While UK waters are rich in several different types of carp, many experienced "carpers" swear that the really big and feisty ones are only to be found by carp fishing in France. The steep increase in the number of Britons who are willing to travel across the Channel for continental carp fishing is increasing every year. France has the advantage of a generally milder climate as well as a very large number of lakes that favour carp growth.
Partly this is due to a lower number of French anglers who consider carp when loading their hooks. In fact, some of the most popular carp lakes of today were once mixed species lakes where fishers threw the carp back for many years, resulting in some monster carp that have been known to top 60 pounds/27kg. Moreover, France is close enough that one can save thousands of pounds over a trip to Central or Eastern Europe.
For the British traveller to France, there are several different ways to get to the biggest French carp. You'll want to choose your best option while considering comfort level, love of adventure and budget.
Public Lakes
The cheapest method, by far, is to go to a public lake. There are thousands of these throughout France, many of which are stocked with carp. You'll simply need to stop by any angling shop or most pubs and get a license. A fishing map (or carte de peche) is also very useful, as is a basic French phrase book. Of course, the carping on such lakes varies considerably, so doing your research before you leave is even more valuable than doing a quick check for suitable carp habitat.
French-owned Lakes
To experience some of the most well-stocked carp fishing in France, the country offers many privately owned lakes, many of which are home to resorts that offer accommodations that vary from run-down caravans or camping sites to luxury hotels. The price you'll pay for a well-stocked lake tends to be rather high, but often proportional with regards to the size and quality of the runs.
British-owned Lakes
Perhaps the fastest growing segment of lakes specifically for carp fishing in France is now home to scores of British-owned lakes that specialize in catering to the somewhat less-adventurous traveller who just wants to fish for the big ones in a familiar environment. Also well-stocked, these are usually the most expensive type of carp fishing in France.
Privately Administered Public Lakes
One uniquely French twist is the publicly-owned lakes that have administration turned over to a local private group. French carp fishing clubs most commonly are responsible for stocking, collecting fees and administering such lakes. Though many now specialize in carp fishing in France, these clubs are also home to lakes that offer a variety of fish, too. Fees on such lakes are usually less than a privately owned lake, though they vary considerably in how they're run.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Become An Expert Carp Fish Fisherman
Carp fishing is both dreadful and irritating. The carp are smart enough to reject food that they don't trust. The feeling of watching the entire action, that gets over with the blink of an eye is great. It's awesome when the reel is trembling noisily as you hang for dear life.
To keep the carp on the surface is easy. You just have to keep supplying the pellets, biscuits, chickpeas, bread and re-hydrated corn by attaching them to the hooks. Carp prefer bread. You can also use biscuits but soften them by dipping in water for around 2 minutes. Then for an hour, keep them in sealed sandwich bag. To find out which biscuit would be firm enough to cast, test different brands. Super gluing the pellet into the shank is another way to hook baits.
Let them be at ease, around the bait as they start feeding. This is an ideal situation for the fisherman as the carp stop being suspicious. For zig rigs too, this tactic is applicable. Once carp are feeding, drop the bait but not directly on them. Drop the bait away from the feeding area, and then slowly bring it closer. Keep on supplying food while the bait is hanging so the carp remain in the same position.
Tips to start
o For success use hair rig. Use food items that carp like. They will not come near if the food is not to their liking.
o Spider Line, 50 lbs test, can also be used. After that a leader material that fits the situation can be tried.
o Hook the hair loop but before that thread the bait on the baiting needle. To enhance the attractiveness of the bait, use foam dipped in a flavor.
o By straightening a long shank hook, make a baiting needle. First slide the bait on the shank and then onto the hair. Slide the bait using a needle.
o It is favorable to use a float as this helps in further distancing and easy identification of the location.
o The controller float rig is important. To the mainline of at least 3 feet length with a 10 lbs Drennan double strength, a leader can be attached with the help of a swivel. A low diameter mono will do if it is properly visible while it floats.
In the words of experts, the method in which the bait is introduced is what helps in catching the carp rather than the bait itself. If food is positioned in one place for a few days before the bait, the carp can be fooled. They will stop being suspicious. Their numbers will multiply too. So to be successful, try to be patient.
Areeb Khatib is involved with an online fishing project that informs and educates the fishing enthusiast through well-written articles. Discover how to get better at Fishing - Bass, Saltwater, Trout, Fly Fishing, & More: http://www.myfishingexpert.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Areeb_A_Khatib
To keep the carp on the surface is easy. You just have to keep supplying the pellets, biscuits, chickpeas, bread and re-hydrated corn by attaching them to the hooks. Carp prefer bread. You can also use biscuits but soften them by dipping in water for around 2 minutes. Then for an hour, keep them in sealed sandwich bag. To find out which biscuit would be firm enough to cast, test different brands. Super gluing the pellet into the shank is another way to hook baits.
Let them be at ease, around the bait as they start feeding. This is an ideal situation for the fisherman as the carp stop being suspicious. For zig rigs too, this tactic is applicable. Once carp are feeding, drop the bait but not directly on them. Drop the bait away from the feeding area, and then slowly bring it closer. Keep on supplying food while the bait is hanging so the carp remain in the same position.
Tips to start
o For success use hair rig. Use food items that carp like. They will not come near if the food is not to their liking.
o Spider Line, 50 lbs test, can also be used. After that a leader material that fits the situation can be tried.
o Hook the hair loop but before that thread the bait on the baiting needle. To enhance the attractiveness of the bait, use foam dipped in a flavor.
o By straightening a long shank hook, make a baiting needle. First slide the bait on the shank and then onto the hair. Slide the bait using a needle.
o It is favorable to use a float as this helps in further distancing and easy identification of the location.
o The controller float rig is important. To the mainline of at least 3 feet length with a 10 lbs Drennan double strength, a leader can be attached with the help of a swivel. A low diameter mono will do if it is properly visible while it floats.
In the words of experts, the method in which the bait is introduced is what helps in catching the carp rather than the bait itself. If food is positioned in one place for a few days before the bait, the carp can be fooled. They will stop being suspicious. Their numbers will multiply too. So to be successful, try to be patient.
Areeb Khatib is involved with an online fishing project that informs and educates the fishing enthusiast through well-written articles. Discover how to get better at Fishing - Bass, Saltwater, Trout, Fly Fishing, & More: http://www.myfishingexpert.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Areeb_A_Khatib
Friday, 26 March 2010
Big Carp Fishing Secrets That the Best Baits Rigs and Tackle Cannot Beat!
The title says it all - this article is all about those absolutely crucial big carp secrets that even having the best baits, rigs and tackle cannot beat; so read on right now and find out more!
Part of the hidden factors in successful carp fishing relate to logic. If you see carp like dogs and think of them as being able to be conditioned in many of the same ways you can see that almost anything we anglers do to make carp scared of our baits makes them harder to catch. It is logical to assume that the majority of anglers are obviously making life very difficult for the carp or they would be much easier to catch! The fact is that more often than not the entire approach of the average carp angler means he is conditioning carp to become harder to catch but how does this happen?
Carp are instinctive individuals programmed to survive by associating anything with danger of threats or with opportunities for safety or extra energy in the form of energy-efficient nutrition. There is not a lot in between these 2 extremes. Once a wary carp is alerted to the possibility that a bait or situation or circumstances it experiences in the past in a swim that may be a threat then it will more than likely feed far more cautiously there - if at all!
Unfortunately, many of the rigs and standard baiting and hook bait approaches that worked even a year ago can now not be the edge they once were when originally applied to a water. Carp communicate in many ways between themselves. You might not believe this but just consider the times you see multiple carp jump out of the water literally simultaneously when nothing has shown on the water all day.
Carp communicate many things by various means, be it body postures and methods and rates of swimming, to releasing hormones just in the same way that they do and we do to attract a mate. In fact it is thought that the mode of action of hormone based stimulants used in baits operate on male fish for instance by making them more aggressive so they approach baits much more positively. Similarly, one might well also postulate that some of the success of those carp anglers using the early hair rigs using female hair benefited from female hormones naturally in the hair.
It is not news to many carp anglers nor anglers of other species either to learn that when a hook bait is rejected as suspicious, even for no apparent reason, other fish in an area are somehow able to locate that same bait and totally ignore it without any testing of it first. This means that moving hook baits maybe every 12 hours is perhaps a better idea than simply leaving them in the same spot all the time in case the bait and rig have been marked and ignored so to speak.
This type of behavior is a common phenomenon in very heavily fishing-pressured waters and has been remarked upon by anglers fishing a wide range of waters from Redmire and busy circuit waters and even to local ponds. Carp fishing for wary fish seems to be more like a chess game where you are attempting to make the fish feel as safe as possible by fishing and using tackle and baits as cunningly as possible, also while avoiding the sometimes unhelpful intrusions of competitive fellow anglers fishing activities and baiting and so on.
I used to fish a small carp water where in the summer the average angler blanked over 70 percent of the time. The hidden factor here was that because it was a small water the fish were all too aware of angling activities and knew whenever anglers where present on the banks. But the anglers themselves did not help themselves. On a small very rich water where the fish have been absolutely hammered by anglers for years, they can respond in the easiest way possible and begin avoiding familiar baits and baiting formats and avoid them altogether, choosing to feed on natural food primarily instead.
This lake was where it took me 6 weeks during June and July of the summer of 2003 to land 60 twenties and 10 thirties which was incredible catch for the time. This year that lake had produced to all the anglers fishing that lake precisely 1 thirty all year. So what on earth has happened that enabled me to achieve my catches?
Well going back to 2003 the fish were very spooky and I decided on a medium-term baiting approach with homemade baits the carp had never experienced ever before and I knew this for certain because I made them myself. Vitally I made them and presented them in ways never tried before their.
However, because the fish were so spooky, even after a full 5 days and 4 nights of consistently baiting up and seeing fish rolling over the baits I did not get a single take. Then on the fifth night one of the biggest fish in the lake took the bait at an awesome 36 plus pounds.
Even at the time this fish took the bait it was very obvious from the fish rolling activity that many of the biggest fish in the lake were over the bait and were filter-feeding on the dissolved substances coming off it, but were not willing to actually pick up whole baits. This was due to the fact they had been hooked on whole baits before and knew to avoid them. Again, this is all too familiar a feature of fisheries today.
I was shocked at the extent of the carp instinct for survival as despite baiting all week and fishing the proceeding 5 days and 4 nights not a single bite came again - that is until the fifth night; when another of the biggest fish took a hook bait and weighed in at over 36 pounds too. Sometimes it can take quite a time for carp to treat new sources of food as safe, but once they do it really reap its rewards for applying it, but it does not mean you will necessarily catch all the biggest fish straight away.
Often big fish let the small fish do bait testing. In fact if I recall correctly when pre-baiting for the biggest carp in the Essex Little Grange water, the 2 anglers only caught the smaller fish when they began fishing a new bait (called the Grange) and it was only after a few months they caught the fish they were after.
Going back to the small lake I previously mentioned catching the 36 pound carp from, I caught one of those fish twice in 2 weeks on the new boilies yet it had come out to no-one else all that year. But more interesting than that was that once I started fishing my hook baits some distance away from my regularly baited spots I was able to catch 2 of the other biggest fish in the lake; both around 38 pounds.
What this indicated to me was that in all likelihood the big wary fish were not getting hooked by the average anglers at all because they were fishing using a smaller picture to fish with based on their own ideas on tackle and baits (often influenced by fashions,) but not influenced by knowledge of exactly what the fish were doing to avoid capture.
Frankly I believe that the wary fish were picking baits up in their lips, taking them away from the baited area, dropping them and leaving them until they thought they were safe, then swallowing them. The amount of single bleeps I got on my bite alarms indicated something like this was going on where my hook baits were often getting picked up then dropped like a stone when the fish felt any resistance.
One of the obvious solutions was to fish away from the baited areas plus give the fish enough rope to hang themselves with so to speak by changing to a more refined rig. This worked like magic and the other 7 thirties plus 60 twenties came along while many anglers failed to catch at all.
But this result was just a feedback loop born of being acutely conscious of the hidden factors involving how fish were responding to any threat represented by signs of angler presence on the bank, any obvious lines in the water, crude baiting, use of familiar fishing tactics that were obviously now history, plus the disciplined regular application of a unique new bait, bait format, and baiting technique all new to the water, and so on. The average angler visiting the water thought it was just your average commercial day-ticket water, saw the photographs of fish caught in the past by many anglers and thought they could lazily empty the place with comparatively very little thought and effort.
