of Terry Hearn for instance to sell their baits but who can forget the time he used Nash Monster Pursuit baits? Jim Shelley is another good example; how many bait companies has he represented and recommended – it makes your head spin. If you are looking to him for a readymade bait recommendation based on all the companies and readymade baits he has used it must be completely confusing for many anglers! This is a very big reason why obtaining detailed information on making and adapting your own baits is such a huge advantage because you will never be confused about bait in that way ever again – plus your confidence levels in your own baits can surpass 100 percent!

Formula-Carp is another bait company established for some years now that has been more closely associated with match fishing and the supply of live baits such as worms, maggots and casters etc for match fishermen and fishing shop. Last year this company had a completely bona fide concept for a new online discount club for bait buyers along with a competitive match fishing series proposal with big cash prizes guaranteed available literally before any entry tickets were even sold.

As with many things in business it appears that currently dominant commercial interests scuppered this plan. One individual even aired a completely ignorant falsely based discreditation of the new series proposal on a Sky Sports fishing programme, which is a great shame. However the fact is that Formula-Carp have a credible pedigree in carp bait design and products supply and they supply many other bait companies with their ingredients, additives and specialist and customised liquid and powdered components for use in big carp baits and match baits alike.

Specialist Bait supplies is a name many anglers in Essex and the rest of the UK will remember going back to the eighties. This is another smaller bait company with a big reputation. In the eighties when I was using Rod Hutchinson powdered appetite stimulators and so-called Sense Appeals years before the Nash palatants etc of today, I also used powdered palatants and other additives from this company – known to most anglers as sbsbaits of course!

Many anglers since the eighties have realised that using very fast boiled baits or fast-steamed baits and pastes are in a different class to conventionally boiled baits. I still use my old pressure cooker from the eighties. Basically when you boil baits you ruin many forms of nutrition and limit much of the potential activity and attraction and stimulation of baits. In immersing baits in water to boil them you also lose valuable nutrition into the water and also you lose invaluable soluble and volatile substances of the kind that have great impacts on carp senses!

Prematurely hydrating using boiling water is not necessarily a good thing for many reasons, including impacting negatively upon the action of enzymes in additives and ingredients that may have been included and perhaps even reducing naturally developing bioactivity in your baits!

Individual Baits is a newer smaller bait company with a nice twist – producing baits they call steamies. It is a great promotional and marketing gimmick – but this time with a very sound and well-proven basis. I was steaming my baits on the bank in the eighties and using them hot – quite openly for all to see because this edge is not exactly new in carp fishing. I did this in winter or summer too. This kind of boilie preparation method has many benefits and competitive edges so readymade baits like this are certainly advantageous. Why so many commercial bait companies still boil even their hook baits in water is a mystery to me!

In the Anglers Mail this past week there was a piece written about catching your first big carp. One of the gems of advice given was to only get your baits from big bait companies that you can trust. Well of course bigger bait companies have a good track record but guess what – it does not mean you cannot trust smaller companies because after all, the big companies of today were also small too!

Many companies both big and small have many less well-known competitive advantages. For example CC Moore has been an animal feed specialist for 12 generations – and benefit from an enormous wealth of experience in feed formulation and in sourcing top quality ingredients etc from around the world. Part of the original success of Mainline was having strong links with the food industry. I think Solar has connections with aquaculture feed specialists for example, and Nash Baits have their own in-house flavorist.

But remember this; many of the most famous boilies of today and over the decades were not even designed by people running bait companies directly or who were not interested in the commercial side of carp fishing as much as others. What were the true origins of Nutrabaits Big Fish Mix or Hi-Nu-Val and who were the individuals involved and their personal evolutions in designing baits! Dave Moore is obviously a very well known bait guy from the north of England but the roots of certain other mixes can be less than clearly documented and rooted in intrigue.

Many readymade bait formulations and recipes came from individuals who did certainly became well known but what were the individual paths of evolution in terms of bait design knowledge for people such as Geoff Bowers, Rod Hutchinson, Mike Willmott, Malcolm Winkworth, Geoff Kemp, Tony Miles, Kevin Nash, Gary Bayes and Ian Moore and so on? This is a question that I find very interesting indeed!

Carp anglers are always being told to buy quality bait but ironically enough on a genuinely pragmatic levels relatively few anglers really understand how one bait is a better quality than another – or even how quality actually translates into something that is verifiable. For instance does it mean that New Zealand lactalbumin has been used instead of a nutritionally inferior but cheaper alternative source and if so how on earth would you know as a readymade bait buyer anyway? After all baits catch fish for so many individual reasons.

How do you know if a particular grade of soya is used or even what the digestibility of a fish meal used is, when used in conjunction with various other ingredients and additives?

A highly bioactive liquid or powder might be the cornerstone of the success of a readymade bait and the quality and effectiveness of a bait in terms of other additives and ingredients could well be a compromise to make profits. Think about it – what bioactive components are in some of the most well known flavours used in instant attractor baits? Some great flavours may be regarded as health promoters and even as metabolic stimulants among other benefits and effects. Remember that even in small doses, certain substances exert great influence on senses and the function of the body. For example how much psychoactive THC is in hemp used in fishing boilies – and what impact does this have on carp brain chemistry?

