Tag Archives: Expert Tips

Fishing Strategies

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

    Fishing Strategies

    Making Easy Carp and Catfish Baits – 16 Expert Tips for More Fish

    Have you ever wondered why one ‘lucky guy’ seems to catch the biggest fish again and again, while the majority of other fishermen just seem to get the average catches? Why is that?

    Many of us would love to catch those big catfish, carp, bass, trout etc, every time we go fishing. It may just be that the guy is a genius angler, but real fishing success is often simply about using bait that is more effective than most other anglers baits at getting round fishes natural fears and resistance to eating it!…

    But how can we achieve this? Well here’s a few of some of the best most proven methods of increasing your catches, especially for carp and catfish, but can be applied very effectively to many other species:

    1. Try taking a look at the most popular baits where you fish and eliminate any similarity your homemade bait has with them. This especially applies to your own unique fishing bait recipe or formulas. This removes the fishes ‘danger reference points’. This gives your bait a massive ‘edge’ because the fish will not associate your bait with danger, anything like as much as with the baits everyone else are using – after all , the whole point of a bait is simply to fool the fish into taking a hook into it’s mouth!

    2. Make your bait different sizes, odd shapes, density, colors, flavors, with different attractors and additives, the more different to the usual bait the fish experience, the more effective your bait will be potentially be. Making your own bait puts the odds back in your favor and the power back into your hands – literally!

    3. Absolutely pack your baits with “powerful ‘free amino acids’ (the type bodybuilders use as a liquid protein food supplement.) Even if you’re making a proprietary bait using a ‘commercial base mix’ that anyone can purchase, this will really set your bait apart and make it preferable to fish!

    4. Pack bait with minerals, vitamins and trace elements – get a health tonic supplement from your local drug store. Very few people realize that these are in fact amazing attractors in their own right! An astounding edge is to massively increase the attractiveness and soluble nutritional message leaking from your bait, by soaking your hook bait in a mixture if fresh liquidized sweet corn, molasses and liquid protein food (so-called ‘free amino acids.)

    5. It has been proven that when tested carp were provided with a number of complete foods providing all their nutritional requirements, preferred the food that had been sweetened. E.g., try sweetening honey and molasses, fruit sugar (fructose), or saccharin.

    6. Add Sea salt to your bait – this is one of the most proven and unbelievable fish feeding triggers, and a great nutritional taste enhancer full of minerals. Nearly every animal and fish cannot live without salt!

    7. For many fish including catfish and carp, pack your bait with fresh good quality digestible protein – it doesn’t need to be a large proportion, no more than a third of your bait. Ingredients such as trout pellet powder, meat and poultry meals, blood meal, fish meals and shellfish meals and liver powder are great.

    Add energy rich carbohydrates to provide balanced nutrition and binding. For example, soya flour, semolina, or even ordinary white or brown wheat flour. For carp try adding some wheat germ it has excellent properties!

    8. Add a small amount of oil to your bait for a balanced nutritional value. For catfish this could be you favorite fish oil. For carp the best is probably pure cold pressed hemp oil; it’s natures ‘super food’ and is one of the richest and most healthy and nutritional oils known to man and fish!

    9. Give your bait some protein that’s been ‘pre-digested’ or ‘hydrolyzed.’ This is easily achieved by adding a small amount of proprietary powder, like pre-digested liver, fish meal or shellfish extracts to your bait; available from bait companies all across the worldwide web.

    This method is incredibly effective, improving the fish attractive ‘amino acid profile of your bait. Fish are extremely efficient at detecting and utilizing amino acids, and you may well find that with the higher the rate of inclusion of these highly fish digestible ingredients, your catches and numbers of bigger fish soar too!

    10. Allow your bait to ‘cure’ for 3-4 days prior to use; this allows your bait to start to ferment and lets bacterial enzymes release alcohols, sugars and increase the level of pre-digested proteins in your bait; all amazingly extremely good fish feeding triggers and attractors. See the difference this makes to your catches!

