Carp Baits – What’s Hot and What’s Not...

When I look back over the years that I’ve been carp fishing bait has always been an obsession. I am lucky enough to have been fishing around the time when the the first designer baits (christened with the name ‘boilies’) hit the scene. Boilies, so called because the bait is made by combining meals and powdered ingredients with liquidised eggs and then boiled to create a bait with a tough skin (the skin is designed to deter nuisance fish from stealing the bait intended for bigger fish) really did transform carp fishing. For the first time, anglers used to fishing with bread and potatoes had a new bait to play with and boy did the fish love them!

Modern boilies have come a long way since those early years. When we set about launching the new TF-Gear boilie range we wanted to create baits that would stand the test of time and benefit from all the advances that have been made in bait formulation.

History and experimentation has taught us that whilst carp are bombarded with many different boilies in a range of colours, flavours and bait that is made from a huge choice of ingredients , certain baits are the real fish catchers. Moreover, we also know that some boilies work better than others on certain types of waters and vice versa. Baits for hard-fished club and day ticket waters need to be different to those used when campaign-fishing a syndicate lake, for example.

Boilies are made with attractors (usually flavours) and food ingredients (these are powdered meals, such as fish meal, milk protein, birdfood and semolina. They are made into a paste by mixing the attractoprs and meals with liquidised eggs. The paste is rolled into little balls and boiled. The liquidised eggs harden in boiling water, creating bait that has a tough skin.

The flavour, or attractor acts as a label for the fish to recognise the bait. The attractor works as a label on two levels – it tells the fish that what it can taste/smell is food and helps it to recognise that food source on future occasions. The ingredients are the food value of the bait. Boilies can either be nutritionally strong or weak, depending on the quality of the ingredients used to make them. As a general rule, whilst carp will sample all types of baits with a multitude of flavours, they will generally prefer to eat baits with a high nutritional profile over a period of time. This is a concept that most anglers struggle to understand. The common misconception is that carp eat baits because the flavour tastes ‘nice’ and whilst this is partially true, they are more likely to eat the bait that does them the most good when fishing over a period of time.

When you choose a carp bait you should choose a bait for the job in hand. If you are fishing a day ticket or club water where the carp get bombarded with all kinds of bait, then what we call attractor baits with a strong ‘eat me’ signal are best. Bear in mind, however, that the ‘eat me’ signal does not mean using over-powering flavours that make the bait reek. Carp have superb olfactory systems that enable them to detect food signals in minute quantities – use baits that have good attractors at low to moderate values.

When campaign fishing waters, syndicate lakes, for example, the attractors or flavours should be much, much lower and it is the food value of the bait, its nutritional profile that you should rely on. Natural extracts and subtle flavours give the bait a label by which fish can recognise it in the future. We know fromn experience that the more subtle the label or flavour, the longer the bait will go on working. A good nutritional bait should get better and better over a period of time – as the fish get used to eating it and benefiting from its superior food value, they will seek it out in preference to others. Bait with strong attractors works for a while but eventually that same strong flavour that drew the fish to the bait in the first place begins to become associated with danger.

In the TF-Gear range of baits you will discover several important points. Firstly, none of them have flavours and attractors that are overpowering. This is a gamble on our part because we know that baits that reek of fruity flavours, so strong that they smell through the bag, attract anglers. We also know that ultra-strong flavours repel fish so we have avoided making our baits reek. Secondly, we have relied primarily on salt as a preservative rather than the sharp chemical preservatives that are so common in the bait industry. These chemical attractors taste bitter and repel fish. Salt, on the other hand is a natural flavour enhancer (we humans use salt as a flavour enhancer all the time) and it is also a great natural preservative. Thirdly, we have developed baits that use proven ingredients – top quality fish meals, proteins and birdfoods. These create nutritionally superior baits that are easy for carp top digest and eat more of. Finally, we have chosen some really great, subtle ingredients that make the bait stand out and keep the fish coming back for more – crushed chilli, for example.

To make life easy, we have created two ranges of boilies – our premium range and ‘the Gear.’ With the Gear we have a range made for day-ticket and club waters with the emphasis on attractors rather than long term food source. The premium range gives more emphasis to food value with lower level, natural attractors such as teatree oil. It’s a range that we are very proud of and results on the bait have justified our confidence.

Next time you buy bait, ask yourself just one question. Has his bait been designed by someone who really understands bait and fish or has it been put together by a faceless company? Too many anglers buy fishing products from companies that don’t employ anglers. I don’t play golf but if I did, I would want my clubs to be designed by Tiger Woods not Victoria Wood...

