Tag Archives: Carp Bait

Fishing Tips

Big Catfish and Carp Baits – Cool Hook Bait Ingredients

Keeping ahead of fish by using new baits, or versions of baits to keep on catching consistently, is so often the key to success, after location! But some fishermen might wonder how and why constantly changing baits has major advantages; there’s more to this than you might expect…

With many big catfish when fished for constantly, over time, many traditional baits can fail as fish associate these baits with ‘danger.’ Often catfish baits will go in a cycle of success before seemingly failing completely at the point where the catfish diet may have changed to predominantly feeding on live fish instead of fishermens’ baits.

I’m not alone in experiencing having ‘hits’ often very good hauls of catfish over a relatively short space of time, on one particular bait. Then the catfish simply ‘switch off’ the successful bait, often for an extremely long of time indeed. You can end up constantly searching for a completely new bait altogether.

Making catfish dough baits is an easier option as the ingredients, attractors and stimulators, size, shape, colour, density, texture, buoyancy etc, can be skilfully manipulated to constantly keep ahead of the fish before it ‘blows’ and results significantly reduce.

This has been found with various boilies, squid, and liver, certain pork baits like luncheon meat and Pepperami, even with nightcrawlers, prawns, mussels and cockles and so on. It seems like each has its day, then they can be ignored completely for an amazingly long time. However, dead baits of whole or chopped fish, but more especially, live baits, can really exploit the catfishes’ change in feeding behaviour.

In certain situations with particular fish, the question is how to get around these ‘defence mechanisms.’ Use of natural baits style is one answer but these often just act like a needle in a haystack, like fishing a single bloodworm in a bed of millions of them. Sure, worms, night crawlers, maggots and the like do make catching ‘clued-up’ fish easier initially, especially where fish have been not been used to being hooked on these baits before.

The famous giant 50 pound common called “Herman” of “Warmwell” repute in the UK, was very wised-up about conventional boilies. But this fish was not immune to worm bait… The “Redmire” fish, which could be very difficult to catch, were very keen to feed on tiny baits like various particles such as hemp. Use of new particle baits to a carp water can be devastating and this has been proven again and again.

The “Redmire” carp including Chris Yates’s record fish that stood for years were often tempted by sweetcorn. Often a can of “Jolly Green Giant” can save the day. These days soaking sweetcorn in sweeteners lik talin and thaumatin, or in liquid liver, yeast or betaine might work better. I’ve had good hits of fish on ‘Scopex’ soaked sweetcorn for example. The possibilities just with bait are endles, but it could be tiger nuts, peanuts, or any other bait. But I wonder how many fisherman think how to give the fish what they want but are very difficult to tempt on an individual bait alone.

A hook with samples of various diverse unrelated baits can often produce fish for many reasons, not least because the fish have not previously been ‘conditioned’ to be able to deal easily with it. Various different types of boilies and or dough type baits with particle baits or maggots or worms on the hook can do well for example.

Combinations with seafoods like prawn or cockles, an old fish cube, with some chicken or pork meat, all coated in an enticing paste or dough mixture can really produce fish when an individual bait simply will not.

Even boilie and dough mixes that have done so well on waters previously, can need changing after a long period of success. The revitalised success of the boilie “Active 8,” when teamed with a new maple attractor brought a new generation of anglers their first big fish success, even when the original version of this bait was still available, but it’s effectiveness had tailed-off compared to its early success before fish wised-up to it.

Often bait is still effective in triggering a feeding response, but the carp feed in different more cautious ways on and around the bait. Often the phenomenon of baits being picked-up, off the edge of, or even some distance away from a bed of baits, has worked better than a hookbait fished in the middle of thousands of identical baits.

The amazing way carp can ‘clean-up’ a huge bed of baits just leaving your hookbaits remaining is quite staggering to those fishermen who just do not appreciate how sensitive to every aspect of their surroundings, fish can be. Often it is those last remaining baits, your hookbaits, which are the last to be picked up, if they are at all!

Big fish man Dave Lane has experienced this many times. The question is really, why do the fish still pick up these hook baits at all, when out of possibly hundreds or even thousands of baits, these have been identified by all the feeding fish to be the ‘dangerous’ ones?