The fact is that fishing for big wary carp and aiming to catch them very consistently is not for the faint-hearted and demands attention to detail and effort of thought many average anglers are not willing to stretch to. I notice that the biggest fish came out of Elphicks Lake in Kent recently. Again it was caught on a method that defeated its caution and that actually exploited the behaviours it and other fish had developed in order to feed on bait in safety; i.e. on the drop and mid-water binge-feeding.
The secrets of big carp fishing include studying the fish, their senses, their adapting dynamic behaviours in direct and indirect response to everything we do to catch them, and to exploit what we observe. This is how successful army commanders often beat superior forces - with superior intelligence and information.
You see lots in magazines about new tackle, rigs and baits etc, but to truly exploit such wonders, you really need to analyse what your fish in a water are actually doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it!
The effort doing this will open many doors to your future success again and again and will leave many of your fellow anglers scratching their heads because such things in pressured modern carp fishing are hidden and not obvious! Even if you happen to have 6 grands worth of gear on the bank it will not guarantee you will catch if you do not understand your fish! (For more information see my website and biography right now!)
By Tim Richardson.
Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: "BIG CARP FLAVORS 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and ready made bait success secrets bibles!
Views: 1789 | Comments (0) | Rating: None yet | Rate this article
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Part of the hidden factors in successful carp fishing relate to logic. If you see carp like dogs and think of them as being able to be conditioned in many of the same ways you can see that almost anything we anglers do to make carp scared of our baits makes them harder to catch. It is logical to assume that the majority of anglers are obviously making life very difficult for the carp or they would be much easier to catch! The fact is that more often than not the entire approach of the average carp angler means he is conditioning carp to become harder to catch but how does this happen?
Carp are instinctive individuals programmed to survive by associating anything with danger of threats or with opportunities for safety or extra energy in the form of energy-efficient nutrition. There is not a lot in between these 2 extremes. Once a wary carp is alerted to the possibility that a bait or situation or circumstances it experiences in the past in a swim that may be a threat then it will more than likely feed far more cautiously there - if at all!
Unfortunately, many of the rigs and standard baiting and hook bait approaches that worked even a year ago can now not be the edge they once were when originally applied to a water. Carp communicate in many ways between themselves. You might not believe this but just consider the times you see multiple carp jump out of the water literally simultaneously when nothing has shown on the water all day.
Carp communicate many things by various means, be it body postures and methods and rates of swimming, to releasing hormones just in the same way that they do and we do to attract a mate. In fact it is thought that the mode of action of hormone based stimulants used in baits operate on male fish for instance by making them more aggressive so they approach baits much more positively. Similarly, one might well also postulate that some of the success of those carp anglers using the early hair rigs using female hair benefited from female hormones naturally in the hair.
It is not news to many carp anglers nor anglers of other species either to learn that when a hook bait is rejected as suspicious, even for no apparent reason, other fish in an area are somehow able to locate that same bait and totally ignore it without any testing of it first. This means that moving hook baits maybe every 12 hours is perhaps a better idea than simply leaving them in the same spot all the time in case the bait and rig have been marked and ignored so to speak.
This type of behavior is a common phenomenon in very heavily fishing-pressured waters and has been remarked upon by anglers fishing a wide range of waters from Redmire and busy circuit waters and even to local ponds. Carp fishing for wary fish seems to be more like a chess game where you are attempting to make the fish feel as safe as possible by fishing and using tackle and baits as cunningly as possible, also while avoiding the sometimes unhelpful intrusions of competitive fellow anglers fishing activities and baiting and so on.
I used to fish a small carp water where in the summer the average angler blanked over 70 percent of the time. The hidden factor here was that because it was a small water the fish were all too aware of angling activities and knew whenever anglers where present on the banks. But the anglers themselves did not help themselves. On a small very rich water where the fish have been absolutely hammered by anglers for years, they can respond in the easiest way possible and begin avoiding familiar baits and baiting formats and avoid them altogether, choosing to feed on natural food primarily instead.
This lake was where it took me 6 weeks during June and July of the summer of 2003 to land 60 twenties and 10 thirties which was incredible catch for the time. This year that lake had produced to all the anglers fishing that lake precisely 1 thirty all year. So what on earth has happened that enabled me to achieve my catches?
Well going back to 2003 the fish were very spooky and I decided on a medium-term baiting approach with homemade baits the carp had never experienced ever before and I knew this for certain because I made them myself. Vitally I made them and presented them in ways never tried before their.
However, because the fish were so spooky, even after a full 5 days and 4 nights of consistently baiting up and seeing fish rolling over the baits I did not get a single take. Then on the fifth night one of the biggest fish in the lake took the bait at an awesome 36 plus pounds.
Even at the time this fish took the bait it was very obvious from the fish rolling activity that many of the biggest fish in the lake were over the bait and were filter-feeding on the dissolved substances coming off it, but were not willing to actually pick up whole baits. This was due to the fact they had been hooked on whole baits before and knew to avoid them. Again, this is all too familiar a feature of fisheries today.
I was shocked at the extent of the carp instinct for survival as despite baiting all week and fishing the proceeding 5 days and 4 nights not a single bite came again - that is until the fifth night; when another of the biggest fish took a hook bait and weighed in at over 36 pounds too. Sometimes it can take quite a time for carp to treat new sources of food as safe, but once they do it really reap its rewards for applying it, but it does not mean you will necessarily catch all the biggest fish straight away.
Often big fish let the small fish do bait testing. In fact if I recall correctly when pre-baiting for the biggest carp in the Essex Little Grange water, the 2 anglers only caught the smaller fish when they began fishing a new bait (called the Grange) and it was only after a few months they caught the fish they were after.
Going back to the small lake I previously mentioned catching the 36 pound carp from, I caught one of those fish twice in 2 weeks on the new boilies yet it had come out to no-one else all that year. But more interesting than that was that once I started fishing my hook baits some distance away from my regularly baited spots I was able to catch 2 of the other biggest fish in the lake; both around 38 pounds.
What this indicated to me was that in all likelihood the big wary fish were not getting hooked by the average anglers at all because they were fishing using a smaller picture to fish with based on their own ideas on tackle and baits (often influenced by fashions,) but not influenced by knowledge of exactly what the fish were doing to avoid capture.
Frankly I believe that the wary fish were picking baits up in their lips, taking them away from the baited area, dropping them and leaving them until they thought they were safe, then swallowing them. The amount of single bleeps I got on my bite alarms indicated something like this was going on where my hook baits were often getting picked up then dropped like a stone when the fish felt any resistance.
One of the obvious solutions was to fish away from the baited areas plus give the fish enough rope to hang themselves with so to speak by changing to a more refined rig. This worked like magic and the other 7 thirties plus 60 twenties came along while many anglers failed to catch at all.
But this result was just a feedback loop born of being acutely conscious of the hidden factors involving how fish were responding to any threat represented by signs of angler presence on the bank, any obvious lines in the water, crude baiting, use of familiar fishing tactics that were obviously now history, plus the disciplined regular application of a unique new bait, bait format, and baiting technique all new to the water, and so on. The average angler visiting the water thought it was just your average commercial day-ticket water, saw the photographs of fish caught in the past by many anglers and thought they could lazily empty the place with comparatively very little thought and effort.
The fact is that fishing for big wary carp and aiming to catch them very consistently is not for the faint-hearted and demands attention to detail and effort of thought many average anglers are not willing to stretch to. I notice that the biggest fish came out of Elphicks Lake in Kent recently. Again it was caught on a method that defeated its caution and that actually exploited the behaviours it and other fish had developed in order to feed on bait in safety; i.e. on the drop and mid-water binge-feeding.
The secrets of big carp fishing include studying the fish, their senses, their adapting dynamic behaviours in direct and indirect response to everything we do to catch them, and to exploit what we observe. This is how successful army commanders often beat superior forces - with superior intelligence and information.
You see lots in magazines about new tackle, rigs and baits etc, but to truly exploit such wonders, you really need to analyse what your fish in a water are actually doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it!
The effort doing this will open many doors to your future success again and again and will leave many of your fellow anglers scratching their heads because such things in pressured modern carp fishing are hidden and not obvious! Even if you happen to have 6 grands worth of gear on the bank it will not guarantee you will catch if you do not understand your fish! (For more information see my website and biography right now!)
By Tim Richardson.
Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: "BIG CARP FLAVORS 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and ready made bait success secrets bibles!
Views: 1789 | Comments (0) | Rating: None yet | Rate this article
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Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Carp Fishing Tips - Hints That Will Help You Deal With Weeds
No one can be unaware these days of 'Global warming', with conferences held regularly by ecological groups, scientists and governments the problem is a genuine and serious one. It is also one of the main factors in the increase of weed growth in many of our carp fishing lakes across northern Europe and in my case northern France.
Add to this the intensive agriculture in many parts of France, with its heavy use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers and you can soon see why weed is becoming more of a problem every year.
There are many types of common pond weeds that we can see proliferating in our waters. Some are denser and harder to deal with than others. They do though offer a safe haven for fish and abundant food store.
Accurate Casting:So how do you deal with weed when you turn up to a weedy lake? Well first off don't panic carp can be caught in weed if you give it a little thought. The first thing I learned when approaching a weedy venue was the need to cast accurately. I am convinced that a major part of being consistent in carp fishing is presenting a bait in a way that a) the fish can find it easily & b) that your rig will work efficiently and get a good hook hold that will enable you to land the fish. I believe often when you get a series of hook pulls and lost fish, your rig is simply not working effectively or is ill-adapted for your swim.
Find the Clear spots: So I like to fish in clear spots adjacent to weed beds where I am confident the fish can find my bait. Ok the fish will certainly feed with more confidence in the weed itself, as they have natural cover and food, as I mentioned above. But I am just not confident my rig will be fishing correctly and the thought of sitting for hours with a rod that is effectively NOT fishing is impossible for me. Casting is the trick. I like to over cast slightly to the hole in the weed and feel the lead down until it 'Donks' on the lake bed. If you hold the rod high you should feel a knock as the lead touches down. I follow the line forward a bit too to try and avoid as much as possible to inswing effect of a lead going in on a tight line. If I don't feel the donk I will recast until I do. This can mean a number of casts, which is why I stated at the outset accurate casting is very important. But I prefer to cast 20 times if necessary until I'm happy.
Fish Sensibly: Some anglers will try to fish in right in the weed, but to my mind it is unwise to fish in thick weed where you have little chance of actually landing the fish. This includes fishing over weedbeds or to far margins and having to drag a fish through them to land it. Not only that it is this likely to result in a lost fish, a break off or mouth damage. The only way I have found to do this safely is in a boat. (These are not allowed on many waters however). I used a boat to get directly above a hooked carp and avoid the heavy ho of trying to pull it through weed.
Fish the Correct Rig: The main item of your rig though that causes the problems in weed is the lead. Anglers must use a lead that can come off easily once a fish is hooked. The Korda safety clips are ok but I modify them for weed fishing by drilling a hole and trying them onto the swivel. This means, with a lightly fitting tail rubber that the leads popped off easily and the clip doesn't slide up the main line causing a 45 degree angle to the fish. Recently however I see other makes like Armaled have produced a safety clip that blocks the swivel in place. This is an improvement I believe.
Do not use in-line leads : I would not recommend this type of set up in weed, not only will these plug you right in the weed if you a cast goes astray, but they will hinder you considerably while you play a fish and probably cause you to lose it. In this case the fish will probably end us towing the rig, I am not convinced of the saftey of in-lines in any case.
Do not use Backleads: I would also avoid backleads like the plague in weed. To my mind they serve no purpose but can cause untold problems once you hook a fish. You need to think why you are using a certain item of tackle and adapt to the situations and not blindly fish in a stereotyped way.
Do use PVA: PVA bags and tape are a great aid in helping your presentation when fishing in weed. You can cover you hook to avoid snagging weed. This is useful if you want to pull back gently after the cast to see if you are clear. It avoids the hook point picking up debris. You can place your whole rig inside a bag and feel this down to the lake bed and know that once the PVA melts down you'll have a nice pile of bait, in close proximity to weed that is clear and fishing and baited up... There are lots of uses for PVA in these situations that will help you land more carp. You can use the tape to hold a break away lead in place on a safety clip for example, so you don't unnecessarily lose weights when you cast out.
Fish as close in as you can! : In a previous article I mentioned all the advantages of fishing the margins. Well these are even more important in weed. Weed will offer you cover to fish closer in. you will be able to fish more accurately, cast more accurately and have a far higher chance of landing your fish.
by Gareth Watkins :
For more Carp Fishing News and great fishing in France check out my website at : http://www.croixblanchelakes.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gareth_Watkins
Add to this the intensive agriculture in many parts of France, with its heavy use of phosphate and nitrate fertilizers and you can soon see why weed is becoming more of a problem every year.