    11. If you use ‘boilies’ rather than paste or dough baits, try chopping edges off your hook baits as if other fish have been ‘playing with your bait and taking small chunks out of it; this can really make the bigger fish ‘feel’ safer when they sample your hook baits – try piecing your hook baits right through to release the maximum attraction even from the center of your bait; it really works!

    12. Try wrapping your bait and your hook (except the point) in a paste or dough. Try a mixture of ordinary flour, marmite, parmesan cheese, garlic granules, curry spices, sea salt, eggs and liquid amino acids – this mixture is pure ‘dynamite’ and really makes them bite!

    13. One of the most successful paste / dough baits of recent times is made from a mixture of fish meal and a couple of pre-digested ingredients like pre-digested, liver powder, fish meals, pre-digested yeast powder or pre-digested shellfish extracts. Try binding them together with just ordinary flour and loads of liquid amino acids / protein food supplement.

    The addition of corn steep liquor powder or liquid, and pure betaine is a massive boost to the power of attraction. (But use no eggs, or water in the mix; just ‘liquid protein’ amino acids. (A body building supplement.) This can be used as bait ‘soaks ‘and dips for pellets and boilies too. Experiment with different proportions to get your dough / pate to hold and last on your hook for different times. When you ‘bait up’ or ‘chum your swim with free baits like this, to attract the fish – hold on to your rods!!!

    14. Add natural ingredients to your bait, for example, bird foods contain all kinds of fantastic foods fish love, like insects, seeds, grubs and worms. Many times, these encourage smaller fish to find your bait, and these can lead the bigger ones to your hook. Spirulina is a great attractor that attracts natural aquatic animals to your baits. These gather and form a brilliant natural ‘free bait’ so attracting fish ‘naturally!

    15. Add a ‘crunch factor’ to your bait – many fish have food detectors inside their gills, and allowing fish to experience eating your bait like it was natural food, e.g., like shrimps or snails or mussels, is a great way to ‘turn them on’ and get more confident feeding and more bites!

    The ‘chitin’ in this hard material is also a massive natural dietary requirement for carp, essential for healthy liver function, healthy blood, and repair and growth of skeletal structures. It is also high in nitrogen; an important building block of protein, also essential for repair, growth and other processes and functions in carp.

    16. If you use ‘boilies’ for carp catfish, etc there is a simple method of improving them: If you buy your baits frozen in a bag, then open them up and let them defrost and ‘warm up for 3-4 days in advance of fishing. This gives bacterial enzymes the time to start breaking down your baits and releasing very attractive alcohols, sugars and amino acids for example. It really works well for better catches and can even promote quicker bites!

    Making and adapting your own and readymade shop – bought baits to make them different to the rest, and far more effective than normal is a science, and a very satisfying ‘art’. When you have armed yourself with a range of great baits, the confidence you feel is awesome and especially satisfying when you’ve designed them made your own homemade baits yourself; and they catch your next ‘personal best!’

    I could show you many real life examples of how using edges like these and others, have resulted in fantastic big fish catches.

    I love researching and writing about fishing bait because it is one of the fastest short-cuts to success! I am into bait in a big way, having even researched the subject with a Ph.D biochemist to reveal the reasons why and how baits really work to catch fish. I’ve found that a little bait knowledge can catch you more fish, but the more you know – the more consistent your catches can become – and the more big fish you catch!

    The truly amazing thing is, ANY angler can achieve truly amazing catches with just enough of the right bait knowledge! Then other anglers will wonder what his ‘secret to success’ is…

    The author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges’ up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact in improving 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…

    Fishing Strategies

    Better Winter Carp Fishing Results Using Well Proven Bait Tips!

    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 more winter and spring fish. Discover more now!