Most fishermen might suggest it is the ‘just one more’ syndrome kicking-in, where the urge to feel the effect of one more morsel replaces the instinct to leave those last baits ‘well-alone.’

There are numerous ways to make a bait have this effect, often by exploiting essential nutritional food signals, or by using attractors, enhancers, stimulators etc with highly stimulatory effects, many of which bear little resemblance to any natural carp food at all nor providing any particular nutritional benefits, but work anyway.

There are many ways to add these effects using many ingredients and additives to boilies, meats, and particles like hemp, pellets, and ground baits etc which are highly effective at keeping those bites coming.

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

By Tim Richardson.

For the unique acclaimed expert bait making and secrets ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:

“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”
AND “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” And ” BIG FLAVORS, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” SEE:


http://www.baitbigfish.com


Tim is a highly experienced homemade bait maker big carp and catfish angler of 30 years. His bait enhancing books / ebooks now help anglers in 43 countries improve their results – see this bait and fishing secrets website now!

Related Blogs

Fishing Tips

Fishing at Lake Bungsamran for the Giant Siamese Carp, Bangkok, Thailand

 

I arrived at Bungsamran Lake at 6am on the dot, just as the daylight was beginning to appear. It was a beautiful morning with very little breeze, the surface of the Lake was like a mirror only being disturbed by the appearance of some of the huge fish that lurk in this world class fishing water.

 

Khun Boonsong mixed the bait while he waited for me to set my rods up, the apprehension of the first cast still makes my heart beat that much faster here. Khun Boomsong is one of the leading carp specialist guides working here and what he does not know about Siamese Carp is not worth knowing.

 

The bait that he had mixed was a combination of baby milk powder, custard cream flavour, sweet corn with a few other secret ingredients (he calls it his mega mix carp bait); all this was added into the base mix of rice bran. This blend is a much wetter combination than the one we use to catch the Mekong Catfish.

 

Nothing had happened for the first half hour, so Boonsong had gone to buy breakfast; he had not been gone thirty seconds, when bingo, I had a bite, the fish ran and the line was screaming off the reel, then it just stopped (probably sensing the hook). I wound the reel to take up the slack line, I thought, maybe it had shed the hook, suddenly the line tightened as the fish moved, I immediately struck and set the hook firmly in its mouth; the fight was on!

 

After the initial excitement of hooking into the fish, I had started to look for hints as to what kind of fish it was. From my previous experiences, the Striped Catfish and the Mekong Catfish are similar; they tend to run with the bait stripping line off the reel at a fantastic rate. The Mekong and the smaller striped Catfish give long hard runs, which slowly curve in a “C” or a wide “S” shaped course.

 

The Siamese Giant Carp tend to run deep and turn suddenly in an almost zig zag path. It is hard to believe that these fish when in the water are completely weightless and you are just fighting its sheer power.

 

My line carved a classic letter “Z” and I was fairly certain that I had a carp on the end of the line.  I knew I had to take my time and play the fish, unlike the Giant Mekong Catfish the Carp has a very soft mouth and too much drag will pull the hook out. I decided to back off the drag slightly; I used an Accurate Boss Magnum 870 with Lever Drag, very fine consistent adjustments to the drag are easily achieved without moving your hands from the rod and reel. They are much easier to use than a fixed spool reel especially when fishing for the larger specimens.

 

My aim at this point was to tire the fish as quickly as possible and keep it out as far as I could; the Siamese Giant Carp are renowned for appearing to give up and roll over, then at the last minute making a dash for freedom (there are many bungalows surrounding the lake and a pier splitting it in half, many fish have been lost in between the supports and stanchions).

 

The fight was ten minutes in and I had made progress, the fish was tiring -it was not the only one, my arms were beginning to ache. After another five minutes of struggle, it made a determined sharp turn, which actually brought its side out of the water, it was a Siamese Carp.

 

The Carp made several more sharp turns and then typical to these creatures, it feigned submission, which I had been ready for. I shifted to one side and instead of letting the fish run underneath the bungalow we were in, I moved it towards the left, increasing the drag slightly and with some fancy footwork (I new those ballet lessons would come in handy one day) the last ditched run for the snags was foiled.