There are many types of common pond weeds that we can see proliferating in our waters. Some are denser and harder to deal with than others. They do though offer a safe haven for fish and abundant food store.
Accurate Casting:So how do you deal with weed when you turn up to a weedy lake? Well first off don't panic carp can be caught in weed if you give it a little thought. The first thing I learned when approaching a weedy venue was the need to cast accurately. I am convinced that a major part of being consistent in carp fishing is presenting a bait in a way that a) the fish can find it easily & b) that your rig will work efficiently and get a good hook hold that will enable you to land the fish. I believe often when you get a series of hook pulls and lost fish, your rig is simply not working effectively or is ill-adapted for your swim.
Find the Clear spots: So I like to fish in clear spots adjacent to weed beds where I am confident the fish can find my bait. Ok the fish will certainly feed with more confidence in the weed itself, as they have natural cover and food, as I mentioned above. But I am just not confident my rig will be fishing correctly and the thought of sitting for hours with a rod that is effectively NOT fishing is impossible for me. Casting is the trick. I like to over cast slightly to the hole in the weed and feel the lead down until it 'Donks' on the lake bed. If you hold the rod high you should feel a knock as the lead touches down. I follow the line forward a bit too to try and avoid as much as possible to inswing effect of a lead going in on a tight line. If I don't feel the donk I will recast until I do. This can mean a number of casts, which is why I stated at the outset accurate casting is very important. But I prefer to cast 20 times if necessary until I'm happy.
Fish Sensibly: Some anglers will try to fish in right in the weed, but to my mind it is unwise to fish in thick weed where you have little chance of actually landing the fish. This includes fishing over weedbeds or to far margins and having to drag a fish through them to land it. Not only that it is this likely to result in a lost fish, a break off or mouth damage. The only way I have found to do this safely is in a boat. (These are not allowed on many waters however). I used a boat to get directly above a hooked carp and avoid the heavy ho of trying to pull it through weed.
Fish the Correct Rig: The main item of your rig though that causes the problems in weed is the lead. Anglers must use a lead that can come off easily once a fish is hooked. The Korda safety clips are ok but I modify them for weed fishing by drilling a hole and trying them onto the swivel. This means, with a lightly fitting tail rubber that the leads popped off easily and the clip doesn't slide up the main line causing a 45 degree angle to the fish. Recently however I see other makes like Armaled have produced a safety clip that blocks the swivel in place. This is an improvement I believe.
Do not use in-line leads : I would not recommend this type of set up in weed, not only will these plug you right in the weed if you a cast goes astray, but they will hinder you considerably while you play a fish and probably cause you to lose it. In this case the fish will probably end us towing the rig, I am not convinced of the saftey of in-lines in any case.
Do not use Backleads: I would also avoid backleads like the plague in weed. To my mind they serve no purpose but can cause untold problems once you hook a fish. You need to think why you are using a certain item of tackle and adapt to the situations and not blindly fish in a stereotyped way.
Do use PVA: PVA bags and tape are a great aid in helping your presentation when fishing in weed. You can cover you hook to avoid snagging weed. This is useful if you want to pull back gently after the cast to see if you are clear. It avoids the hook point picking up debris. You can place your whole rig inside a bag and feel this down to the lake bed and know that once the PVA melts down you'll have a nice pile of bait, in close proximity to weed that is clear and fishing and baited up... There are lots of uses for PVA in these situations that will help you land more carp. You can use the tape to hold a break away lead in place on a safety clip for example, so you don't unnecessarily lose weights when you cast out.
Fish as close in as you can! : In a previous article I mentioned all the advantages of fishing the margins. Well these are even more important in weed. Weed will offer you cover to fish closer in. you will be able to fish more accurately, cast more accurately and have a far higher chance of landing your fish.
by Gareth Watkins :
For more Carp Fishing News and great fishing in France check out my website at : http://www.croixblanchelakes.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gareth_Watkins
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Secrets of Carp Fishing Boilies Pellets and Ground Baits!
When you think you need more innovative ideas to catch more big wary carp here are some unusual concepts that really work! You can use these proven recipes and ideas to help you catch more carp on readymade baits of all kinds and improve the potential of various homemade baits too - and even top the most popular readymade boilies and pellets used at your waters in very unique ways!
One of the most useful fishing items has nothing to do with fishing and more to do with sausage making and meat grinding and processing. A old fashioned manual handle driven mincer has played a great part in making carp fishing baits since the earlier popular use of ground trout pellets in homemade carp baits decades ago and indeed before that.
One of the popular kinds of special carp baits years ago was made from a pet food yeast mixture powder packed with attractive minerals, and trout pellets, plus a little soya flour, semolina or milk powders perhaps to help binding alongside eggs and maybe Marmite as flavouring and extra enhancing etc. Elements of PYM style baits and baits of earlier carp fishing eras such as yeast, vitamin B and betaine rich wheat germ and so on have all been used over the years, right up to today to catch loads of winter carp. You can use elements and principles of old fashioned favourite bait recipes to help your own baits perform better whether you use readymade baits or make your own cheap homemade baits.
Phillips Yeast Mixture is still available today although the formula is slightly different to the original it is still a very useful product to exploit the senses of carp in your favour, most especially as it is rarely used today and will not arouse carp caution as much as many over-used popular ingredients and additives may!
You can get worm and maggot extracts form various sources in liquid forms and I regard these liquid protein type products to have great potential in terms of being different to so many conventional baits issuing forth recognisable products such as Belachan, bloodworm, mussel, L030, green-lipped mussel extract, corn steep liquor and others.
To ensure your baits are a little different all it takes is a glugs, dips and bait soaks that is a little alternative. These are exploited often for pulling fish to hook baits in particular. Homemade dips for example can be made using the benefits of glycerine in the mixture which due to its viscosity and density forms a halo of soluble attraction directly around the hook bait which can in many fishing circumstances bring bites more readily.
I prefer to combine many methods and ideas at once to overcome carp caution. One of the ways to top a popular readymade bait is to use a mixer or a spiked Korda bait crusher cylinder to break up some readymade baits into a fine powder. It does not matter if you use boilies, pellets, boilie pellets, your favourite nuts or seeds or meats or whatever. For late autumn, winter and the cold of spring time I prefer to make very finely crushed mixtures that form tiny particles when disturbed in water.
Note that hazel nuts are great for winter being rich in B vitamins (why stick religiously to tiger nuts for example?!) B vitamins are very important in boosting metabolism and this fact should be exploited in lower temperatures! Why not try adding CC Moore Cyprivit to your special ground baits and pastes and see the difference!
Simply mix up your powder or mash with some Phillips Yeast Mixture or maybe enzyme-treated yeast powder or enzyme-treated liver powder and add some liquid worm or maggot juice and liquid yeast for instance and then mix all this into a paste and let it all soak in together. Adding fine bread crumbs pre-soaked in aniseed, fennel oil (even better in my opinion,) or even basil essential oil and hemp oil for instance, are other good edges for winter and spring.
Making a mix drier using very fine and coarser particles is a great idea. The options and alternatives of substances to use really are endless although some are certainly far better in cold water than others and some have better characteristics in terms of fish stimulation or digestion or some other aspect perhaps that improves bait performance inside carp or how your bait interacts with water for example!
All you do is make the mixture into a paste. Just before use add extra crumbs and powders to it becomes crumbly again - this enables you to use it in PVA bags and netting without it melting. I rarely use netting and use very little PVA bags as I have discovered other methods that cut out this cost. I guess using a little more bread and maybe more coarsely chopped boilies and nuts etc will help the powders stay in position in PVA netting.
Ultimately, the bait will break up and soon produce a bait that will pull fish down to feed. Fish will recognise elements from the popular readymade bait you have found many anglers are baiting up with on a water and so you are exploiting this but topping the effect with some more unusual stimulating and attractive nutritional factors of your own!
This is such a simple idea yet very few anglers bother to adapt their own ground baits when fishing against anglers with the means or whatever to be using loads of readymade baits and this is just one way to top the effects of such baits. By winter time baits that are already established on a water do have obvious benefits but this does not mean that any particular ready made bait has not already hooked the big fish you want to catch and make them cautious! Therefore being able to exploit baits by adapting them and using them in new ways really is very effective in getting around fish caution - and avoiding too familiar baiting scenarios. However there are many ways of exploiting the benefits and features and actual modes of action etc of readymade bait recipes without even having to know what they actually are!
I have used PVA products in winter ever since Rod Hutchinson brought out PVA tubes years ago and although I was a fan of the old original Gardener PVA string, I objected to the price! One of the great things about playing around with baits is that you can find ways to avoid using PVA products altogether. Remember thinking like a fish and thinking differently can help you do things that bit differently to normal and get around fish caution instead of following the crowd and expecting unrealistic results.
One of the best things about using unique or alternative methods and being the first to exploit them on a water is that the fish tend to get hooked more easily - so why not give your thoughts about baits a little more creativity and come up with your very own irresistible secret mixtures to top all those readymade baits! Then next time someone asks you what bait you are using as you are catching so well you can tell them honestly you are using the popular readymade baits on your lake - but with a big twist! (For much more information see my website and biography 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and more original carp and catfish fishing articles!
One of the most useful fishing items has nothing to do with fishing and more to do with sausage making and meat grinding and processing. A old fashioned manual handle driven mincer has played a great part in making carp fishing baits since the earlier popular use of ground trout pellets in homemade carp baits decades ago and indeed before that.
One of the popular kinds of special carp baits years ago was made from a pet food yeast mixture powder packed with attractive minerals, and trout pellets, plus a little soya flour, semolina or milk powders perhaps to help binding alongside eggs and maybe Marmite as flavouring and extra enhancing etc. Elements of PYM style baits and baits of earlier carp fishing eras such as yeast, vitamin B and betaine rich wheat germ and so on have all been used over the years, right up to today to catch loads of winter carp. You can use elements and principles of old fashioned favourite bait recipes to help your own baits perform better whether you use readymade baits or make your own cheap homemade baits.
Phillips Yeast Mixture is still available today although the formula is slightly different to the original it is still a very useful product to exploit the senses of carp in your favour, most especially as it is rarely used today and will not arouse carp caution as much as many over-used popular ingredients and additives may!
You can get worm and maggot extracts form various sources in liquid forms and I regard these liquid protein type products to have great potential in terms of being different to so many conventional baits issuing forth recognisable products such as Belachan, bloodworm, mussel, L030, green-lipped mussel extract, corn steep liquor and others.
To ensure your baits are a little different all it takes is a glugs, dips and bait soaks that is a little alternative. These are exploited often for pulling fish to hook baits in particular. Homemade dips for example can be made using the benefits of glycerine in the mixture which due to its viscosity and density forms a halo of soluble attraction directly around the hook bait which can in many fishing circumstances bring bites more readily.
I prefer to combine many methods and ideas at once to overcome carp caution. One of the ways to top a popular readymade bait is to use a mixer or a spiked Korda bait crusher cylinder to break up some readymade baits into a fine powder. It does not matter if you use boilies, pellets, boilie pellets, your favourite nuts or seeds or meats or whatever. For late autumn, winter and the cold of spring time I prefer to make very finely crushed mixtures that form tiny particles when disturbed in water.
Note that hazel nuts are great for winter being rich in B vitamins (why stick religiously to tiger nuts for example?!) B vitamins are very important in boosting metabolism and this fact should be exploited in lower temperatures! Why not try adding CC Moore Cyprivit to your special ground baits and pastes and see the difference!
Simply mix up your powder or mash with some Phillips Yeast Mixture or maybe enzyme-treated yeast powder or enzyme-treated liver powder and add some liquid worm or maggot juice and liquid yeast for instance and then mix all this into a paste and let it all soak in together. Adding fine bread crumbs pre-soaked in aniseed, fennel oil (even better in my opinion,) or even basil essential oil and hemp oil for instance, are other good edges for winter and spring.
Making a mix drier using very fine and coarser particles is a great idea. The options and alternatives of substances to use really are endless although some are certainly far better in cold water than others and some have better characteristics in terms of fish stimulation or digestion or some other aspect perhaps that improves bait performance inside carp or how your bait interacts with water for example!
All you do is make the mixture into a paste. Just before use add extra crumbs and powders to it becomes crumbly again - this enables you to use it in PVA bags and netting without it melting. I rarely use netting and use very little PVA bags as I have discovered other methods that cut out this cost. I guess using a little more bread and maybe more coarsely chopped boilies and nuts etc will help the powders stay in position in PVA netting.