You might even argue that quality represents the use of the very freshest eggs in a bait – thus providing the most intact, most potent of nutritional and other factors in egg components. A large number of readymade baits catch many fish but are actually very difficult for carp to digest and actually slow down their metabolism unduly – in winter or even in summer! This is also pretty important to consider. Carp baits have been made by homemade bait makers and readymade bait manufacturers for decades that totally incidentally have had prebiotic and probiotic impacts upon carp digestion yet this is being used as a selling point. The Cc Moore N-Gage is far more than a gimmick however as the catch results of this bait demonstrate.

Ultimately readymade baits are certainly not all alike and baits can function in endless ways that differ compared to others, so comparing and contrasting them in technical terms can be very complex!

So many carp anglers talk about quality of bait without much concept in reality of what this really means. Many still think it is the difference between an bait of lower nutritional value containing higher levels of flavours compared to a balanced protein bait with maybe zero added flavours. But instant attractor baits these days can actually have incredibly effective components that are the opposite of being poor quality!

Nutritional value of bait is merely one aspect an angler might choose to consider if he really knows enough about carp physiology and sensory systems and digestion etc, and enough about bait substances and their effects etc, and the bait making process etc in order to make some kind of informed judgement or comparison between baits

One complaint that I have been told by commercial bait makers is just crazy is that an unbelievable number of carp anglers will spend thousands on their tackle, and then demand the very cheapest bait deal possible – and expect miracles with it.

Many carp anglers seem to want to buy bait just on price – which is crazy! Personally I would prefer to spend 100 pounds on 5 kilograms of the most potent bait I can possibly use instead of 100 pounds for 15 kilograms of bait that I will be very lucky to even get a bite using on pressured carp waters – which is most big fish waters today!

Some of the smaller bait companies offer incredible value for money in terms of the nutritional and other factors their baits offer in terms of potency and attraction etc. Yet far too many anglers just seem to go for a bait that has a currently popular flavour, such as pineapple, maple, or chocolate malt!

Personally I would use flavours that have not been used for at least 7 years or more to ensure that fish have not recently been hooked on such flavours! So do think about baits far beyond fashion and do consider what nutritional and other potencies are really about – as opposed to grabbing the latest new product with a new but previously popular flavour for example.

Not many anglers would think of making a homemade bait that has a green-lipped mussel or Belachan flavour – in fact it is very likely most anglers will go for something like peach, plum, crab or pineapple which to me makes little sense when being different is such a massive advantage when it comes to carp baits!

I know that at least one small bait company has optimised the amino profile of their baits regarding the first to third most limiting amino acids; yet the public are largely ignorant of the huge value this represents in terms of potential success of such baits in the short and long-term! In this case, Phil at CW Baits has access to expert input from the aquaculture feed formulation experts for instance, connected with his pellets and other suppliers for instance. His Supreme readymade bait is the equal of the top flagship baits from very big companies and I say this from practical bait testing comparisons and experiences!

But the majority of Phils potential readymade bait customers do not know about this leading bait. This is because there is a kind of endemic leverage and influence exerted via commercial means to ensure that the smaller or newer bait companies get less exposure in the carp fishing media compared to the big boys! Even a company of the calibre of CC Moore has obviously had to really make great efforts to get noticed and become the far more fashionable brand that they are today!

It seems to be the case that very many anglers choose their baits by simply copying what the glossy adverts or carp magazine articles recommend. Now I am all in favour of the dispersal of quality information that produces the desired catch results for fellow anglers.

I also appreciate that many angling writers are in contracts and are sponsored to the effect that they have to recommend their companys products and ignore other good products which may in fact by just as good or maybe superior. But I do think that to a great degree the way carp baits work differently to others needs to be expressed more in detail so anglers can make a far better informed judgement in choosing their baits.

It is one thing to say we have added a new strawberry or pineapple flavour, or additional ingredients, but it would be good if anglers actually understood what the benefit if this really and truly is practice. How else can the average angler be expected to maximise his bait performance if he simply does not understand it?

OK I realise that many anglers are instantly bored by the subject of bait and prefer to focus on which high profile angler is saying he is using whatever brand of bait. When anglers start saying things like it is Tutti Fruiti time, it is really hilarious because this means that these guys are totally unaware of how to maximise a massive range of baits for cold-water use. Tutti Fruiti baits are good – but when over-used they can easily blow you know!

As an aside personal tip – why not soak your Tutti Fruiti baits in Richworth Salmon Supreme bait dip plus neat CC Moore Feedstim XP for example, to differentiate them?

It is shocking how many anglers put blind faith in their bait without finding out more about the one purchase that has as much impact on their catches as any piece of tackle on which they pay thousands of pounds! These days countless so-called tackle tarts really get deeply into the specification and performance of their rods, reels and even bite alarms and bivvies and prefer to get the most fashionable top end models available. But do these anglers spend any time whatsoever seriously researching the specification and testing and actual impacts of their baits? Very few anglers even know how to maximise the impacts of their readymade baits – simply soaking their baits in a readymade dip is far from the limitations of this.

It stuns me just how many anglers still use round boilies without a thought about the fact that they tend to travel in more direct lines in water compared to any other shape – and so are very much easier for carp to avoid getting hooked on. Smooth firm round boilies are very easy for carp to avoid getting caught on despite the misleading impression that this shape is very effective today. The fact is that there are more anglers using round baits today than ever before and fishing for by far more big carp than ever before.