 

The carp made its last attempt to go deep, kicking up the silt -causing lots of bubbles of natural gas, which is trapped in the bottom of the lake- but by this time it was exhausted so was I, but the fish did not know that, Boomsong appeared, with the landing net in hand I was never more pleased to see him, he quickly prepared the deck to receive the fish.

 

We unhooked the line from its mouth and we also removed another snapped line from a previous battle which it had obviously won.

 

The Siamese Giant Carp weighed in at 25.3Kg 56lbs which was quickly returned to the lake after a couple of photographs for the album.

 

Guided by Khun (Mr.) Boonsong

 

Jason Butler is a free lance writer. He is currently residing in Thailand and enjoying life. Writing articles on Fishing and Steam engine models is a passion of his. He is also a scuba Diving Instructor with over ten years experience.

contact Jason…divebutler@hotmail.co.uk

http://www.john-tom.com/

Related Blogs

Fishing Tips

Maize carp bait?

Maize is a bizarre bait. At times carp seem to stuff themselves silly on the little yellow grains. The majority of carp anglers that I encounter who use maize seem to prefer to use it uncooked after a 24 hour soak in flavored water. In this form the grains are bullet-hard and pass straight through the carp more or less intact. I feel that maize is a hundred times more effective if it is not only soaked for at least 2-3 days, but is also then cooked for about thirty minutes. After this prepa­ration most of the grains split and soften and they are far more palatable.

 

Maize takes on flavor very well and I have also found that it benefits from the addition of a sweetener of some kind. This does not necessarily have to be an artificial sweetener but could quite easily be ordinary white sugar, icing sugar or caster sugar. On the rare occasions that I use maize in France, I flavor a large bucket of 5 kilos of maize with 20ml Strawberry and 500g of ordinary
sugar. The flavor is added to the sugar which is then dissolved in boiling water which is in turn poured over the maize. I add sufficient boiling water to cover the maize by an inch or so, then leave the grains to soak up the sweetened, flavoured water for 24-72 hours, then I boil the grains for half an hour.

After boiling, return the cooked maize and the water in which they have been boiled to the bucket and allow them to cool. Do not drain off the water as contin­ued soaking will encourage the cooked maize to ferment. The liquor will thicken and the maize will start to leak its attractive sugars. The maize is then at its most effective. I am encountering fewer and fewer waters  where maize is still effective. For many years it was the bait of choice for most French carp anglers as well as with visiting carp men from all over Europe, but with the enormous growth in the popularity of carp angling in France, the widespread use of maize is proving less and less effective.

On the other hand, maize is not a popular particle bait in the UK and provid­ed the bait is properly prepared and applied, I see no reason why it shouldn’t be successful on many British carp lakes.

www.carp-tricks.blogspot.com

Carp fishing blog with loads of usefull information about carp fishing carp fishing tricks

Fishing Tips

Particles carp bait?

Maybe it is my imagination but there seems to be far fewer carp being caught on particle baits these days. At the peak of their popularity in the past  a great many carp anglers were using a particle bait of some kind, but recently many club and private carp waters have introduced particle bans and this may account for the fall in their popularity.

I believe that the main reason for the decrease in the popularity of particle baits is the growth of the bait industry and the ready availability of really top class ready-mades, boilie-making ingredients, base mixes, flavors and attractors. Nowadays it is possible to make a wide variety of superb boiled baits and, quite simply, particles have become less effective. There is no shadow of doubt in my mind that boilies catch more fish, catch bigger fish and do them good at the same time.

Apart from using a few kilos of cooked maize from time to time when fishing in France, I have not used a particle bait for nearly ten years and quite frankly I doubt if I shall be tempted to do so again. The use of mass baits, pellets, ball pellets and groundbaits in conjunction with well formulated boilies is a far more effective method of catching carp than the use of particle baits.

Frankly I am pleased that the widespread use of particles has lost its popu­larity. Particles are poor food baits that do the carp little good and I believe that it is important that we, as anglers, give back a little to our quarry in the form of decent, nutritional food baits that compensate them in part for the stress we impose by catching them.

www.carp-tricks.blogspot.com

 

Carp fishing blog with loads of usefull information about carp fishing carp fishing tricks

Carp Fishing Basics

HOW TO MAKE CARP AND CATFISH BAITS Using Bait Flavours That Catch More fish!