Ultimately, the bait will break up and soon produce a bait that will pull fish down to feed. Fish will recognise elements from the popular readymade bait you have found many anglers are baiting up with on a water and so you are exploiting this but topping the effect with some more unusual stimulating and attractive nutritional factors of your own!
This is such a simple idea yet very few anglers bother to adapt their own ground baits when fishing against anglers with the means or whatever to be using loads of readymade baits and this is just one way to top the effects of such baits. By winter time baits that are already established on a water do have obvious benefits but this does not mean that any particular ready made bait has not already hooked the big fish you want to catch and make them cautious! Therefore being able to exploit baits by adapting them and using them in new ways really is very effective in getting around fish caution - and avoiding too familiar baiting scenarios. However there are many ways of exploiting the benefits and features and actual modes of action etc of readymade bait recipes without even having to know what they actually are!
I have used PVA products in winter ever since Rod Hutchinson brought out PVA tubes years ago and although I was a fan of the old original Gardener PVA string, I objected to the price! One of the great things about playing around with baits is that you can find ways to avoid using PVA products altogether. Remember thinking like a fish and thinking differently can help you do things that bit differently to normal and get around fish caution instead of following the crowd and expecting unrealistic results.
One of the best things about using unique or alternative methods and being the first to exploit them on a water is that the fish tend to get hooked more easily - so why not give your thoughts about baits a little more creativity and come up with your very own irresistible secret mixtures to top all those readymade baits! Then next time someone asks you what bait you are using as you are catching so well you can tell them honestly you are using the popular readymade baits on your lake - but with a big twist! (For much more information see my website and biography 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and more original carp and catfish fishing articles!
Sunday, 21 March 2010
501 Carp Fishing Bait Ingredients and Additives to Boost Your Catches Now! By Tim F. Richardson
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501 Carp Fishing Bait Ingredients and Additives to Boost Your Catches Now!
By Tim F. Richardson
As you probably know by now, I have been writing about bait for 5 years now and it seems many anglers are taking up my ideas and being inspired into bait creation far more than maybe anglers have been doing for 15 to 20 years or more; so try the ideas given here - they are well worth trying because they really work!
Boosting bait is not all about substances such as amino acids or flavours or palatants, appetite stimulators and other things either well known or totally new to bait-making. Boosting your bait potential is really geared to how fish have begun to respond to any established that fish may have been hooked on already and now is a bit heir of it than before - but still wants your bait. Well-designed baits that supply a broad or even minimal range of essential nutritional factors to carp, or even factors that simply boost metabolism or health or digestion in some and so on all work very effectively. This is why nutritional baits for example go on working for years needing relatively minor changes to give them a new lease of life.
Most of the present readymade baits on the market are made from a collection of mostly very standard ingredients, additives and flavours. It is no surprise then when fish receiving such baits every day decide they may not be so hungry or excited about them after all and pick and choose much more.
There are so many bait substances that offer benefits to carp that are not used in the majority of any readymade carp baits. This could be due to a myriad of reasons, from incredibly high cost, irregular supply, import regulations and restrictions, lack of scientific knowledge of the actual concentrations or combinations that best exploit potential of substances and so on. Obviously some bait company bosses are decades ahead of others in terms of technical knowledge and feedback from users, substances combinations, levels, ratios and best applications of substances known to date.
Very often one of the biggest reasons an additive or ingredient is mostly not used in readymade baits is because the time, labour and costs it takes to prepare it simply may not be profitable to make it worthwhile. This does not mean that making the effort will not massively pay you off as a homemade bait angler! This scenario is rather like the sae anglers fishing off the East coast of America for cod. In years gone by these fisheries were basically fished out so they became too unprofitable to fish and even endangered the actual survival of the species completely in an area - as in the saga of the depletion of the now gone gigantic shoals of cod at the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic or the massive shoals of herring off Southern island.
However, with the right refinements in baits, tackle, rig and fishing location and depth you can make some crazy catches of cod, but if you were a commercial trawler for instance the costs to catch this small amount of fish simply would not pay a profit.
Homemade bait makers really can profit big-time from using even small amounts of very expensive additives and ingredients because although such things work incredibly well, few bait companies will invest in such substances and expect to turn a profit. I am not going to tell you some examples here that I have discovered but relate to you some examples of things to get your mind thinking about further possibilities - and many clues are found in bait ingredients in popular use today.
Garlic is used in many commercial baits and is cheap. But garlic is not packed with protein and amino acids is it; so garlic effects have to do with other factors that are very potent indeed.
The smell of garlic is different to that in air - different molecules are formed. It is wise to remember that carp can have many differences in the experience of substances in water that are often different to the experience of the same substance we have because of us experiencing substances in air.
Maybe a bit more detail is required to illustrate this sort of aspect of bait. For example, many bait ingredients, additives, flavours etc contain volatile substances which when heated evaporate into the air - and we detect these substances very well - even with our dumbed-down senses! Ethyl alcohol is an ideal example that most people can relate to. In fact you can smell different compounds in different wines before you take them into your mouth. Some of these substances will give you a gut response too which I think in terms of fishing baits is extremely important.
But not all substances that easily mix with air and disperse very rapidly will mix with water so readily! Many substances that when heated in air are released into the air with ease can in fact be surprisingly insoluble in water.
I do not just mean certain compounds in liquids we use in baits but in the plethora of dry powder form additives and ingredients too. The relative densities of substances can have a huge impact on bait performance too and can either impact on fish at long range or when fish are right next to your bait - and effect the weight, firmness or texture and buoyancy of baits too.
When we talk about flavours, so many anglers jump to ideas such as diacetin, glycerol, esters and so on, but milk caseins have flavour profiles, just as soya flour, L030, cheese powder, Marmite or even maize flour do.
It amazes me how many carp anglers are actually shocked to discover that they can catch fish using baits made with zero additional flavours. I think that the majority over-look all the combined flavour profiles of mixed dry ingredients when they form a solution (i.e. with water.)
For instance, how many anglers realise that the pretty well known liquid additive butyric acid is present in Marmite and in mature cheeses for example. Everyone knows by now how potently-smelling butyric acid is. You really can make boilies an many other baits that do not scare off fish by exploiting ingredients, liquids and additives that contain natural compounds etc; that attract fish and stimulate feeding behaviours - without using any additional flavours whatsoever.
You read so many anglers in magazines explaining that they wanted to make a long-term bait for the biggest wary fish, so they omitted using flavour, or used only a low does of flavour. I many ways, if you use enough of a particular soluble dry powder ingredient or additive for example within your bait you can in effect provide a similar amount of minimum dose that adding a small amount of pure flavour component would add.
Winter and the cold water conditions of spring time are excellent times to try new things because let us face it - if your readymade baits are not hauling then trying other approaches certainly can work. In fact there have been many times when I have fished using maggots in low temperatures and used my homemade pastes on a different rod and had the maggots left un-touched while hooking fish on the pastes.
In my view, once maggots stop frantically wriggling around and have already excreted the bulk of the ammonia etc they expel upon the shock of entering water, they can be very limiting in terms of attraction. Meanwhile a soluble specifically-designed paste can keep on breaking down and releasing plumes of attraction without over-filling fish in the slightest.
Here I will provide you with a very simple example of a soft paste you can mold onto your rigs that does not involve milk or fish ingredients: Why not try liquidised maggots, Marmite and whole wheat flour with the addition of enzyme-treated yeast powder, and enzyme-treated liver powder. Add a dash of dried crushed shrimps and insects pre-soaked in black pepper essential oil for example and CC Moore liquid Red Venom, and away you go.
Try CW Baits for the dried shrimps and try CC Moore for the insect and other natural little feasts in their ground bait section. You might also like to try spraying some maggots with neat Scopex, Tutti Fruiti or Bun spice flavour for instance and include these in your stick mix, spod mix, PVA bag mix, method mix etc to get some extra vibration and movement into the proceedings.
If you are wary of using flavours then flavour maggots avoiding synthetic and more familiar type solvent-based flavours and go for natural flavours or nature-identical flavours for example; these are much more easily found these days!
Many homemade natural flavour creations can be produced in concentrated forms by using your own imagination and creativity. Simply warming up fresh cranberries and blackberries pulped and warmed up to evaporate water content without damaging the live enzymes and bioactive components of such fruits is just one idea.
You can take advantage of such things (and discover many more such things) if you keep an open mind!
Here is just an observation on normalised and bait industry conditioned anglers behaviours and perspectives! How many anglers expect to see a red fish meal boilie, or a pink shrimp pop-up bait, or yellow Scopex or Chocolate Malt readymade baits? Think about it; have you been conditioned to expect to see smooth firm round boilies or pellets that are dyed red and flavoured with Tutti Fruiti flavour for instance? (Note even dumbbells, barrels or pellets are still very common rounded shapes carp are well-used to dealing with!
The bait tones of red and white obviously show up well in terms of sight feeding carp in various conditions. However, bait colour can seriously help or hinder confident feeding. For me bait colour is just no important because you actually want carp to feed with confidence and not admire what a wonderful Day-Glo florescent colour tone a bait is. These things really do sell bait for bait makers however. The point is that it is very wise to make your baits a totally alternative colour to what fish are used to - or mimic tones of natural baits. Much of the natural proteinous food items carp eat cannot even be seen because of the dense bottom silt they feed in.
Often carp will suction and filter feed head-deep in rich deep silt for hours on end. Many senses are used simultaneously such as sensitivity to vibrations and electrical fields, internal and external stimulation by dissolved natural chemical traces in solution such as ammonia and amino acids (even betaine) etc, given off by various natural food items as they go about doing whatever they do in their life cycles. I really like to catch carp with black heads or that are a black colour right up to their shoulders where their silt-feeding habits have stained them!
On a clay or gravel bottom or silk weed bottom, I was successful using white pop-up baits 30 years ago fished 2 feet off the bottom, especially at range but then I was also successful using black baits on the bottom in exactly the same spots using foam glued to the back of hooks to balance and negate hook weights to various degrees.
It is obvious also that where fish feed predominantly with their heads buried it is normal to hook fish with a short rig fished actually within the silt and not over it. This kind of fishing gets me into bait design for silt and the ways you can make the power of a bait far greater without making baits repellant are very many indeed and certainly not limited to concentrated flavours.
In terms of tones and colours, I have used flecked baits tinged with red, green, white and black with success as well as homemade baits skilfully moulded in red and white made using one base mix or even two completely different base mixes molded by hand to make individual baits.
How many other anglers will try this I do not know but it really hedges your bets on all kinds of levels and I seriously recommend it (So feel free to let me know what your results are doing it!)
I personally feel that preparing or making up your hooks and rigs with small fake red worms, or special hook skins, or paste or actually threaded onto your hooks is much more important than what colour your bait is. After all, the vast majority of hooks on the market reflect light instead of absorbing it and up close carp eyesight is far better than anglers imagine; especially when teamed with barbels, lips, fins and so on and pressure sensing cells etc feeling for lines, abnormal tension or unnatural movements of potential foods etc.
In my case I have tested all kinds of really weird and even shocking things on hooks and found that removing the coating off most hooks improves numbers of bites. This coating removal is done well in advance of fishing and my hooks are soaked in water to allow a coating of rust to develop. It may be carp are somehow attracted by this maybe for electrical-field related reasons, curiosity or maybe just the fact that this object is different to 99 percent of other objects in the water they experience regularly - including other hooks. Maybe it is partly to do with how light hits such prepared hooks contacting a matt rough surface instead of a glossy smooth one?!
I always sharpen the final 4 millimetres of the hook anyway because in my personal opinion, the sharper and thinner this is the more fish will be self-hooked effectively. The importance of this finesse of 4 or 5 millimetres or so is lost on far too many anglers I think, and after many years of sharpening my hooks and fishing them against all kinds of chemically-sharpened hooks on the markets none have ever beaten the hooking ratio of my extremely manually sharpened hooks - fact!)
I even went through a phase of testing those ready-painted green hooks against my coating-stripped megs-hand sharpened hooks and found that 4 millimetres is what really counts! The fact that I have actually hooked a carp (with a run achieved) by preparing a hook like this and using no bait is food for thought at least. If you have doubts - try testing for yourself but bear in mind sharpening a hook really does takes hours to do right - my hooks are literally thinner and sharper than needles and never have I ever seen another angler do much more than a couple of runs up and down the point with any forma of sharpener.
So really do yourself a big favour and do it right and you will experience the difference big-time! It is true that I have lost a couple of big fish because the tip of my hooks have bent out usually just prior to netting stage. But would these have actually been self-hooked using less sharp hooks?! I know these fish would not have been properly hooked if I had not done the preparation as so many big wary fish can shake hooks very easily with enough practice and developed skills over thousands of hours of being fished for.