Another personal best

Once again, I was back on the tench trail, in the same swim as last week, in identical weather conditions. This time last year, I seemed to find the pit plagued with hurricane force winds whenever I chose to go. It was pleasant to fish a gentle ripple for a change.

My approach to the fishing was identical to last week and on day one the action was manic from the first minute. I had a run only ten minutes after casting out at dawn. Annoyingly, I lost that fish but then had four tench in the next hour to 6lb 3oz, before missing another run.

There was then a bit of a break until mid morning, when I had a 3lb fish plus a sleek female of 6lb 8oz. I was then to lose what felt a really big tench in early afternoon, when this time I lost the battle with that tangle of branches to the left of the swim. No sooner had I re-tackled and recast than the alarm was screaming again; this time it was a very big carp that did me all ends up!

In mid afternoon, I managed a 4lb bream and a string of rudd to about 1lb. The rudd bites stopped abruptly about 4.0pm and that was the signal for two more big males to come calling. First into the net was another personal best of 8lb 7ozs, closely followed by another cracker of 7lb-11oz. What a super brace.

After that brilliant first day, I was up at the crack of dawn on the second, full of anticipation. But isn’t it typical of angling that day two was a complete blank!

A first 8lb Male

I was again tench fishing for two days and one night, this week being very hot and settled, apart from two hours of heavy rain on the second morning. I fished the adjacent swim to last week so that I had 7ft of water at 30 yards rather than 9ft. Once again, there was a pleasant gentle east wind.

As far as the loose feed was concerned, I decided to eliminate the hemp, casters and pellets as an experiment, just baiting over each rod with two cones of dead red maggots to kick start the swims, and then casting the feeders every half hour or so.

The first tench came at midday on day one, and then at regular intervals until mid morning on day two, when the action stopped. I even caught two tench in darkness, a rare event for me. The average size of the fish initially was very disappointing, with the first six fish only up to about 4lbs. In fact, two were the smallest tench I’ve caught for years, barely a pound apiece. But at dusk, I did get into a bigger fish, with a cracking male of 7lb 5ozs coming to net. Two hours later, I had another of 7lb 3oz. Things were looking up; a brace of 7lb+ male tench was a first for me.

Just as it was getting light the following morning I had a screaming take which resulted in a lovely clean fish of 6lb 8oz, but the last fish of the session was the highlight. It was still pelting down when the reel handle was again a blur and I hooked into something that was obviously substantial. I had a real battle keeping it out of marginal branches to me left but eventually the fish was in the net. It was another cracking make fish, which soon proved to be a personal best of 8lb 2ozs. I was delighted with that and it made a fitting conclusion to the trip.

Tench - To feed or not to feed!

Now that I’m back from a very enjoyable two weeks in Tenerife, it’s time to start some serious fishing. I first started deliberately targeting big fish on June 16th 1959, so I’m now entering my 50th year of specimen hunting. God willing, there’ll be a lot more years yet! I’ve made a plan to fish for as many different species as possible over the next twelve months, and increase as many personal bests as I can. It won’t be easy as there are some awesome fish on my present list, but whatever the outcome it will be fun trying.

My first target species is the tench, present bests 11lb 11ozs female and 7lb 13oz male and if I beat those it will be like winning the lottery. Having said that, the pit where I started operations produced a 12lb+ fish three years ago so you never know.

This trip, my fishing was from dawn on the 7th until dusk on the 8th, and I was able to enjoy nice calm, sunny days, although the night of the 7th was cold and I needed my fleece jacket. Characteristic of this spring, the wind was in the east, although very gentle.

When I arrived, I bumped into an old friend, Tenchfishers member Matt Dooley, who has some very big tench to his credit. Matt had been on the pit since late March and been taking lots of fish. Interestingly, he told me that beds of bait had not been working and he’d taken all his fish just using feeders. As I always value local knowledge I decided to hedge my bets on the baiting. I put my normal; few baiting cones of casters, hemp and mini pellets over the right hand rod, but the left hand rod would be baited with feeders only.

The fishing was fairly slow for us all that week, but, as well as assorted small rudd and a couple of 4lb bream, I did manage three nice tench to 6-14. End rig was my normal short hook link fished above a Kamasan Black Cap 50gm feeder. The link consisted of a size 12 Pallatrax hook to 8lb Fluorocarbon. This is secured by two sliding beads each side of the hooklink swivel on anti tangle tubing, thereby allowing the distance between hook bait and feeder to be varied easily if there are weed problems. Hook bait was an Enterprise buoyant rubber red maggot together with three normal red maggots, giving a neutral buoyancy offering.