The reality is that smooth round baits can be totally out-fished by other shapes and textures of baits – yet in the Anglers Mail last week the advice given to catch your first big carp was to use boilies from around 10 to 14 millimetres in size – referring to the diameter of guess what – round boilies. Barrel and cylinder shaped baits are still round by the way!

Another misconception is that freezer baits are the only baits worth buying. Maybe before a decade ago artificial chemically preserved baits obviously had some factors that could be potentially detrimental to bait performance – and also bait breakdown when immersed in water. These days natural preservatives are being used – and are also available from some bait companies for homemade bait makers.

Preservatives do not necessarily make baits immune to attack from such things as bacteria and yeasts. Undesirable off-flavours and nutritional quality loss can be side effects of preservation long-term but there are some advantages to using preservatives for certain situations. Personally I want my baits to be as bioactive as is potentially possible so I never use preservatives and if I want to drop the pH of my bait (in solution of course) then preserving baits this way is easily done!

Air-drying baits to well over 90 percent dehydration is possible for anyone at home anyway – and you can re-hydrate readymade boilies and hydrate all kinds of pellets and other formats of baits to make them your own unique versions – even more active than the originals straight from the packet! I must emphasise the great value to you of doing this!

I could go into some extremely powerful and unusual ways of improving readymade bait performance so that no matter what bait company you use and whatever the quality of the ingredients they use, you can massively improve bait performance. I have done this with all kinds of baits from cheap 50:50 mixes, to top quality flagship baits from big bait companies such as Richworth, Nutrabaits, Mainline, and even CC Moore. Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information – look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with this unique series of fishing and bait secrets bibles:

“BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!”

For these on limited-time deals plus and much more free information and extracts etc now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com

Baitbigfish – The home of the worldwide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and free original and highly revealing catch-multiplying articles by Tim Richardson!

Technorati Tags: baits, Choosing, fishing, Readymade, Secrets

Readymade carp baits are a big topic of conversation among anglers but some baits are definitely better than others and particular ones perform far better in particular fishing situations in different seasons for instance; the price should be a secondary consideration if catch results really matter to you! So how can you identify excellent readymade baits at a sensible price from such a bewildering choice? Read on to find out!

Quality protein is not cheap and if you are looking for a quality carp bait that performs instantly and is excellent in the long term then protein quality really matters. The protein content of baits has very many implications in regards to their potency as fish catchers or big fish catchers in particular. If you do not know some of the reasons why carp are actually attracted to baits apart from natural curiosity then in very simple terms this bit if information might help.

Proteins when broken down into its constituent amino acids and peptides etc become very much more easily detected by carp when dissolved in solution and additionally they are very much easier and much more energy-efficient for carp to digest and assimilate them to the benefit of the fish.

Carp like other teleost fish for instance naturally derive a massive degree of their nutrition which sustains their existence from proteins and can utilise proteins far more efficiently in many ways than us humans can. This is logical as carp bodies and systems have evolved to find and process the most energy-efficient food sources at any time

In very simplistic terms, carp are not only attracted to amino acids but when they experience certain amino acids in various combinations they are turned on to feeding intensively by them. But this effect is no limited to amino acids that are essential to carp and sustain their survival, but also to other semi or non-essential amino acids too.

This aspect of carp baits is very interesting. Not only can carp be turned onto your baits if they contain biologically-available proteins but also if they contain proteins that they do not have much chance of actually digesting, but which are very attractive to carp anyway for a variety of reason. Notably this is particularly so if they are highly digestible and easily water-soluble for instance.

Apart from freshness and other characteristics of quality protein sources used in carp baits, what really helps in their effectiveness is the concentrations of carp-essential amino acids they may contain in various levels. Essential amino acids really are very significant factor in attracting carp and making carp actually feed but of course there are many other feeding triggers besides just these.

Having said that you would be forgiven in thinking all that matters is amino acids considering what some anglers have written in the past although this is far from the truth! Carp also do need carbohydrate sources and fatty acids for instance, and both are very important in essential energy provision, but they also spare protein so more gets used for body repair etc instead of being used for energy!

It should probably be noted that the protein in very many high protein baits is not able to be utilised by carp due to limiting factors, but one of the big points about high quality protein bait effects is really about getting as much attraction and stimulation around such baits in solution as possible to make them perform to a far more effective degree compared to very many other baits lacking in quality protein.

It is mostly very difficult for commercial bait manufacturers to make a profit from making good quality protein orientated baits unless you are talking about bigger companies with more buying power or companies that are more cash rich or simply have the expertise, knowledge and experience to be able to source the highest quality grades of protein products so finished readymade baits and base mixes can be offered at sensible prices.

In general you might say that if a bait is more costly then this is an indication that probably a concentration of quality protein sources are used in the bait and this will reflect in the outstanding performance of the bait. The best baits for long term use have often been designed so the vast percentage of the protein in the baits will be highly digestible and so able to be utilised within the fish to their ongoing benefit – and to ensure they find such baits highly palatable and energy-efficient food sources.

However, just because a bait contains various highly digestible protein sources does not mean all the protein within the baits will actually get digested as certain impacts of so-called limiting amino acids will usually prevent this unless the designer is an outstanding bait designer.

The relatively extremely few bait designers who can sort out protein bait ingredients in their baits alongside other ingredients so they are not limited by the third limiting amino acid for instance, will inevitably have all the nutritional data for literally every single component of the bait on computer. This way they can compute the impacts of adjusting bait ingredients levels and ratios for instance and quickly see how this affects bait digestibility.