In fact I think that in general the fish we actually land are the minority of the fish that actually get hooked on pressured waters because the majority of the time these fish shake the hook without giving much more than a single bleep if that! Also the vast majority of so-called self-hooking rigs are simply dependant on a fish going upright against a lead to pull in the hook, or moving a distance far enough to create pressure on the hook point from line drag and so on, yet we all know fish get off hooks attached to 5 ounce leads and get off running rigs with light leads.
For me the hook finesse is the key to rig success, the mechanics of curved hooks and weight-negated hooks etc are all secondary however a curved hook is obviously maximising your chances with very many rigs combined with various curved stiff links, or coated hinged links, very supple and stiff combi-links etc. In my books if you make black and green baits that have a natural unami taste and boosted with certain probiotic and prebiotic additives and ingredients (which I will disclose in my further ebooks) impacting on bait performance and fast efficient digestion, such things are far superior to be sold on Day-Glo pinks, reds and yellows that are used by the masses!
Being different in terms of bait is not about taking risks, but adapting to what fish may become wary of and giving them alternatives that also exploit their sensitivities and their simultaneous uses of them all! You can boost bait attraction using natural fructose concentrate and lactose concentrate from CC Moore for instance, or try their green-lipped mussel flavour, or their Belachan flavour and or other more alternative essences for instance. You might use such things not in neat form but cut with dextrose or powdered amino acids or liquid betaine or milk shake powders or whatever you wish to test next and my ebooks go into such things far more.
Such simple ideas are a great change from the usual protein-based and other intense sweeteners used in the majority of commercial baits today. The strong natural aroma and solubility of the potent compounds in Manuka honey for example will make your baits extra-different and even more appealing! (Honey flavour is very over-looked; why not try it with Scopex or a popular flavour like Chocolate Malt for instance!)
All this might sound pretty obvious to some of you or this might well really get you thinking much more about doing things differently yourself. Whatever the case, the impacts of such ideas will be pretty obvious to your fish and your catches - even if your lake is freezing over as you exploit them! (For much more valuable information see my website and biography 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles!
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Home :: Recreation and Sports : Fishing
501 Carp Fishing Bait Ingredients and Additives to Boost Your Catches Now!
By Tim F. Richardson
As you probably know by now, I have been writing about bait for 5 years now and it seems many anglers are taking up my ideas and being inspired into bait creation far more than maybe anglers have been doing for 15 to 20 years or more; so try the ideas given here - they are well worth trying because they really work!
Boosting bait is not all about substances such as amino acids or flavours or palatants, appetite stimulators and other things either well known or totally new to bait-making. Boosting your bait potential is really geared to how fish have begun to respond to any established that fish may have been hooked on already and now is a bit heir of it than before - but still wants your bait. Well-designed baits that supply a broad or even minimal range of essential nutritional factors to carp, or even factors that simply boost metabolism or health or digestion in some and so on all work very effectively. This is why nutritional baits for example go on working for years needing relatively minor changes to give them a new lease of life.
Most of the present readymade baits on the market are made from a collection of mostly very standard ingredients, additives and flavours. It is no surprise then when fish receiving such baits every day decide they may not be so hungry or excited about them after all and pick and choose much more.
There are so many bait substances that offer benefits to carp that are not used in the majority of any readymade carp baits. This could be due to a myriad of reasons, from incredibly high cost, irregular supply, import regulations and restrictions, lack of scientific knowledge of the actual concentrations or combinations that best exploit potential of substances and so on. Obviously some bait company bosses are decades ahead of others in terms of technical knowledge and feedback from users, substances combinations, levels, ratios and best applications of substances known to date.
Very often one of the biggest reasons an additive or ingredient is mostly not used in readymade baits is because the time, labour and costs it takes to prepare it simply may not be profitable to make it worthwhile. This does not mean that making the effort will not massively pay you off as a homemade bait angler! This scenario is rather like the sae anglers fishing off the East coast of America for cod. In years gone by these fisheries were basically fished out so they became too unprofitable to fish and even endangered the actual survival of the species completely in an area - as in the saga of the depletion of the now gone gigantic shoals of cod at the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic or the massive shoals of herring off Southern island.
However, with the right refinements in baits, tackle, rig and fishing location and depth you can make some crazy catches of cod, but if you were a commercial trawler for instance the costs to catch this small amount of fish simply would not pay a profit.
Homemade bait makers really can profit big-time from using even small amounts of very expensive additives and ingredients because although such things work incredibly well, few bait companies will invest in such substances and expect to turn a profit. I am not going to tell you some examples here that I have discovered but relate to you some examples of things to get your mind thinking about further possibilities - and many clues are found in bait ingredients in popular use today.
Garlic is used in many commercial baits and is cheap. But garlic is not packed with protein and amino acids is it; so garlic effects have to do with other factors that are very potent indeed.
The smell of garlic is different to that in air - different molecules are formed. It is wise to remember that carp can have many differences in the experience of substances in water that are often different to the experience of the same substance we have because of us experiencing substances in air.
Maybe a bit more detail is required to illustrate this sort of aspect of bait. For example, many bait ingredients, additives, flavours etc contain volatile substances which when heated evaporate into the air - and we detect these substances very well - even with our dumbed-down senses! Ethyl alcohol is an ideal example that most people can relate to. In fact you can smell different compounds in different wines before you take them into your mouth. Some of these substances will give you a gut response too which I think in terms of fishing baits is extremely important.
But not all substances that easily mix with air and disperse very rapidly will mix with water so readily! Many substances that when heated in air are released into the air with ease can in fact be surprisingly insoluble in water.
I do not just mean certain compounds in liquids we use in baits but in the plethora of dry powder form additives and ingredients too. The relative densities of substances can have a huge impact on bait performance too and can either impact on fish at long range or when fish are right next to your bait - and effect the weight, firmness or texture and buoyancy of baits too.
When we talk about flavours, so many anglers jump to ideas such as diacetin, glycerol, esters and so on, but milk caseins have flavour profiles, just as soya flour, L030, cheese powder, Marmite or even maize flour do.
It amazes me how many carp anglers are actually shocked to discover that they can catch fish using baits made with zero additional flavours. I think that the majority over-look all the combined flavour profiles of mixed dry ingredients when they form a solution (i.e. with water.)
For instance, how many anglers realise that the pretty well known liquid additive butyric acid is present in Marmite and in mature cheeses for example. Everyone knows by now how potently-smelling butyric acid is. You really can make boilies an many other baits that do not scare off fish by exploiting ingredients, liquids and additives that contain natural compounds etc; that attract fish and stimulate feeding behaviours - without using any additional flavours whatsoever.
You read so many anglers in magazines explaining that they wanted to make a long-term bait for the biggest wary fish, so they omitted using flavour, or used only a low does of flavour. I many ways, if you use enough of a particular soluble dry powder ingredient or additive for example within your bait you can in effect provide a similar amount of minimum dose that adding a small amount of pure flavour component would add.
Winter and the cold water conditions of spring time are excellent times to try new things because let us face it - if your readymade baits are not hauling then trying other approaches certainly can work. In fact there have been many times when I have fished using maggots in low temperatures and used my homemade pastes on a different rod and had the maggots left un-touched while hooking fish on the pastes.
In my view, once maggots stop frantically wriggling around and have already excreted the bulk of the ammonia etc they expel upon the shock of entering water, they can be very limiting in terms of attraction. Meanwhile a soluble specifically-designed paste can keep on breaking down and releasing plumes of attraction without over-filling fish in the slightest.
Here I will provide you with a very simple example of a soft paste you can mold onto your rigs that does not involve milk or fish ingredients: Why not try liquidised maggots, Marmite and whole wheat flour with the addition of enzyme-treated yeast powder, and enzyme-treated liver powder. Add a dash of dried crushed shrimps and insects pre-soaked in black pepper essential oil for example and CC Moore liquid Red Venom, and away you go.
Try CW Baits for the dried shrimps and try CC Moore for the insect and other natural little feasts in their ground bait section. You might also like to try spraying some maggots with neat Scopex, Tutti Fruiti or Bun spice flavour for instance and include these in your stick mix, spod mix, PVA bag mix, method mix etc to get some extra vibration and movement into the proceedings.
If you are wary of using flavours then flavour maggots avoiding synthetic and more familiar type solvent-based flavours and go for natural flavours or nature-identical flavours for example; these are much more easily found these days!
Many homemade natural flavour creations can be produced in concentrated forms by using your own imagination and creativity. Simply warming up fresh cranberries and blackberries pulped and warmed up to evaporate water content without damaging the live enzymes and bioactive components of such fruits is just one idea.
You can take advantage of such things (and discover many more such things) if you keep an open mind!
Here is just an observation on normalised and bait industry conditioned anglers behaviours and perspectives! How many anglers expect to see a red fish meal boilie, or a pink shrimp pop-up bait, or yellow Scopex or Chocolate Malt readymade baits? Think about it; have you been conditioned to expect to see smooth firm round boilies or pellets that are dyed red and flavoured with Tutti Fruiti flavour for instance? (Note even dumbbells, barrels or pellets are still very common rounded shapes carp are well-used to dealing with!
The bait tones of red and white obviously show up well in terms of sight feeding carp in various conditions. However, bait colour can seriously help or hinder confident feeding. For me bait colour is just no important because you actually want carp to feed with confidence and not admire what a wonderful Day-Glo florescent colour tone a bait is. These things really do sell bait for bait makers however. The point is that it is very wise to make your baits a totally alternative colour to what fish are used to - or mimic tones of natural baits. Much of the natural proteinous food items carp eat cannot even be seen because of the dense bottom silt they feed in.
Often carp will suction and filter feed head-deep in rich deep silt for hours on end. Many senses are used simultaneously such as sensitivity to vibrations and electrical fields, internal and external stimulation by dissolved natural chemical traces in solution such as ammonia and amino acids (even betaine) etc, given off by various natural food items as they go about doing whatever they do in their life cycles. I really like to catch carp with black heads or that are a black colour right up to their shoulders where their silt-feeding habits have stained them!
On a clay or gravel bottom or silk weed bottom, I was successful using white pop-up baits 30 years ago fished 2 feet off the bottom, especially at range but then I was also successful using black baits on the bottom in exactly the same spots using foam glued to the back of hooks to balance and negate hook weights to various degrees.
It is obvious also that where fish feed predominantly with their heads buried it is normal to hook fish with a short rig fished actually within the silt and not over it. This kind of fishing gets me into bait design for silt and the ways you can make the power of a bait far greater without making baits repellant are very many indeed and certainly not limited to concentrated flavours.
In terms of tones and colours, I have used flecked baits tinged with red, green, white and black with success as well as homemade baits skilfully moulded in red and white made using one base mix or even two completely different base mixes molded by hand to make individual baits.
How many other anglers will try this I do not know but it really hedges your bets on all kinds of levels and I seriously recommend it (So feel free to let me know what your results are doing it!)
I personally feel that preparing or making up your hooks and rigs with small fake red worms, or special hook skins, or paste or actually threaded onto your hooks is much more important than what colour your bait is. After all, the vast majority of hooks on the market reflect light instead of absorbing it and up close carp eyesight is far better than anglers imagine; especially when teamed with barbels, lips, fins and so on and pressure sensing cells etc feeling for lines, abnormal tension or unnatural movements of potential foods etc.
In my case I have tested all kinds of really weird and even shocking things on hooks and found that removing the coating off most hooks improves numbers of bites. This coating removal is done well in advance of fishing and my hooks are soaked in water to allow a coating of rust to develop. It may be carp are somehow attracted by this maybe for electrical-field related reasons, curiosity or maybe just the fact that this object is different to 99 percent of other objects in the water they experience regularly - including other hooks. Maybe it is partly to do with how light hits such prepared hooks contacting a matt rough surface instead of a glossy smooth one?!
I always sharpen the final 4 millimetres of the hook anyway because in my personal opinion, the sharper and thinner this is the more fish will be self-hooked effectively. The importance of this finesse of 4 or 5 millimetres or so is lost on far too many anglers I think, and after many years of sharpening my hooks and fishing them against all kinds of chemically-sharpened hooks on the markets none have ever beaten the hooking ratio of my extremely manually sharpened hooks - fact!)
I even went through a phase of testing those ready-painted green hooks against my coating-stripped megs-hand sharpened hooks and found that 4 millimetres is what really counts! The fact that I have actually hooked a carp (with a run achieved) by preparing a hook like this and using no bait is food for thought at least. If you have doubts - try testing for yourself but bear in mind sharpening a hook really does takes hours to do right - my hooks are literally thinner and sharper than needles and never have I ever seen another angler do much more than a couple of runs up and down the point with any forma of sharpener.
