Tag Archives: Cold Water

Get the Best Out of Your Bait in Winter and Maximise the Money You Spend on It! These are a Handful of Very Well Proven Expert Tips to Help You Catch

Why not find out more how to maximise the money you spend on your baits in winter and spring and achieve better catches?! See these expert tips proven to work for more cold water carp again and again and save you money! Use these tips to help you right now!

Carp get filled by boilies and other potentially more difficult to digest baits, and it is well known that feeding too many of them in winter is not only often the kiss of death of a swim, but a big waste of money too which certainly does not maximise your chances of bites! Many methods have evolved to provide attraction near your hook bait without over-filling carp. Boilies threaded onto a water soluble PVA stringer next to the hook is very effective and this kind of idea has also spawned countless variations on the theme and really helps maximise bites, while minimising bait costs and usage.

In ground baiting for winter and spring carp it is wise to pre-bait if at all possible and then apply minimal bait while actually fishing, perhaps using soluble pellets, stick or method or spod mixes incorporating broken boilies as opposed to whole boilies at this time. You choice of what to ground bait with and how to do it is a skill and art form that very many carp anglers really need to develop far more as it is vital in manipulating suitable carp feeding behavioural responses to your hook baits! Ground bait using bread is a very reliable method and almost anything excluding indigestible oils can be added; for example boilie base mix and homemade boilie liquid additives and foods.

Bread is often and over-looked ground bait base and it is soluble and digestible enough to really be ideal for the job at this time, and it is very well known not to be just a small fish bait! Fishing over all kinds of forms of bread-based ground baits in winter and spring has proven successful time and again. You can always fish reliable boilies on your hooks and these will of course always remain successful.

Anything you do to raise the likelihood of a curious or hungry carp sampling your hook baits in winter and spring in particular are of vital significance. Solubility and digestibility of your free baits in extremely important so choose very carefully; winterised boilies and carp pellets low in oil are good examples. Low oil pellets designed specifically for carp (as opposed to halibut pellets for instance,) are far more preferable at this time and many great boilie recipes and pellets contain high levels of ingredients ideal for low water temperatures; such as betaine, and Robin Red.

If you find you struggle by still sticking with your usual halibut pellets for winter and spring ground baiting try something like CSL or hemp pellets instead! Cold water-soluble attraction is so vitally important to fish attraction at this time! Soluble attraction dispersing easily from bait through the water column is really the name of the game at this time. Adding Vitamealo from Ccmoore for instance to your ground baits and particles will really boost water clouding and add loads of water soluble milky carp attraction…

Glugs and soaks and dips based on liquid proteins, spleen and liver extracts, and things like herb and spice terpenes and flavour components like butyric acid and so on, really can help catches now. Extra liquid foods and boosting attraction substances will multiply the performance and catch rates on hook baits and ground baits ranging from bread to boilies, pellets, particles and even maggots and fake baits. Thinking far more about your winter and spring hook baits and ground baits, and their incredibly important method and rate of application is so underestimated by very many carp anglers; try to stimulate carp senses as much as possible and build on your knowledge of tips and edges to draw on!

When the huge importance of the relationships between carp senses and your effective (or ineffective) choices of hook baits and ground baits become cornerstones of your fishing attack, you will not stop until you have read as much as possible on this subject and gathered an extremely effective arsenal to stop you wasting as much money on blanks and wasted bait as possible; so keep reading on…

By Tim Richardson.

For the unique and acclaimed new massive expert bait making / enhancing ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:

“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”

And: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” (AND “FLAVOUR, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS”) SEE:


http://www.baitbigfish.com


Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait-maker, and proven big fish angler. His bait making and bait enhancing books / ebooks are even used by members of the “British Carp Study Group” for reference. View this dedicated bait secrets website now…

Related Blogs

    Spring Carp Bait Flavors and Irresistible Cold Water Fishing Ground Baits

    In spring, carp are notorious for being very difficult to catch. Fishing bottom baits or ‘pop-up’ baits on the lake bed can be a complete waste of time. But also using buoyant baits in the middle or top layers of water. The top layers are where carp will often ‘sit’ most comfortably for a great proportion of time without visiting the denser, colder bottom layers. If they do visit the bottom layers to feed, it may often be for a very limited period of time indeed!

    In carp fishing it is often the case that without sufficient stimulatory attraction substances dissolved (or ‘semi-dissolved’) in the water, the fish can seem ‘blind’ to your hook baits. In order to induce takes’ far more efficiently in spring, you need an edge which will activate the senses of carp which hang n the top water layers as if oblivious to a hook bait on its own even when boosted with flavours and glowing with fluorescent colours!

    To achieve the levels of stimulation in the water around and directly above you hook bait is distinct advantage at times when water is cold especially. Having an ‘active’ ground bait (or chum) that constantly releases rising particles and attractive and stimulatory substances is a great ‘edge.’