However as I stated, their are very few bait designers out their who can put all this together with any appreciable effect to make their finished boiled baits perform to outstanding levels. Usually such bait makers have a 3 decades-long history in bait design or have had actual experience in the aquaculture or koi food production and formulation industries for example.

But the big question is: Do you want to feed fish or get bites from them? Well ultimately any great bait will give you bites from the very first cast and instantly. But extremely well designed balanced nutritional baits can achieve the effect when regularly introduced over a period of time of ensuring carp can accept such fishing baits as acceptable food. At very many carp waters bait is a huge factor in success and it is very noticeable that some baits simply do not achieve the same levels of success as others in both the short and long-term.

If you are not an outstandingly-talented or experienced angler, the very best quality balanced nutrition baits can be a great leveller of ability etc when fishing busy angling-pressured carp waters. Now I appreciate that some of you may be thinking that you can catch carp on a bit of rubber corn or foam rubber even or a ball of flavoured semolina and soya flour.

However in the extremely competitive world of modern carp fishing any edge you can get can seriously add up and make all the difference between and good season and you best ever. A high quality bait literally can make the difference between continuing a very poor series of seasons on a pressured water with far too many totally unnecessary blanks, compared to having your best season on there that you ever had where you catch all the big fish and even bank the new lake record fish!

I say this from personal experience and from countless related experiences of so many countless anglers I have known over the years who benefited drastically from waking up and becoming deeply aware of the implications for repeated success using totally unique quality protein orientated baits. Quality protein is related to actually improving energy-efficiency and available vital energy in carp; after all this is the ultimate aim of food apart from as a nutrition source. Certain flavours have potent implications in terms of fish metabolism and especially in cold weather, and autumn, winter and spring bait design is very much about fish metabolism maximisation.

It is no surprise to learn that many winter flavours contain genuinely potent components that can boost fish metabolism and increase energy in fish if only temporarily. Buy do not get the impression that all bait flavours are similar because many differ incredibly and their impacts on carp senses externally and internally and responses and reactions can be very different indeed.

Indeed some flavours and components can be revitalised so they actually become incredibly bioactive and impact on carp in far greater competitively successful degrees. Such flavours can in some cases be extremely costly to source or to formulate. These kinds of intellectual property are closely guarded as trade secrets. However many potent edges can be uncovered or simply stumbled-upon if you dedicate enough time and effort in your own personal bait odyssey of discovery and research to enable you to significantly improve your catch results compared to average anglers relatively poor results.

In fishing terms there is little difference between a cheap instant bait and a more costly bait if you happen to be a world champion standard angler. But if you happen to be on this level you will still seek the very best bait you can because again, a champion will seek any extra competitive edge and advantage for improved performance. It is ironical that in sports this inevitably leads to drug-taking. What your bait is ultimately ideally doing is having a drugging impact on fish if only temporarily.

Some of the best baits can be regarded as the ones that get picked up by carp and get the hook in their mouths even though carp experiencing the bait at that time do not feel hungry directly before sensing the bait! These days the pressure for your baits to perform better than other competing baits is greater than ever in many cases just to achieve getting bites instead of blanks.

There is so much to bait that to come up with a rule of thumb for choosing baits is probably impossible. But this is for certain; I would much rather choose a bait containing the highest quality proteins I could buy and use just 1 kilogram of such boilies, than use 100 kilograms of boilies containing cheap low quality protein! Frankly cost is not the issue ever when low cost equals less fish or worse still no fish!

It is a sobering thought that Mr Carp do not care about the cost of your baits or if you personally find them palatable or even if you like or dislike their taste, flavours, smells or aromas etc. He is operating at many levels higher and beyond your senses as a human (with your extremely dulled senses compared to a fish.) All too many commercial baits are unfortunately sold in formats that do not necessarily appeal the most to carp but are formats that carp anglers expect simply because they have become conventional and normal in the buyers perceptions. This is just one reason why so many great original popular baits and flavours get copied by so many companies when very few of those versions can perform any where near as well as the original article.

For instance just how many copies of flavours of the world famous original Scopex, or Tutti Fruiti or Strawberry Jam are there now? Just how many perform as well as the originals is a very big question! Frankly the only direct way to discover this is to personally try these copy-cat baits against the originals! It might be noticed that there are many individuals who run bait companies with very little experience and limited knowledge in bait making, but some guys running a comparatively small bait company may have access to far better nutritional and fish knowledge that it might first appear including using scientists at DEFRA for example.

However I can tell you one complaint I hear too often from bait companies. So many carp anglers expect to spend 4 thousand pounds or more on tackle such as rods, reels, alarms, bivvies, bed chairs, fashion clothing and even bivvy entertainment systems, but then expect to pay a mere 4 pounds for a kilogram of poorer quality bait!

Then they expect this bait to produce for them the very best results! This mentality is about the most expensive one regarding baits that you could possibly have because for every minute you are fishing with almost inevitably inferior baits you are wasting your time not catching the fish you otherwise would be catching. But this mentality is so predominant and it simply dooms lots of average anglers to endless mediocre catches despite the fact that quality baits that are unique can literally catch you the catches of a lifetime but with using just the same effort as using very cheap far less effective bait!