So really do yourself a big favour and do it right and you will experience the difference big-time! It is true that I have lost a couple of big fish because the tip of my hooks have bent out usually just prior to netting stage. But would these have actually been self-hooked using less sharp hooks?! I know these fish would not have been properly hooked if I had not done the preparation as so many big wary fish can shake hooks very easily with enough practice and developed skills over thousands of hours of being fished for.
In fact I think that in general the fish we actually land are the minority of the fish that actually get hooked on pressured waters because the majority of the time these fish shake the hook without giving much more than a single bleep if that! Also the vast majority of so-called self-hooking rigs are simply dependant on a fish going upright against a lead to pull in the hook, or moving a distance far enough to create pressure on the hook point from line drag and so on, yet we all know fish get off hooks attached to 5 ounce leads and get off running rigs with light leads.
For me the hook finesse is the key to rig success, the mechanics of curved hooks and weight-negated hooks etc are all secondary however a curved hook is obviously maximising your chances with very many rigs combined with various curved stiff links, or coated hinged links, very supple and stiff combi-links etc. In my books if you make black and green baits that have a natural unami taste and boosted with certain probiotic and prebiotic additives and ingredients (which I will disclose in my further ebooks) impacting on bait performance and fast efficient digestion, such things are far superior to be sold on Day-Glo pinks, reds and yellows that are used by the masses!
Being different in terms of bait is not about taking risks, but adapting to what fish may become wary of and giving them alternatives that also exploit their sensitivities and their simultaneous uses of them all! You can boost bait attraction using natural fructose concentrate and lactose concentrate from CC Moore for instance, or try their green-lipped mussel flavour, or their Belachan flavour and or other more alternative essences for instance. You might use such things not in neat form but cut with dextrose or powdered amino acids or liquid betaine or milk shake powders or whatever you wish to test next and my ebooks go into such things far more.
Such simple ideas are a great change from the usual protein-based and other intense sweeteners used in the majority of commercial baits today. The strong natural aroma and solubility of the potent compounds in Manuka honey for example will make your baits extra-different and even more appealing! (Honey flavour is very over-looked; why not try it with Scopex or a popular flavour like Chocolate Malt for instance!)
All this might sound pretty obvious to some of you or this might well really get you thinking much more about doing things differently yourself. Whatever the case, the impacts of such ideas will be pretty obvious to your fish and your catches - even if your lake is freezing over as you exploit them! (For much more valuable information see my website and biography 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles!
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Thursday, 18 March 2010
Boilies - The Best Carp Fishing Bait
Boilies is the most selective bait for larger specimens, is the biggest invention for big carp fishing. Proof is the biggest carp have been caught with this Carp Fishing Bait. Honestly, I was quite skeptical until I got the first time with boilies (by 99 after the fishing tournament ) then I became a big fan of this bait. Proof of fire was given in the delta when after 2 days my girlfriend and I caught only 3 kg and had carp over a frequency of 15-20 pieces per day with weights between 3 and 18 kg(all with carp boilie), while the rest of the neighborhood, which nadeem with other fishing baits (bread and corn and fished with polenta) and 20-30 frames were caught per day with an average of 1 kg max
You have no use for 5-10-15 boilies (or even a jar of 200g), carp must be educated, to be taught. Education is not so hard. I have tried in 2 ways: one, the swamps that went frequently mix in 5 kg of corn with 2 kg of boilies (same flavor every time) and nadeem with mainline baits, every game sitting on a longline Boilies, sometimes I got the first game was required 3.
If you are an angler fish great when you really need to try this bait, I know it takes time, I know it requires hard work but the results will be the measure. Production costs are not that great if you make your own home boiliesurile certainly not those bought ready at hand to anyone but even if sometimes you could not put in the house all the ingredients of some of the freshness of the house brand will compensate this work.
To start homemade carp bait you need for some accessories: A rolling table is a table consisting of 2 parts, base and lid with grooves in which balls roll and are required to be round. Depending on your budget and quantity that we want to produce you can choose between a 7-8 variants grooves and a width of 15-20 cm up to the professional with a width of 50 cm and 30-40 grooves.
http://www.catfishbestbait.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stoica_A_Bogdan
You have no use for 5-10-15 boilies (or even a jar of 200g), carp must be educated, to be taught. Education is not so hard. I have tried in 2 ways: one, the swamps that went frequently mix in 5 kg of corn with 2 kg of boilies (same flavor every time) and nadeem with mainline baits, every game sitting on a longline Boilies, sometimes I got the first game was required 3.
If you are an angler fish great when you really need to try this bait, I know it takes time, I know it requires hard work but the results will be the measure. Production costs are not that great if you make your own home boiliesurile certainly not those bought ready at hand to anyone but even if sometimes you could not put in the house all the ingredients of some of the freshness of the house brand will compensate this work.
To start homemade carp bait you need for some accessories: A rolling table is a table consisting of 2 parts, base and lid with grooves in which balls roll and are required to be round. Depending on your budget and quantity that we want to produce you can choose between a 7-8 variants grooves and a width of 15-20 cm up to the professional with a width of 50 cm and 30-40 grooves.
http://www.catfishbestbait.com/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stoica_A_Bogdan
Something Different For Carp Fishing
Achieving an Edge to catch more fish
There are no set rules to achieving an edge in carp fishing, what maybe advantageous in a certain situation or lake may not be good on another. That sounds like a politician's answer; nothing concrete for you to work with? It would take more than I can fit into this article to describe the many advantages that will put the odd extra fish on the bank, therefore have opted to cover a few and portray the thinking behind achieving an edge rather than attempting to detail as many as possible. Hopefully this will spur you into thinking about your approach and even what else can be done to increase your chances. Here is an open question that I would like you to think about whilst reading this piece, I will present my opinion of the answer in the conclusion; why are some anglers more consistent than others?
We are mid way through the maggot boom; they are a brilliant bait and will encourage a take when other methods fail. Rob Maylin then came up with the maggot aligner and landed many of the big fish from Swan Valley using the method. I wonder what the next 'in method' or bait will be? I suspect chopped lob worms with a whole worm over the top will be re-invented or naturals such as cockles will be the in thing, if maggots, worms or cockles have not been used on your lake I strongly recommend you give them a go!
Polaris float fishing for carp is little practiced and a highly successful method for short session carping, more so than sitting behind indicators. I believe it is effective due to its sensitivity, a single bleep or rod tip knock can be an indication of a missed take, that single bleep when fishing a float would pull it under resulting in a hittable indication and possibly extra fish on the bank. Additionally the float helps keep the majority of the line near to the surface and only a short length of line from float to lead. I suspect maggot fishing using a polaris float will be a devastating method!
We understand that carp learn by association? How many times have carp associated long lengths of line travelling through their patrolling level from rod to lead as danger? Would it be advantageous to keep as much line as possible out of their patrolling level? We automatically presume that pinning the line between the rod tips to the lead is the right thing to do.
Back leads are appropriate in many situations but maybe not so good for all as the main line is often pegged up above the lake bed due to running across obstacles such as bars, weed and debris. An open question leading on from this; should we not look at keeping the line in the surface layers when the fish are deep and the line close to the bottom when they are in the upper layers, thus avoiding line running through and across their motorways. The sensitivity of a float is far greater than that of any alarms. Think about it, for example: the depth is 7 foot: that is only 7 foot of line that a bite signal must travel through before an indication is seen? In comparison to a far greater distance that the signal must travel through for an alarm indication, even then it may only be a single bleep. I don't normally hit single bleeps but would hit the same amount of indication transmitted to a float, interesting?
On larger lakes an angler that can cast over 160 yards will be able to apply those skills to pick up bonus carp at distances that the majority cannot achieve. I recall fishing High Town Lake near Ringwood 15 years ago, using my trusty old whisker rods casting single hook baits into a bay where the fish felt safe and out of reach. Using 8 lb line and a shock leader to encroach into their safe haven and pick up extra fish. At the time no one else fishing the venue that was able to reach the magic zone. However the next season a couple of the local anglers had observed the successful tactic and had been out honing their casting skills and soon became accomplished castors. Able to place a single hook bait at the edge of the carp's safe haven, and having a moderately successful season. Why didn't they think of that in the first place, why did it take someone else to demonstrate the advantages of the method on the lake? A little forethought would have given them a distinct advantage, fortunately for me I was able to catch the majority of fish I was after during the first season of casting into the safe haven, the following year the fish held further out of range due to the pressure and the method was not nearly as productive, to a certain extent they missed the boat. The moral of the story is if you can identify an approach that would give you the edge then get on it as soon as possible before the method is done to death and blown. I had it good at the right time and took advantage of the situation. I believe an advantage can be gained on all venues if a little thought is put into the approach.
I have wandered off track a little within the previous paragraph, where was I? Oh yes, achieving an edge. Placing a hook bait where they do not associate danger will give you an advantage. This can be accomplished by looking for suitable spots e.g. I recall a season on Somerly near Ringwood where an edge was achieved via dropping the baited rig close to a rope within six foot of the bank and near to a snag, it was not possible to cast to the spot due to overhanging bushes. However it was possible to drop the baited rig through a small gap in the bushes, near to the snags, then crouching down in order to pass the rod around two trees to the pod. This little extra effort often resulted in nettle stings to the derrière but was worth it. I went on to land over 30 x 20 lb fish and 4 x 30s that season including the lake record, a carp named Billy Boy, most of them from that one little spot. Bare in mind the period I am referring to was around the early 90s, a good result on any water back then. The consistency was soon noticed, but due to pointing the rods towards the centre of the lake and keeping the top two feet of the rods under the surface it was difficult to spot exactly where I was placing the rig. I had the spot to myself for many months until someone saw me place the bait, soon after the spot was blown as he informed others and the old falling domino effect took place i.e. don't tell anyone but I know where he's having the fish from, he tells his mate and so on. Hence the reason I was deceptive at the time.
The use of roach poles with a small plastic cup glued to the tip allows us to place a bait close in under bushes as long as they are hollow underneath of course. The rig and bait is placed in the cup and the pole extended to the desired spot and tipped. It is often used in spots that are difficult to cast too. Is this method altogether ethical, I would not like to pass comment and will sit on the fence? The pole or wading will allow you to accurately place a rig and bait and are good methods in certain situations.
Anglers that are new to a venue occasionally do very well! You may recall occasions when the new person on the block out fishes the regulars. This may be due to them not being aware of the vogue methods. The new angler tends to turn up with a fresh set of eyes and ideas, approaches the lake using a strategy that the carp are not accustom to and catches them off guard. The regulars often look on, unaware of the fish having grown wise to past successful methods, failing to notice that results have slowed. Jumping on the bandwagon will place you pretty much on the same level as the majority on the venue, but may not be the method for the best results, something different and some analysis may give you an advantage.
Some of the top UK anglers do a lot of tree climbing; it allows the angler to get above the water which in turn reduces the amount of glare. Many of them practice tree hugging on a regular basis as they can observe fish habits, this gives a greater understanding and feel for what is happening sub surface, do you climb trees or fish blind?
When the weather is warm surface fishing comes into its own, although it is an oft practiced method, usually with a float controller. The beach caster method looks clumsy but is an absolute brilliant method; it works due to there being no visible line on the surface, only the hook bait. Alternately laying the line over lily pads or hang it from a twig. Nowadays I have found it increasingly difficult to entice a take using float controllers unless I drop down to 6lb X line.
I cannot detail all of the possible edges due to their being an infinite amount; however I do hope that I have been able to give some pointers in the right direction and as the saying goes, 'food for thought.'
Conclusion in gaining the carp fishing edge
The edges mentioned are but a fraction of what can be used to gain an advantage. I have purposefully presented you with many open questions and not too many direct answers in order to get your brain working. If you wish to improve your chances then take a leaf out of the most successful angler's books. As stated in recent articles doing something different may catch the carp off guard, don't put all of your eggs in one basket, test and adjust for maximum results.
The initial question within the first paragraph was: why are certain anglers more consistent than others? Answer: They work hard at achieving an edge and think about what they are doing! If you too work hard and think about your approach, you may swing the pendulum in your favour. I hope within this article I have achieved the aim of getting the 'grey matter' working?