    Oily ground baits can disintegrate and components can rise up to ‘activate’ the water column surrounding your hovering pop-up or floating buoyant hook bait above it in the middle and top layers where fish are often located. Cold water fish are often unwilling to feed in more dense lower water near the bottom as this is more uncomfortable for them and too cold for their metabolism to be efficient.

    The top water layers receive radiated heat fro the sun and bit becomes less dense. Top layers are warmer and suit fish metabolism parameters and they use energy far more efficiently there, but carp can also be caught at great depths too… A great ‘plus’ about fishing the top water layers is that ‘takes’ can come at any time and be totally unexpected, whereas winter and spring carp fishing results and feeding times can be far more limited. With bottom baits, bites may be limited to happen during a short half-hour period in the early morning on a fishery. This can mean that the rest of your time fishing on the lake bed is just a waste of time!

    Water soluble poly vinyl alcohol (‘PVA’) bags or ‘netting’ can be used filled with all kinds of tasty morsels to attract fish. The more they react and remain active and move around in the water the better! Filling these with bread crumb based ground bait and maggots to get movement it can really improve results when fish are unresponsive to more conventional inactive pellets and boilies, meats etc. Maggots and hook baits can be sprayed with flavours to boost attraction. Proven cold water flavours like Rod Hutchinson’s ‘Megaspice’ or ‘Scopex’ at about 3 milliliters per kilogram of crushed boilies or pellets as part of a ground bait mix in a ‘PVA’ bag (or net) can work wonders on a cold day.

    Hemp oil which is far more water soluble and viscous in low temps than most oils used in fishing baits does not inhibit bait digestion like fish oils.

    Adding liquid lecithins has many stimulatory advantages helping any oils already in the crushed boilies or pellets to emulsify and spread more effectively through water to attract fish.

    Adding a mixture of essential oils can really make a difference at this time of year. You can use a single one or a mixture. Among the most well known are black pepper oil and geranium terpenes and clove oil. Eucalyptus oil has also been very successful in winter and spring for me as well as the cold decongestant essential oil mixture called ‘Olbas Oil’ which has done well for me all year round any temperatures. It comes into its own in spring those variable spring temperatures.

    As an attractor and flavor ‘Olbas Oil’ contains many ‘bioactive’ antioxidant compounds also regarded as antiseptics. (Clove oil in dentistry for instance!) It has a proven range of essential oils but one constituent is also a very potent, extremely soluble, naturally occurring carboxylic (‘organic’) acid a derivative of birch trees. This special group of acidic substances are just one among very many which has been used extremely successfully in commercially produced fishing flavors and baits for years.

    Adding edible dyes to your ground bait adds visual stimulation. (You can mix ‘Ccmoore’ red pigment based ‘Red Venom’ which is extremely effective at this time of year.) It is based on the famed ‘Carophyll Red.’ (The substance connected to so much controversy in connection with another excellent bait additive especially for this time of year namely, ‘Robin Red.’) There are a vast range of other stimulants, enhancers, flavours etc to exploit especially for low temperature use and much depends if you are using the ‘instant bait’ approach, the long-term bait approach, or both!

    If you mix up your special ground bait and find it is too light or buoyant you can add sterilised sand to provide weight and when spread on the lake bed will release and send up into the water column tiny globules of oils attached to them from the ground baits mixture, so adding to the attraction

    So you cast out and your ‘PVA’ bag or netting of ground bait attached to your hook and or lead releases bits of bait and tiny droplets of oils travelling upwards constantly release from the bait in regularly occurring streams of attraction. As your flavours, additives and oils travel and diffuse through the water in varying amounts, any carp in the vicinity will be able to home in on it and identify the exact proximity of your hook bait as the source of all this exciting substances.

    As the ground bait is composed of crumbs which are not going to fill the carp up before it has at least sampled your hook bait as it is the only sold food available, the chances of a hooking a fish and getting a take are maximised. I have since learnt that this is the kind of idea used with the compressed ground bait ‘stick’ method. This method can rely less on ground bait design of ingredients being very ‘active’ It differs in that the bait is compressed tightly into soluble PVA netting and when this dissolves in the water, the ground bait expands and disperses, so increasing its carp ‘pulling power!’

    Although this is just the tip of the winter and spring bait ‘ice-berg’ and there is far more to successful baits and techniques, even using these few simple methods has proven effective for me personally, but are just a ‘half-way stage’ to even more effective things…

    This fishing books author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges.’ Just one could impact on your catches!

    By Tim Richardson.

    For the unique and acclaimed new massive expert bait making / enhancing ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:

    “BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”

    And: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” (AND “FLAVOUR, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS”) SEE:


    http://www.baitbigfish.com


    Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait-maker, and proven big fish angler. His bait making and bait enhancing books / ebooks are even used by members of the “British Carp Study Group” for reference. View this dedicated bait secrets website now!