Quality protein is expensive but this magic stuff forms an incredibly important backbone of bait and fish attraction and stimulation beyond flavours, oils etc. Quality protein has proven time and again on countless occasions the difference between catching a fish or blanking, or catching moderate numbers of average fish and higher numbers of the very biggest fish!

If you want easier fishing then establishing unique quality digestible protein orientated baits that are rich in biologically-available nutrition can just keep on producing fish reliably for you trip after trip. Ideally you will establish such bait and keep it going into you waters regularly to maximise their impacts on fish responses and this can catch you as many fish as possible.

But if you are concerned about your bait choices and realise that successful carp fishing is very much about doing and using unique things and refining that which is or has been successful in the past then having an open mind is a seriously valuable asset! When you question the bait manufacturers about the quality of proteins in your bait this should really help your peace of mind in terms of your bait performance but do bear in mind this quality comes at a price.

In 2007 high quality caseins were around 9 thousand pounds a tonne and they are not getting any cheaper; the extremely high cost of quality ingredients such as these will reflect in higher bait prices of quality protein baits. Again if you are an average angler then using a few kilograms of the very best quality protein based bait you can get will certainly pay off as opposed to using cheap carbohydrate based baits. Even certain unique winter baits that are designed to be very highly digestible and with low protein contents such as 24 percent are very difficult to design so that they contain all the correct balances of essential amino acids. The quality of the proteins used in such baits need to be absolutely guaranteed and this comes at a price so even in this case of lower protein baits they will be more costly!

So instead of automatically reaching for a bag of a pineapple, strawberry, banana or Scopex flavour this, or a chilli flavour that, or a halibut this or tiger nut that, why not really consider quality protein first for easier success if you are just an average angler!

If your mind is turned on by the aroma of a smoked house fish flavour or a smooth rich strawberry then bring your mind back to the fact that you are not a fish, and remember that exploiting high quality protein will makes things much easier than using what are often highly flavoured and cheap low quality carbohydrate or low quality protein based baits!

A kilogram of quality protein boilies in shops today generally cost between 8 and 13 pounds should be of higher quality protein than other cheaper baits. Obviously it makes great financial sense to team up with friends in order to take advantage of discounts on quality baits and quality base mixes. Also by doing this you can more quickly, more easily and less expensively establish a new quality protein bait with genuine expectations of outstanding success.

Many more carp anglers are turning to making their own homemade baits in order to save money as well as to benefit from using unique baits and enjoy the unique satisfaction of a succession of new personal best fish caught on your own unique homemade bait which is a truly incredible feeling! You can do many things with homemade baits of all kinds in order to include extremely high levels of quality protein type ingredients, extracts and liquids to make your very own potently attractive baits compete very successfully against expensive readymade baits.

Ultimately thinking that big fish will be caught using cheap baits is more likely going to cost you dear when you cannot get bites in fishing situations where quality protein baits will do and where you will most likely be sitting getting no bites while watching other anglers catching loads of fish! (For more information see my website and biography right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” For these and much more now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles!

Technorati Tags: baits, Finding, first, fishing, Readymade, Research

Having the correct knowledge, experience, and Carp fishing gear is a perfect situation. You need to know that you and your carp fishing equipment are up to the challenge. Big carp fishing is much different than just going after those 15 or 20 pounders. Read more to learn what it takes to catch the big carp.

When it comes to big carp fishing making sure you’ve got the right equipment is very important. If you’ve never fished for carp at all or any large fish for that matter you’re going to need to upgrade some of your equipment. You’ll need a larger, heavy-duty rod that can flex more and withstand great amounts of stress and pressure. You’ll also need to look into purchasing new line that can hold more weight since the average fishing line is guaranteed to break under the weight of a larger carp.

Big carp fishing usually means going after fish that are at least 50lbs or more. This can sometimes require a lot of work to even get the fish to the surface of the water and into your boat or on shore, not to mention the other factors involved. To even find a good area where there might be larger carp you will need to find an area that is relatively secluded, not over fished and has enough local smaller fish to maintain the carp population. This is much harder than it sounds and not every body of water can offer this, so knowing a good place to do the fishing is critical and varies from place to place.

Something you should also avoid when trying to go big carp fishing is using over the top bait. You want to avoid bait that will stand out or look suspicious in any way, shape or form. There is a widely held belief that the bigger the carp the more suspicious they are to bait and they’ll go to any effort possible to protect themselves from being reeled in. This being said, don’t be easily frustrated when you’ve spent a long time waiting for the big carp to bite-they might be onto you.

It’s also important you consider your health as a fisherman. Many carp that put up a fight can worsen any minor or mild injuries you already have. For example if you have back problems or heart problems you might want to refrain from trying to take down a 50-75lb carp all on your own. In any event always make sure you talk to your doctor or physician to make sure you’re in good enough shape to take on fishing for larger fish of any variety.

If you’re serious about big carp fishing then make sure you can devote yourself to it and realize it is not for just any fisherman. It takes a lot of patience and careful tweaking of one’s fishing style to be successful catching these larger carp. However with practice, patience and the right equipment you should be able to master this sport.

Roy A. Jones is an avid fisher. For more information about carp fishing tips and techniques http://carpfishinginsider.com/ or http://carpfishinginsider.com/carp-fishing-in-france/carp-fishing-in-france/ We are continually adding information to our website so visit often to improve your fishing skills.