For more information on fax marketing visit fax marketing articles [http://www.trio-marketing.co.uk] More of my articles at marketing articles
Many commercial venues did not live up to their expectations, and they therefore decided that they had the spirit and knowledge to fabricate the ideal commercial venue, which would be suitable to all levels of carp angling ability. Dave improved his fishery management training by attending a number of courses, absorbing all of the information necessary to manage and nurture a lake from draining, stocking and rearing to management. It's not surprising that Dave and Jo covered over 7000 miles searching for a lake that fulfilled the criteria essential for success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ron_Simonds
There are no set rules to achieving an edge in carp fishing, what maybe advantageous in a certain situation or lake may not be good on another. That sounds like a politician's answer; nothing concrete for you to work with? It would take more than I can fit into this article to describe the many advantages that will put the odd extra fish on the bank, therefore have opted to cover a few and portray the thinking behind achieving an edge rather than attempting to detail as many as possible. Hopefully this will spur you into thinking about your approach and even what else can be done to increase your chances. Here is an open question that I would like you to think about whilst reading this piece, I will present my opinion of the answer in the conclusion; why are some anglers more consistent than others?
We are mid way through the maggot boom; they are a brilliant bait and will encourage a take when other methods fail. Rob Maylin then came up with the maggot aligner and landed many of the big fish from Swan Valley using the method. I wonder what the next 'in method' or bait will be? I suspect chopped lob worms with a whole worm over the top will be re-invented or naturals such as cockles will be the in thing, if maggots, worms or cockles have not been used on your lake I strongly recommend you give them a go!
Polaris float fishing for carp is little practiced and a highly successful method for short session carping, more so than sitting behind indicators. I believe it is effective due to its sensitivity, a single bleep or rod tip knock can be an indication of a missed take, that single bleep when fishing a float would pull it under resulting in a hittable indication and possibly extra fish on the bank. Additionally the float helps keep the majority of the line near to the surface and only a short length of line from float to lead. I suspect maggot fishing using a polaris float will be a devastating method!
We understand that carp learn by association? How many times have carp associated long lengths of line travelling through their patrolling level from rod to lead as danger? Would it be advantageous to keep as much line as possible out of their patrolling level? We automatically presume that pinning the line between the rod tips to the lead is the right thing to do.
Back leads are appropriate in many situations but maybe not so good for all as the main line is often pegged up above the lake bed due to running across obstacles such as bars, weed and debris. An open question leading on from this; should we not look at keeping the line in the surface layers when the fish are deep and the line close to the bottom when they are in the upper layers, thus avoiding line running through and across their motorways. The sensitivity of a float is far greater than that of any alarms. Think about it, for example: the depth is 7 foot: that is only 7 foot of line that a bite signal must travel through before an indication is seen? In comparison to a far greater distance that the signal must travel through for an alarm indication, even then it may only be a single bleep. I don't normally hit single bleeps but would hit the same amount of indication transmitted to a float, interesting?
On larger lakes an angler that can cast over 160 yards will be able to apply those skills to pick up bonus carp at distances that the majority cannot achieve. I recall fishing High Town Lake near Ringwood 15 years ago, using my trusty old whisker rods casting single hook baits into a bay where the fish felt safe and out of reach. Using 8 lb line and a shock leader to encroach into their safe haven and pick up extra fish. At the time no one else fishing the venue that was able to reach the magic zone. However the next season a couple of the local anglers had observed the successful tactic and had been out honing their casting skills and soon became accomplished castors. Able to place a single hook bait at the edge of the carp's safe haven, and having a moderately successful season. Why didn't they think of that in the first place, why did it take someone else to demonstrate the advantages of the method on the lake? A little forethought would have given them a distinct advantage, fortunately for me I was able to catch the majority of fish I was after during the first season of casting into the safe haven, the following year the fish held further out of range due to the pressure and the method was not nearly as productive, to a certain extent they missed the boat. The moral of the story is if you can identify an approach that would give you the edge then get on it as soon as possible before the method is done to death and blown. I had it good at the right time and took advantage of the situation. I believe an advantage can be gained on all venues if a little thought is put into the approach.
I have wandered off track a little within the previous paragraph, where was I? Oh yes, achieving an edge. Placing a hook bait where they do not associate danger will give you an advantage. This can be accomplished by looking for suitable spots e.g. I recall a season on Somerly near Ringwood where an edge was achieved via dropping the baited rig close to a rope within six foot of the bank and near to a snag, it was not possible to cast to the spot due to overhanging bushes. However it was possible to drop the baited rig through a small gap in the bushes, near to the snags, then crouching down in order to pass the rod around two trees to the pod. This little extra effort often resulted in nettle stings to the derrière but was worth it. I went on to land over 30 x 20 lb fish and 4 x 30s that season including the lake record, a carp named Billy Boy, most of them from that one little spot. Bare in mind the period I am referring to was around the early 90s, a good result on any water back then. The consistency was soon noticed, but due to pointing the rods towards the centre of the lake and keeping the top two feet of the rods under the surface it was difficult to spot exactly where I was placing the rig. I had the spot to myself for many months until someone saw me place the bait, soon after the spot was blown as he informed others and the old falling domino effect took place i.e. don't tell anyone but I know where he's having the fish from, he tells his mate and so on. Hence the reason I was deceptive at the time.
The use of roach poles with a small plastic cup glued to the tip allows us to place a bait close in under bushes as long as they are hollow underneath of course. The rig and bait is placed in the cup and the pole extended to the desired spot and tipped. It is often used in spots that are difficult to cast too. Is this method altogether ethical, I would not like to pass comment and will sit on the fence? The pole or wading will allow you to accurately place a rig and bait and are good methods in certain situations.
Anglers that are new to a venue occasionally do very well! You may recall occasions when the new person on the block out fishes the regulars. This may be due to them not being aware of the vogue methods. The new angler tends to turn up with a fresh set of eyes and ideas, approaches the lake using a strategy that the carp are not accustom to and catches them off guard. The regulars often look on, unaware of the fish having grown wise to past successful methods, failing to notice that results have slowed. Jumping on the bandwagon will place you pretty much on the same level as the majority on the venue, but may not be the method for the best results, something different and some analysis may give you an advantage.
Some of the top UK anglers do a lot of tree climbing; it allows the angler to get above the water which in turn reduces the amount of glare. Many of them practice tree hugging on a regular basis as they can observe fish habits, this gives a greater understanding and feel for what is happening sub surface, do you climb trees or fish blind?
When the weather is warm surface fishing comes into its own, although it is an oft practiced method, usually with a float controller. The beach caster method looks clumsy but is an absolute brilliant method; it works due to there being no visible line on the surface, only the hook bait. Alternately laying the line over lily pads or hang it from a twig. Nowadays I have found it increasingly difficult to entice a take using float controllers unless I drop down to 6lb X line.
I cannot detail all of the possible edges due to their being an infinite amount; however I do hope that I have been able to give some pointers in the right direction and as the saying goes, 'food for thought.'
Conclusion in gaining the carp fishing edge
The edges mentioned are but a fraction of what can be used to gain an advantage. I have purposefully presented you with many open questions and not too many direct answers in order to get your brain working. If you wish to improve your chances then take a leaf out of the most successful angler's books. As stated in recent articles doing something different may catch the carp off guard, don't put all of your eggs in one basket, test and adjust for maximum results.
The initial question within the first paragraph was: why are certain anglers more consistent than others? Answer: They work hard at achieving an edge and think about what they are doing! If you too work hard and think about your approach, you may swing the pendulum in your favour. I hope within this article I have achieved the aim of getting the 'grey matter' working?
For more information on fax marketing visit fax marketing articles [http://www.trio-marketing.co.uk] More of my articles at marketing articles
Many commercial venues did not live up to their expectations, and they therefore decided that they had the spirit and knowledge to fabricate the ideal commercial venue, which would be suitable to all levels of carp angling ability. Dave improved his fishery management training by attending a number of courses, absorbing all of the information necessary to manage and nurture a lake from draining, stocking and rearing to management. It's not surprising that Dave and Jo covered over 7000 miles searching for a lake that fulfilled the criteria essential for success.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ron_Simonds
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Going Carp Fishing in France By Martyn Davis
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Home :: Recreation and Sports : Fishing
Going Carp Fishing in France
By Martyn Davis
France has become an extremely popular destination for the carp angler, especially with so many different carp lakes in France choose from and many that have carp in excess of 40lb to 50lb plus.
However, due to the sheer size of the carp, you do need to have sensible equipment in which to land these fish. Most people recommend at least a 2 and 3/4 test curve rod or more, plus baitrunner reels are a must. We actually use the Shimano 8010GT baitrunner reels, and although there are some more modern ones on the market, we prefer these to anything else. But a lot of people also opt for the large big pit reels that hold a lot more line, as some of the places you may choose to fish could be quite a considerable distance from the bank.
In France there are a lot of privately owned fishing lakes such as Rainbow Lake, L'Etang de Tricherie, L'Etang du Chef de Ville, etc, that hire boats and many other lakes such as Bills Lake and Brittany Mill Lakes that allow you to use your own or hire out bait boats.
Also, many carp fishing lakes do not allow braid and the best option is monofilament line and we have found that Ultima PowerPlus is an excellent quality fishing line, yet a higher breaking strain line is needed when you are carp fishing in France compared to fishing most lakes in the UK.
Some lakes are also extremely strict on the type of tent where it must be a bivvy, but like ourselves where we do this as a family, we have a large tent which is not gaudy in colour but needs a bigger swim than most, so there are certain lakes that we could not go fishing at for this reason, so it is sensible to check out these details prior to booking your carp fishing holiday.
Now bait is something that differs from lake to lake and in some French carp lakes they will only allow specific types of bait and it is necessary to check this before you go, for instance, tiger nuts or certain ground baits are not allowed.
Mobile phones are the norm these days, but apart from these that need charging, you do have to consider things like bait boats if you have one, but there are now plenty of carp fishing lakes in France that do cater for charging different equipment you have, and when it comes to facilities, something you may not have really thought about is the need for a freezer, hang on forget this, what about washing facilities? Well forget this as well, we need the fridge, not just for the bait, but that cold beer or chilled water on a really hot day!
And although we all know the drive and survive aspect, there are now numerous different carp fishing lakes in France that have complete packages available right through from accommodation, to all of your equipment supplied and even lakes that supply a complete service from the flights through to full board, along with exclusive fishing and some of these include Dream Lakes, Croix Blanche, Willow Lake, Lake Juvanze, Brittany Mill Lakes and many more, plus some lakes are also available as an exclusive family holiday.
However, the cost for these and the all inclusive carp fishing packages can be considerably more expensive than making your own arrangements, but it can certainly save you a lot of hassle and keep the Wife happy!
Rules and regulations vary at the numerous carp lakes in France and some allow you to fish with three rods, whereas others are four and night fishing is only allowed if the owner has a permit for this, so again it is always a good idea to check these points prior to booking.
Other points you feel are essential for you, like local bars, restaurants, shops or swimming facilities, etc are also good points to check on, plus most people find that the carp fishing is best during the months from April through to October, but do bear in mind the further down South you go in the height of summer with hot days, most of the action will happen at night when it is cooler, so you had better be prepared for lack of sleep!
On one session near Bordeaux, we were getting up and down to the bite alarms at least two to three times every night and by the time our stay was coming to an end, we pulled our rods in just so that we could get some peace and quiet and catch up with much needed sleep before the long drive back home!
But saying that, when you are catching 40lb plus carp each time, the lack of sleep becomes insignificant and if you want to try catching a fish of a lifetime or just beating your personal best, then a carp fishing holiday in France is definitely for you!
http://www.placesinfrance.com
Martyn Davis European Traveler, Author, Photographer and Business Development Manager, For all your French holiday needs and travel guide to France, with tourist information, landmarks and attractions - Fishing Holidays In France
Views: 713 | Comments (0) | Rating: None yet | Rate this article
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260,792 Authors Sharing Their EzineArticles
Home :: Recreation and Sports : Fishing
Going Carp Fishing in France
By Martyn Davis
France has become an extremely popular destination for the carp angler, especially with so many different carp lakes in France choose from and many that have carp in excess of 40lb to 50lb plus.
However, due to the sheer size of the carp, you do need to have sensible equipment in which to land these fish. Most people recommend at least a 2 and 3/4 test curve rod or more, plus baitrunner reels are a must. We actually use the Shimano 8010GT baitrunner reels, and although there are some more modern ones on the market, we prefer these to anything else. But a lot of people also opt for the large big pit reels that hold a lot more line, as some of the places you may choose to fish could be quite a considerable distance from the bank.
In France there are a lot of privately owned fishing lakes such as Rainbow Lake, L'Etang de Tricherie, L'Etang du Chef de Ville, etc, that hire boats and many other lakes such as Bills Lake and Brittany Mill Lakes that allow you to use your own or hire out bait boats.