If you are looking for easy ways to improve your catches then flavours and their creative uses really need to be explored further – but flavours are far more than just smells, tastes or labels but a whole world of different irresistible factors when used in combination in readymade or homemade baits! To maximise flavours to catch many more fish read on now!

 

If you think that flavours are nothing more than a smell they have really come a very long way and are incredibly diverse in effect, quality and fish-catching properties. Many flavours contain bioactive compounds, essential oils and their components plus other factors including metabolic stimulants of various kinds, and many other things besides that turn fish on in multiple ways on different levels. Some flavours attract fish to the proximity of your bait and other substances in your baits should ideally trigger strong reliable instinctive feeding responses. (Natural feeding triggers are a huge part of CC Moore bait design for instance like so many bait companies large and small.)

 

Not at all things about flavours used in modern carp fishing are anything to do with what we in human terms call smell or taste! Specifically-designed and carefully scientifically chosen fishing bait flavours offer many varied effects and impacts on fish these days; far more than the old fashioned solvent-based cake flavours for instance!

 

Solvent based flavours improve bait solubility. For instance glycerol and alcohol based flavours are hygroscopic which means they attract water into your bait. This produces a diffusion effect so that flavour and dissolved bait substances pump out of your bait – so increasing the performance of your bait, and hydrating it more making it more digestible than drier un-hydrated baits yet to become water-packed.

 

Solvent based flavours also act to a great degree as solvents, although water is the greatest solvent of course, many flavours can to a degree help emulsify ingredients, additives, liquids and other elements of your baits so they pass out of your bait and into the water column more efficiently –and even help make your baits that bit more digestible.

 

In one carp magazine a couple of years ago someone used a headline stating to the effect that flavours do not work! Some people have even said that flavours sell more anglers than catch fish. Flavours do more than just attract, or incite or even repel in some cases! Flavours do so much more in a bait when used in combination with many bait ingredients, extracts, liquids and so forth. They are like amino acids and enhancers – they can add to, enhance and multiply the effects and impacts of all kinds of factors in baits as a whole!

 

To simply test a neat flavour in any concentration or pH of water in a tank of clean water using usually juvenile carp is extremely misleading – with endless variables not covered at all.

 

To state that in a range of tests that a certain flavour did nor stimulate feeding does not mean at all that that flavour cannot make a very big difference in a bait. Flavours are about so much more than triggering feeding. They can illicit a change in the behavioural modes of fish even if that happens to produce curiosity and stopping the fish from just carrying on doing whatever (as if your bait were not there at all!)

 

It’s just the same when testing amino acid combinations in different pH water, different temperatures and so on in a tank. Think about it; natural lake water is alive with all kinds of micro-organisms, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and suspended particles and minerals and so on.

 

When you realise how extremely powerful fish senses really are in comparison to humans you tend to consider that almost anything, even inert plastic and rubber baits carry some kind of signal no matter how insignificant. Each and every ingredient and liquid in a bait has flavours even on the extremely finite scale so think about it! Carp can detect certain molecules in water down to as little as one part in a billion. In that way they are like sharks that are well known to detect just one drop of blood a mile or more away down current!

 

I say down current because one of greatest effects of flavours is to not only disperse quickly themselves in the water column, but also crucially assist the dispersal of other bait materials in solution, in suspension and so on which make it far easier and quicker for fish to detect your baits and get hooked faster!

 

I’m not electrochemist or whatever but I do know that baits are very much about the passage of charged particles impacting upon variously evolved receptors, proteins, signalling pathways and brain receptors and so on. This leads to amino acid and hormone releases that directly cause changes in behaviour in us – and in fish. It’s like the old Bisto gravy advert where once you get a whiff of it carried in the air you instinctively want to follow the source – or in the case of fish, the concentration gradient of that signal in the water, issuing forth from your baits!

 

Many many tricks and tips and sound scientific facts can improve your catches when it comes to flavours. For instance cutting a successful flavour with maybe another, or a liquid food, or sweetener or enhancers etc to give a bait a new signal when fish maybe are wising up but still want the nutrition within your bait’s base mix. You can make your own flavour recipes very easily if you have the know-how. I find the ripening processes of fruit and flavour developments in meats, fermented fish, and cheeses and so on fascinating – and very useful and effective when applied to homemade bait making!