Technorati Tags: fishing, things

You might be interested to know that France has some premier carp fishing destinations. So if you are planning a vacation or perhaps you already live there keep that in mind. To accompany the fishing there are plenty of attractions to visit while in France. Read more to find out what opportunities are available and where to fish in France.

Carp fishing in France is an increasingly popular thing to do. In fact it has gotten so popular there are entire vacation packages and offers based around fishing. If you plan on vacationing there and just staying for a week or so but still want to see the rest of the city there are independently owned carp lakes where you can visit and go fishing on a secluded small body of water. Many of these lakes are maintained to keep a good population of carp and a suitable ratio of other smaller fish to keep the growth rate steady.

Finding one of these places to do your carp fishing in France may be a challenge, so one of the best ideas is to go online or ask other fishers who have gone overseas where they went. Word of mouth is the best way to find a good place to go fishing but if you can’t find anyone who’s gone overseas then your next best option is to go online. A few good places to find out more about quality fishing locations in France is to visit places like carp related message boards/forums, blogs or just doing a simple search in Google or Yahoo!

Or you can fish Cretelakes. This is a stunning carp fishing holiday venue set in 60 acres, it is located in the department of Aisne in Picardy northeast France just 3 hours from Calais. These former gravel pits were created about 25 years ago and were stocked with carp and other fish. Carp fishing at that venue commenced in November 2008 and early indications suggest there are many big carp already present with fish to 50lb+ already landed. Another excellent private lake to check out is Etang de Beynac. Many of these private lakes also offer lodging with accommodations.

There are plenty of good places to go carp fishing in France that are also camp grounds as well. If you’re traveling to Europe with family or friends who still plan on seeing the city or other countries then you may want to consider making a stop at one of the camp grounds that’s part of or nearby a carp lake. This can save you some money on room and board and you’ll get to see more of the French landscape.

Carp fishing in France isn’t limited by any stretch of the imagination. For example there are dozens of fishable lakes in the country where you could spend an entire weekend. You won’t be limited to just a small handful of lakes which is a great thing. One of the main benefits of fishing in Europe is the fact that carp are actually native there. You get to enjoy the experience of casting out your reel onto the exact same waters where many of the American carp originated from.

If you want to learn more about good carp fishing in France locations and tips then there are plenty of great online guides and tourism books that have reviews and advice. This is a great way to find out good areas to go to that are near tourism attractions like dining, parks, camp grounds and so forth.

You can find more information about carp fishing tips and techniques at http://carpfishinginsider.com/ or http://carpfishinginsider.com/big-carp-fishing/big-carp-fishing/ We are continually adding new advice so feel free to visit often.

Technorati Tags: fishing, france, Planning, Vacation

When it comes to catching big carp we all know that it is vital to understand certain crucial factors that will at least give us a fighting chance to hook that elusive lake record carp. Catching big carp should not be down to just chance but someone we can be confident about achieving and if you want that edge to start catching bigger carp then carry on reading and next time you go to the river bank or your syndicate water you can make the bagging of a record carp a reality.

Your 4 Carp Fishing Tips and Tactics – So How Do I Catch Big Carp?

1) Understanding why carp can be elusive is the most important factor to being able to catch the big ones. Carp get used to seeing standard baits being presented on fancy rigs that can make the fish stand up and think to themselves – Danger. You need to present a bait in a reasonable manner and on a carp fishing rig that suits the environment on the bottom on the lake. Lake information should be obtainable by the bailiff and they are usually more than happy to let you know certain quirks about a particular swim and to what type of lake bed you are casting onto.

2) Big Carp also seem to have more developed awareness to baiting patterns and an over fished swim may lead to the carp filter feeding of the dissolving bait already having been put there by over keen anglers who think that throwing in a ton of bait will actually help them catch. Again, it is worth getting to know information about each swim of the particular lake and when the last carp was caught. It is really good when you can get into a swim that is bare of old bait and the fish start to feed again on your whole baits – you are then in for a full catching session so don’t expect to get much sleep if you are doing an all-nighter.

3) Baiting for Carp is a much discussed topic for top anglers but it has been proven that certain factors influence the carp into feeding on dissolving or whole baits. If you are fishing a swim for just a couple of nights and you can see lots of splashing around and occasional cloudy patches on the top of the water where the carp have been splashing it is true that the dissolving bottom bait is the normal cause. Whilst, dissolving bait is available to the carp they will often feed on this as they have become used it to this as being safe to eat. However, if you present new carp bollies or other bait they will still prefer the filter feeding until it has run out and then will venture upon your new baits. The rule of thumb and best practice for the big carp is to pre-bait small amounts of new bait and wait until you know that a swim has been quite for at least 3-4 days and then get established in the swim and do a 4-7 night session which will result in good carp catches and maybe get you that elusive carp record.

4) Make sure you have all the tackle and spare equipment that you think you may need for a good carping session. We know that carp tackle can be expensive these days but if you are serious about catching, carp fishing secrets and tips aside, then you should at least have a mid range carp rod and spend as much as you can on the bait runner reels, I still use and prefer Shimano. Make sure you have good bite alarms and you take a few spare batteries with you. Remember, you can always upgrade your other carp equipment but it is best to start with a good package of rods, reels and bite alarms so you minimize having to waste that money when you find that the tackle you first purchased may not be up to the job after 6 months.