    Carp do not digest bait very well in colder conditions so it is extremely vital you design and select your baits and ground baits for exactly this situation to maximise your greatest chances of bites and literally in effect stop actually wasting good money on bait! Of course one way to do this is use as little bait as possible, but this is only part of the solution and does not maximise your chances because you will not necessarily be applying bait and baiting in the optimum ways possible for best results. Many anglers will choose to utilise water-soluble PVA products in combination with whole or crushed boilies, yet you still have to pay for the PVA of course, however it baits-up exactly where your hook bait is, so drawing most attention to it without filling fish up.

    The choice of bait these days means you need never worry about over-feeding fish but you need to know what will and will not over-feed fish in the first place and this requires some know-how. In general you need to avoid bulk oils and un-winterised oils in baits and avoid using too much free bait that takes a long time to break down in water. after all, if a bait is not very soluble it is likely to take much more energy and time for carp to digest it and this is something to very definitely bear in mind! Proteins are much better if they have at least been part-digested and fermented shrimp powder, whey protein concentrate, predigested yeast powder and enzyme-treated yeast powders for example are very well proven.

    Of course you can apply as many various baits in your attack as you like, from readymade ground baits, to maggots, to hemp, to various crushed boilies and soluble carp pellets and so on, all in conjunction with PVA products and methods (and specialised bait feeding cages and droppers etc. Ground bait application is the art and skill that is a genuine cornerstone of successful carp fishing so it is absolutely essential especially in winter to do it to suit the situation and conditions taking into account all the possible variables that may challenge your fishing. Ground baiting for some carp anglers might mean launching spods of pellets or hemp or slop or method mix etc, instead of just firing out whole baits; which may well fill carp up too fast and bread is a very useful ground bait base often over-looked.

    If you choose to exploit bread in winter and spring you will find it is not necessarily a small fish ground bait base; in fact far from it! In the coldest of nights you can get bites from big carp over bread-based ground baits and of course, know fish are gorging on free bait very little without actually sampling your hook baits with this method. Boilies in standard bottom bait, or pop-up bait or critically-balanced form etc all are reliable hook baits and always will be.

    Increase your bite rate by improving the effective addtives and ingredients in your baits and ground baits that induce more sampling of hook baits having not fed fish up on free baits first! Water-solubility and digestible potential of your baits is paramount. Pellets and boilies made with little oil as possible (that make baits less digestible and less effective in cold water) are very highly recommended!

    Many forms of popular pellets substantially lose their edge in winter owing to their high oil levels, including the halibut pellets and others which are designed as commercial feeds for fish with comparatively higher dietary lipid requirements. Pellets with low oil levels and wheatgerm are great for winter and spring carp fishing and you will normally get far more bites in the long-run fishing over such digestible free ground baits than over ordinary high oil halibut pellets for example. As oil is pretty much insoluble in water low oil pellets and boilies are much more able to draw fish towards your baited area as more water soluble attraction is dispersed more effectively in low water temperatures.

    Robin Red is one of those famous winter bait and ground bait additives you can adapt and apply to almost anything just by mixing it into a mix or adding water or almost any liquid. Red Factor, Red Band, crushed hemp, Insecto Insecivorous, Nectar Blend and other mixtures such as Meggablend, Ccmoores Meggablend Red and Meggablend sweet are excellent as are yeast products and Phillips Yeast Mixture in winter baits. Essential oils and lecithins work their magic too and some are mostly under-dosed, while others are often over-dosed, so take the effort to discover correct levels!

    If you add a liquid to your boilies and pellets for whatever period you choose whether long or short, you can raise the water-soluble proportion of your baits making them far more effective. Baits like particles, boilies, pellets etc all benefit from glugs, dips and so on, and so do fake and live baits such as maggots. These tips are just a sample taster to give you a perspective on the importance of you bait choices and the seriously important free bait application methods and ground bait formats you might select; preferably you will try to stimulate as many carp senses as possible at this time by gathering as many tips to help you as possible!

    In winter and spring you get what you work for so to guarantee you save yourself money in wasted bait and on wasted blank trips, think about your carp senses-related issues around your hook bait and ground bait effectiveness and it will pay you back big-time; so read 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…