 

You might cut a concentrated flavour with a liquid food, or syrup or sweetener, enhancer, natural soluble extract, oils plus a high potency high PC liquid emulsifier, and so on to boost effects and impacts on fish to make them even easier to catch! You can also do the opposite; i.e. cut a flavour so it is less recognisable and produce something new to get around carp wary of familiar over-used flavours.

 

One trick anyone can do is cut one solvent based flavour with others so for example you might make your own pineapple flavour using 3 different brands of pineapple flavour or Scopex flavour or chocolate malt flavour for example.

 

You might source some of your own special flavours that are not on familiar solvent bases at all but are natural – and use these to mix with natural ester based flavours and perhaps an unusual solvent based flavour. Many flavours are natural extracts in an alcohol base, but you can easily make your own unique homemade versions with a little thought! My ebooks are filled with this stuff.

 

I’m not against soaking baits in neat flavours and other substances. You might think this will put fish off. But it’s all about context. Think about it. If you are fishing for many days, you can certainly put flavour-soaked free baits out to alert fish of their presence- very strongly! Then you can be crafty and not fish that area for a number of days, knowing that a good number of wary fish will creep back onto your baits when they have washed out and appear safe. This is the kind of thing I and countless others have been known to exploit.

 

You might consider that you can make extremely potent natural flavours with no solvent bases whatsoever. So many powdered ingredients and additives etc are soluble. But soluble does not just mean in water, but in a variety of other substances. For instance, you might make unusual flavours based on condensed milk totally packed full of added soluble milk fractions and extracts.

 

Another example could be hydrolysed casein liquid with liquid yeast concentrate with added enzyme-treated yeast and intense sweetener with liquid glucose and malt extract. You might want to use pre-digested fish, oleoresins, liquid lecithin, terpenes, Manuka honey and Talin.

 

You can even make baits that are flavoured with a weak flavour mixed with Molasses and Minamino for instance or anything – maybe fresh liquidised crab or crab paste plus a crab flavour for instance, or real liquidised pineapple plus a pineapple flavour and liquid betaine for instance. I class betaine as a flavour, just like glycerine and honey or Marmite or Belachan in warm water in solution for instance.

 

On easier waters using flavour-soaked hook baits and free baits can significantly improve your catch rate. Think about it. Why do hook baits over-dosed with concentrated flavours at 1000 to 1 concentration or whatever incite fish to snap at baits or suck in baits; even going beyond the point of having their receptors in their lips burnt and resulting in hooked fish?

 

Concentrated flavours solvent-based flavours are extremely complex in not just their components but the entire diversity of their designs, properties and impacts on tastes and perceptions. Even if you sampled 10 different brands of pineapple or Scopex or strawberry you would find at least one or 2 that stand out from the rest. Flavours really are a matter of experimentation.

 

If you doubt this and just want to stick to the big brand names and labels that you have heard of previously then consider this; the big companies are not the only ones who use the services of professional flavorists and scientists in various fields to produce fishing bait flavours and additives and so on that are extremely potent in their effects. Many of the products from really small companies can be very advanced indeed and I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending them for your own testing.

 

It is very easy to test flavours. Just one way which is not very scientific but will show you instantly what works on any individual water is to soak your hook baits in 3 different brands of a flavour with the same name, such as banana, blue cheese, condensed milk or whatever, and fish each brand on a different rod for a period long enough to see if one flavour really out-fishes the others, then test the best against more flavours of the same name from different companies until you find an even better flavour. It works because I have done this many times over the years! But the best bit is then you can play with the best flavours you can get even more creative and add effects to them that boost impacts on fish senses and physiology etc even more potently. It takes a bit of reading of my ebooks to put this into practice but literally anyone can do this!

 

You will really benefit from using such variations of many kinds in applications varying from homemade boilies, shelf life and frozen boilies and homemade and readymade pastes, to readymade and homemade particle mixes and preparations, ground bait preparation, spod mixes, pellets, stick mixes, fake baits and even natural baits like CC Moore frozen mussels and bloodworm etc! 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 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

Proven homemade bait making readymade bait success secrets bibles, unique bait secrets articles by Tim Richardson! FOR FREE VIDEOS SEE:http://www.youtube.com/user/BAITBIGFISH7KAIZEN#p/u/1/eUbFBwq6l9w