The more you can understand about the proven methods to catching big carp as early as possible will stand you in good stead for future carp catching success. There is much written about catching good carp and you should take the time to read and read more on the subject as knowledge is King – having loads of fantastic carp fishing tackle doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to catch the elusive fish.

Next, now that you want to start catching more carp and read up on proven carp fishing techniques to catching carp there will be no stopping you. Fishing for carp is a great sport and pastime and it’s time to take it as a measured approach and benefit from a big carp catching future.
Val Marks – fishingforcarp.net (CEO)

Technorati Tags: fishing, Reveal, Secrets, Tackle

Carp fishing has been one of the things most people near fresh body of water have been doing and you might find it really interesting how this type of fishing seems to be larger than life for some people. If you’re a person who just seem to have heard carp fishing then you may find this type of angling very interesting. These fishes can only be found in fresh water. It’s a kind of fish grows up to a 110 kilograms but it really depends on what type of carp it is. Know why so many people are hooked on it and what do they really get from fishing carps.

Carps has been known to many people as table fish. It is one of the most common fish served on the table in Europe and Asia. These fishes are originally from Asia and Europe but as we all know carps are now found in different parts of the world. Carp fishing is indeed becoming more famous in United Kingdom and United States. Competition for angling the biggest carp is the main goal of the fishing competition; in fact most competition has the same goal. Fishing for carp may look easy for someone who has not experienced it yet. The truth is; fishing is really challenging especially if you want to have a big catch.

Angling carps is tricky! This is why it is very important to know the best way to catch it. There are different approaches in catching this type of fish. Each type has a unique way of being caught. What I’m trying to say is, there’s perfect bait for each kind you wish to capture. This is actually what carp fishing enthusiast do before they join a competition. If you want to be known as a great carp fisher, you would have to discover the best bait that will work for each type. These fishes can age up to thirty years old, that’s why they can grow so big! The fact about the older fishes is that they are wiser. They don’t easily fall into any bait. This is one of the many challenges you will encounter when you go fishing for carps.

Common carps are usually found in fresh water such as lake and river, though some carps can tolerate salt water such as Trobolodon. Some people fish for carps to have something to serve on the table for supper, some do it for fun. Other people angling for carps do it as a hobby while others do it to prepare for the much awaited Carp fishing competition. Most of these competitions pay big sum of money to the winners and I’m talking about thousands of dollars to be won. People from all over the world may have their own personal reason for fishing carp but to be an expert in this type of fishing you have to be an expert in making your bait.

Carp Fishing is indeed challenging! But you can learn how to be a pro by learning the art of bait making. Learn different types of tools and baits used in fishing for carps by clicking the link.

Technorati Tags: Enjoy, fishing, people

How often do we hook big fish and never ever realise it? This happens all the time and is especially a problem where big wary fish are concerned and is a problem every angler needs to become aware of and focus on solving. Yesterday I visited a small water with a large stock of small fish and only a few big carp; within hours I hooked and landed one of the biggest; an upper-thirty pound mirror carp. But how did I do it? Read on to find out!

In so many big carp waters today you have fish cleaning up on free baits and avoiding the vast majority of hook baits, very frequently by actually ridding themselves of your hook without running or often without giving you even a single bleep on your alarm. In fact if we truly appreciated how frequently this happens we would be more than alarmed – very shocked is more like it! Just because you hook fish and you see lots of big carp caught in the angling weeklies and monthlies does not mean you cannot improve drastically upon your own catch results compared to your fellow anglers and some edges will treble or quadruple your catches if only you truly appreciated their true power!

Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of ways of converting more bleeps on the alarm to landed carp and it really does come down to refining every aspect of your fishing in many ways so you are able to maximise every opportunity at a take you can create. I can categorically state that non of the hooks I have used straight from the packet have converted as many carp bait bites into fish for me as my own extreme-sharpened hooks. Of course you might think this sounds like I have not used the sharpest chemically sharpened hooks in all their patterns, but in my case I have used probably all the leading brands and patterns over the years and deliberately tested them.

(Please note I have not tested the new circle style carp hooks recently introduced by a British carp tackle company; the reports of bite conversions on these sound fantastic.)

For a number of decades I lived in Essex time and often combined sea fishing from the beach alongside my carp fishing and catfish fishing activities. Fresh eels from the sea are very good eating and a great saving on supermarket bills! (I happen to have a great taste for eels especially when fried; they are like chicken to me, but I detest jelled eels!) Between 20 and 30 years ago I used to catch a number of eels from the shore during the warmer months often while carp fishing ponds and lakes near the sea side. Often eels really seemed to be a pest – that is until I tried frying and barbequing them!

Since then I have determined to eat every legal size fish within the limit (and within acceptable reason) that I catch from the sea, and this has included bass, sole, dabs, eels, mullet, codling, whiting, (and even a lobster) among others. I have also been lucky enough to sample fresh sea trout and also wild brown trout and rainbow trout that I caught from Scottish rivers during a period I lived in Scotland. (I even hook a twenty-plus pound salmon in a spate river (the river Girvan.)

The idea for purposely testing hooks abilities to avoid hook shedding and converting bites into landed fish came from an unusual experiment in itself. So I gradually increased the number of hooks on more paternoster booms of various lengths in theory to improve the number of fish hooked on a single cast when left out for longer. Please note that in more recent years eel numbers in our rivers have been very significantly declining and these days conservation is vitally important; the illegal poaching of elvers has been a big reason for this as well as over-exploitative commercial fishing and barriers to spawning stretches of rivers and pollution of the sea and rivers.

