New Baits For Carp Fishing And Their Powerful Impacts!

A thought-provoking piece about carp baits, nutritional stimulation, improving fish weights, and much improved catch results!

The scientific information available on essential dietary needs of carp most often does not take into account the presence of natural food in the presence of a test food item such as that of milk casein and gelatine. In fact it really makes a big difference when you consider that a carp is fully designed to fully digest and utilise its natural food items as opposed to an artificial food item composed of many foods such as in a boilie bait or pellet designed for salmon, trout or even specifically designed for carp! The actual energy and nutrient requirements compared to the actual biological conversion and energy supplied may well not be as great nor as efficient as thought by anglers.

Carp feeding stimulation involves many carp senses in a combined way; so why not exploit as many as possible to maximise our baits, after all; (baits do not merely work by exploiting nutritional stimulation but many other factors too!) We can take into account real life fishing variables such as the way carp exploit various natural food sources as the season progresses and this will impact on bait design and bait recipes, type of baits used and how they are applied on the hook and introduced as ground bait. When fish are very much orientated to feed upon natural organisms then this too can be exploited by good bait design, and we can exploit and manipulate the presence of natural organisms by using our bait to deliberately attract these too.

How things have changed in carp fishing since I began in the 1970's when most carp anglers caught single and double-figure fish and a carp weighing over twenty pounds was very special indeed and a thirty pound fish was a fish of a life-time and something of an object for closer scientific scrutiny! Where a can of luncheon meat or a loaf of bread used to catch carp, now many anglers will throw into their swim a couple of thousand boilies, many kilograms of pellets or particle baits and still expect to catch without waiting a week for all this to be cleared before getting a bite. The impact of the general trend towards use of more bait as free bait, chum or ground bait is often to do with improving angler confidence, but it can very much improve fish confidence too and when done appropriately seriously multiplies catches.

When I look back to the 1970's and 1980's, often carp catches composed of single and double figure fish because much of the time was spent fishing waters that had yet to grow fish to over twenty or thirty pounds. It seems mad that today on the right waters, you can pretty easily catch perhaps 5 twenty pound fish in a day plus many other big double figure carp, when 25 years ago such a catch would be the total for a successful season on the vast majority of UK waters! Because bigger carp simply did not exist in anywhere near the huge numbers and exceptionally bigger sizes found in UK waters today, it is very difficult for those newer to carp fishing today to imagine just how incredibly hard carp fishing used to be in the UK.

It is funny to think that once upon a time catching twenty individual twenty pound carp in a (UK) carp season fishing from June to March was a very tough goal, even up to 2 decades ago on most UK waters. But I know for certain this can be achieved in under a week on the right UK waters today. Bait know-how does make a great difference to potential results without doubt.

One 1991 milestone catch for me was of 23 carp caught over 5 days from an Essex reservoir, topped by the biggest in the lake (a mid-thirty,) and these fish averaged just under twenty pounds each; this provoked much jealousy from other members at the time, yet today such catches are pretty commonplace. Unique homemade bait design and regular effective bait application was the secret to my milestone catch back then and probably applies even more so today! Bait is often the last consideration today in the age of the instant carp angler who can buy everything except experience, but getting educated on the secrets of bait and how to exploit its power is a very big edge that can make your catches far better than ordinary, (even if you are a carp angler of average talent or experience!)

In France and Spain, anglers I know have caught sixty fish over twenty pounds in just 3 days by good homemade bait design and application. High profile anglers like Terry Hearn, Julian Cardiff and Dave Lane understand the power of effective bait and its correct application. Its a proven fact that discovering more about bait generously pays you back big-time in both unseen and very obvious ways…

By Tim Richardson.