I the tests what happened was the eels simply shed the hooks. I recall waiting while a series of bites indicated another eel taking the worm baits on a 10 hook rig casts. Guess what happened? Just 1 or 2 eels were landed upon reeling in. The hooks of the rest of the rigs had all been twisted and the hooks had been shed leaving a bare hook and no fish! Now you might say this was no big deal as eels are slippery customers and can ties themselves up in knots to get off the hook literally tying themselves up in knots in the line and pulling themselves off.

But I noticed some hook were massively more consistent at preventing eels getting off the hook and there were the sharpest hooks of the sharpest patterns that I had specially sharpened. Over all the faster and deeper a hook penetrates the harder it is to shake free. I found that the hooks with the longer thinner points were the most successful. (This I have applied with indisputably better measurable results in carp fishing.) But there are very few hooks suitable with ideal characteristics and even these need specially sharpening!)

For example even the short and long shank Nailer type hooks convert many more bites into landed fish when very finely and skilfully sharpened. The greatest test is when using barbless hooks which so many fisheries demand these days; lost fish due to a non-maximised hooks are completely unnecessary. In the odd extremely rare occurrence that I have lost a big fish due to a hook point breaking or bending over I know the chances are I would never had achieved a take from the fish in the first place had the hook not been so skilfully honed!

Very much comes down to the thickness of the hook wire used in the region of the first 4 to 5 millimetres from the end of the point. The next incredibly important point is the thickness of the point. When I sharpen my hooks I hone them using a diamond hook sharpener and aim to get the first 4 5 millimetres thinner than needles and thickening out more only as the bend is approached.

Such hooks are supreme in performance to such a degree that without such hooks I know I will be missing out on at least 2 thirds of fish picking up baits (as they can simply mouth baits and slip the hook with ease and this is no exaggeration because I have measured this over 10 years of testing ultra sharp hooks beside chemically sharpened hooks straight from the packet!)

At the start of my many years of testing I did not use ordinary Cyprinus Carpio carp to test hooks – but crucian carp. These are very well known to be even more notorious for playing with baits and for being especially good at not getting hooked; even hitting fish mouthing baits when float fishing is a highly developed skill requiring endless hours of practice!

My testing originally involved ground baiting a shallow slope in the waters edge with bread paste. A series of 4 feet long lengths of line were tied down to bank sticks out of the water and small hooks of various patterns were attached and baited with bread paste and soft pellets. The crucian carp would come along feed on the ground bait and take the baited hooks and guess what? They could get off 9 out of 10 hooks of different patterns tried – every time! Any hooked fish were immediately returned as I was observing and making notes of all that was happening.

The results were so surprising and the implications were so shocking that it lead me to a big re-think about hooks completely. I discovered that just because a hook has what appears to have a sharp point it most certainly does not mean a carp cannot slip off the hook very easily and often so fast it is as if they were not actually initially hooked and often the sharper the hook the more easily it came off because the hook pattern simply did not do anything but allow this to happen – which rather defeats the point of it!

Bent hooks have obviously one solution but various hook patterns used like this are well known to have caused carp damage and as such are unethical and banned on pretty much all UK carp waters. The more flexible fish-friendly approach came in the form of line-aligner rigs, but these certainly do not do not work as great as anglers think and just because a hook turns due to the angle created it certainly does do mean the hook holds achieved are ideal even where a rig designed to penetrate the flesh of the bottom or scissors is used!

Even today thousands of carp are still lost on line-aligner rigs and anglers still keep suffering the either lack of bite indication due to fish instantly slipping the hook or get single and double bleeps on alarms where carp still shed the hooks anyway due to years of practice 24 hours a day in avoiding hooks! No-one I know claims a 99 percent conversion rate even with special (ethical) stiff rigs and stiff Withy Pool type rigs and so on.) Even so-called high profile anglers are still assuming chemically-sharpened hooks straight from the packet perform well enough compared to hooks skilfully honed to perfection by diamond sharpener in both in advance and before every single cast!

I hope this all makes you think! If you doubt the veracity of my testing why not get highly skilled with a diamond hook sharpener and do your own very strict tests fishing unsharpened hooks against the very thinnest finest of hand-sharpened hook points (sharpened at least for 5 millimetres) and the difference in your big fish results will become very well proven to you too!

You can design the best carp bait in the world but if the carp can get off your hook is all wasted, but an incredibly sharp hook in the correct pattern combined with a truly great unique bait is proven to catch more big fish. This is the explanation to why when I visited that small fish water yesterday I was able to hook that that rare upper thirty within hours. For more information on the sharpest big fish edges that can double or treble your catches, why not take a look at my uniquely researched and big fish catches-proven bait secrets bibles on line at my Baitbigfish site now; see my biography or Google for much more!

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” For these and much more free information now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com Home of world-wide proven readymade and homemade bait success secrets bibles!

Technorati Tags: Afford, Cannot, fishing, Secrets

Hi I have about 6 koi carp in a little pond at the back of my house aprox 2mx2m I was wondering wht I need to do to make them breed? They have now been in the pond for about 1 year.

Answers below in Comments Section

View the original article here

Technorati Tags: Breeding