Also, many carp fishing lakes do not allow braid and the best option is monofilament line and we have found that Ultima PowerPlus is an excellent quality fishing line, yet a higher breaking strain line is needed when you are carp fishing in France compared to fishing most lakes in the UK.
Some lakes are also extremely strict on the type of tent where it must be a bivvy, but like ourselves where we do this as a family, we have a large tent which is not gaudy in colour but needs a bigger swim than most, so there are certain lakes that we could not go fishing at for this reason, so it is sensible to check out these details prior to booking your carp fishing holiday.
Now bait is something that differs from lake to lake and in some French carp lakes they will only allow specific types of bait and it is necessary to check this before you go, for instance, tiger nuts or certain ground baits are not allowed.
Mobile phones are the norm these days, but apart from these that need charging, you do have to consider things like bait boats if you have one, but there are now plenty of carp fishing lakes in France that do cater for charging different equipment you have, and when it comes to facilities, something you may not have really thought about is the need for a freezer, hang on forget this, what about washing facilities? Well forget this as well, we need the fridge, not just for the bait, but that cold beer or chilled water on a really hot day!
And although we all know the drive and survive aspect, there are now numerous different carp fishing lakes in France that have complete packages available right through from accommodation, to all of your equipment supplied and even lakes that supply a complete service from the flights through to full board, along with exclusive fishing and some of these include Dream Lakes, Croix Blanche, Willow Lake, Lake Juvanze, Brittany Mill Lakes and many more, plus some lakes are also available as an exclusive family holiday.
However, the cost for these and the all inclusive carp fishing packages can be considerably more expensive than making your own arrangements, but it can certainly save you a lot of hassle and keep the Wife happy!
Rules and regulations vary at the numerous carp lakes in France and some allow you to fish with three rods, whereas others are four and night fishing is only allowed if the owner has a permit for this, so again it is always a good idea to check these points prior to booking.
Other points you feel are essential for you, like local bars, restaurants, shops or swimming facilities, etc are also good points to check on, plus most people find that the carp fishing is best during the months from April through to October, but do bear in mind the further down South you go in the height of summer with hot days, most of the action will happen at night when it is cooler, so you had better be prepared for lack of sleep!
On one session near Bordeaux, we were getting up and down to the bite alarms at least two to three times every night and by the time our stay was coming to an end, we pulled our rods in just so that we could get some peace and quiet and catch up with much needed sleep before the long drive back home!
But saying that, when you are catching 40lb plus carp each time, the lack of sleep becomes insignificant and if you want to try catching a fish of a lifetime or just beating your personal best, then a carp fishing holiday in France is definitely for you!
http://www.placesinfrance.com
Martyn Davis European Traveler, Author, Photographer and Business Development Manager, For all your French holiday needs and travel guide to France, with tourist information, landmarks and attractions - Fishing Holidays In France
Views: 713 | Comments (0) | Rating: None yet | Rate this article
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Big Carp Fishing Success and Irresistible Cold Water Tricks and Bait Edges! By Tim F. Richardson
Winter and spring carp fishing is really exciting because the biggest fish in a lake are at their most vulnerable and anglers on the bank competing and baiting-up for those fish are fewer than any other time of year! Revealed here are crafty, unusual and very potent tricks to reliably catch you more cold water carp!
How much do you know about your bait? In winter and spring the cold temperatures really sort out the best baits from the average. Most usually, those baits that perform best in winter also reliably catch fish all year round, but many baits that catch well in summer may not catch well at all in the cold. But even if you believe that your baits have been optimised for peak performance in low water temperatures you can easily do things to improve their catch rate and boost fish responses!
If you are one of those anglers who stick to their tried and tested methods and tend to struggle in the winter and spring you need to consider why you are fishing using the techniques and methods you use. Very often carp will be sitting or moving around off the bottom in layers of water that are more comfortable. A lot of the time one of the major reasons cold water carp do not get caught is not because they are not willing to take a bait, but because so many anglers use tactic that do not suit the fish.
How many times have you fished a swim where you have seen fish on the surface showing fins for example, but failed to catch while fishing bottom baits or pop-up baits just off the bottom. Much of the time fish in cold temperatures appear to be suckers for baits presented in the upper layers of the water but do not wish to feed in the lower water layers.
Many anglers fish with long hook links with a bait in mid-water for instance. It used to be that most carp were carp by float fishing for them and I am glad I was one of those anglers in the seventies still doing this before getting into the static multiple rod and bite alarm method which just relies on carp self-hooking themselves! This newer form of carp fishing really is less skilful - you can buy all the tackle, baits, rigs, etc and cast out on a commercial water stuffed with over-sized foreign fish and call yourself a good carp angler.
One of the problems for the average carp angler today is excessive expectations. The fact is that if you are an averagely skilled or averagely talented angler you will most usually catch average amounts and sizes of fish. Commercial readymade baits just keep going around in fashionable cycles yet the same old 20 percent of anglers carry on catching 80 percent of the big fish. Average anglers need to remember the way the game is rigged!
The vast majority of high profile faces you see in the magazines with big fish are thinking and doing things that ordinary anglers would normally never do. Think about it; anyone with half a brain can fish almost full-time, tune into a water, pre-bait and establish a going bait using maybe 100 kilograms of boilies or more and hook many-times more big fish than average weekend anglers. Terry Hearn does this kind of thing like many other figures in the tackle and bait industries. Another fact is that most of the big fish in the UK come from those waters which hold the highest density stocking of big fish!
These days the majority of these waters are syndicated and very difficult to get into. So many times in the media you will see the same old faces with the same old fish from the same old syndicates. It is far easier to catch big wary fish from a water that only has 50 to 100 members where swims are nicely widely spaced out where you and your mates are monopolising as few swims and baiting them regularly all year round to hold the majority of the fish (and if you are not in the clique - bad luck!)
This is most often the reality although really talented anglers will catch big fish without spending every week on the bank and without piling 100 to 200 kilograms of bait into a lake over months and months. It might be obvious but carp are energy-efficient creatures of habit and they are pretty lazy.
This means that the bulk of the big fish will monopolise protein-rich food areas over a period of time in the age-old classic baiting pyramid way. Almost any old rubbish bait based on wheat (i.e. semolina) and soya flour can catch most of the big fish out of a lake if anglers pile enough of it -some lakes literally receive a tonne or more of such bait in a year. This has happened for example on Darenth big Lake where such simple bait has actually been dominant in the past despite some anglers still putting in quality fish meal baits for example.
Basically big carp will exploit easy food. Have you ever noticed how most fish seem to come out on whatever bait is put into a lake the most at any point in time. You can see this effect all over the place over the years. Of course some fish respond more to some baits as opposed to others for a wide range of reasons from genetics to specifics of water quality and natural food abundance or scarcity etc through a year.
Much of the reason bait companies keep bringing out new baits is not because their baits have blown - far from it. It is simply that anglers respond strongly to new products on the market and it can really boost sales and even market share to keep announcing new wonder baits in the fishing media.
It is a strange quirk of human nature that we want to exploit lazy-mans short-cuts in the form of any new or different edge that comes our way. These days the majority of good quality food baits simply do not blow; the fish just feed more cautiously on them or adapting how they feed on them to avoid getting hooked.
In the days when fishing over massive beds of boilies was the in-thing, after a while on many waters it was noticed that fishing away from the beds of bait caught the bigger or more wary fish. One trick I use based on such experiences in the Eighties is to fish balanced mini boilies to the side of a bed of big boilies (25 millimetre homemade ones that were highly digestible.) Many buoyant baits like this are fashionably called wafters these days and negate the tell-tale weight of fishing hooks - but you might as well say that Dick Walker caught his record carp from Redmire on a wafter bait (paste-balanced crust!) Just to show how Mr Walker thought about his fishing, after he landed his big common he became focussed on other forms of fishing and I definitely get the impression that part of the attraction of fishing for carp was for him the process of problem-solving and successful fishing solutions by design using measured scientific thinking!
Winter fishing is all about confidence. I see so many anglers jumping on the bandwagon of methods popularised in the magazines. Again you might have noticed how the majority of anglers are followers not innovators. Many times, by the time Mr Average gets on a method or new bait it has already done the business for those in the inside track as it were and used it before it was popularised.
It is a bit like those who claimed they invented the hair rig that revolutionised carp fishing along with boilies and bolt rigs. But I know for a fact that anglers were using many versions of hair rigs with success on the quiet having created these rigs using their own brains. Hair-rigged snails have been used to catch carp in Asia for God-knows how long now, and bass fishermen have hair-rigged live baits when fishing from shore for many decades.
If you want the best from your baits, rigs, fishing methods etc in carp fishing it is a very good edge to always strive to analyse what the fish are doing to adapt and avoid currently fashionable rigs, baits and fishing methods. These days the impacts of fishing pressure caused by anglers certainly causes many fish to behave, feed in highly unexpected and unnatural ways and be in locations that can make all the old classic carp fishing lore about fish location totally wrong. For example, on one water I winter fished most anglers would fish popular swims to the central island margins and deeper water features.
I noticed that there were some areas of bank that nobody seemed to ever fish in the winter and the water there was very shallow with quite exposed banks. Following a hunch and fishing for liners I found that fish crept in the margins there on occasional winter afternoons for a very swift browsing session maybe only lasting 5 to 15 minutes per 24 hours (when the sun had warmed that margin.)
Instead of messing around with copycat spods, stick mixes and Zig-Rigs etc, I used the fish as my prime reference to determine what was going on and how to exploit this new behaviour. Usually doing that takes patience and plenty of experience plus sometimes following gut instinct. All it took was some preparation to exploit this situation.
A plan was immediately hatched using the knowledge of when the fish arrived, how close in they fed and what direction they travelled in from. They were feeding right next to the bank in thick silt that normally would not be fed-in because anglers would have their rods right over the top in that exposed swim.
I had made some very odd-shaped homemade buoyant baits. These baits were used directly on each hook on the top of the shank and I moulded a small amount of specially made resilient paste bait directly onto each hook above and below the buoyant bait so the hooks only just sank.
Each rig was made from 10 pound multi-stranded hook link and was around 2 feet long. I retrieved a heavily water-laden twig from the margins and cut this into short lengths to form safe natural sinking weights. Each rig was tied to short using elastic bands and these I attached a big PVA bag of free bait to each hook.
I had prepared 3 batches of special homemade baits. I had buoyant baits and 2 sets of specially-boosted pastes. The homemade hook bait paste was made so it took a very long time in low temperatures to dissolve, while the other homemade paste was formulated so it literally started dissolving immediately it was immersed. These special paste free baits are a trick I came across by accident while making baits. (Even mistakes are never mistakes in homemade bait-making; most of my baits that did not perform as expected have formed the basis of most of my most effective homemade baits!)
On arriving back at the lake the most popular winter swims were all taken as usual which pleased me. It is sometimes so hilarious to see anglers simply turn up at a water and without any thought of their main reference (i.e. the fish) they set up their bivvies, tackle-up, bait up with their readymade baits and expect miracles - then complain when someone else catches instead!
The rods were no the ground in the mud as the fish could have seem them on sticks and the baits were literally only 3 to 5 feet from the bank in about 4 feet of clear water anyway. Only the main lines protruded from the top of the bank and the rods were kept well back with line in clips, reel clutches set and me in my one-piece thermal suit flat on my bed chair set low.
The free bait pastes were scattered widely around the entire area of the swim and were well broken down to sediment and solution by the time the fish were due to arrive. On cue, the fish arrived and all my free baits had by now melted (including in my PVA bag baits) so there were no whole or crumbed baits to alert the fish. The only whole baits available were the hook baits and the first fish took one of the baits straight way - at 32 pounds it was one of the biggest fish that winter from the lake.
Sometimes it is very entertaining to actually be fishing instead of camping especially when you get action immediately as a result of being far more proactive in your fishing and getting more innovative and thinking about the fish, baits and their potential for getting around angler-conditioned caution successfully in different times of year and in diverse fishing conditions!
As you can appreciate, making unique homemade baits is a controlled and reliable edge in presenting fish with new and unusual baits they can have less reason to be cautious of plus and giving them more reasons than normal to take hook baits with confidence! (For much more valuable information see my unique website and biography 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 unique revealing information now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and more free completely original articles on carp and catfish fishing and bait success - make this year your best ever!
(The innovative bait and fishing author and bait consultant Tim Richardson has been writing articles for 5 years and has helped anglers in over 50 countries catch new personal best fish.)
How much do you know about your bait? In winter and spring the cold temperatures really sort out the best baits from the average. Most usually, those baits that perform best in winter also reliably catch fish all year round, but many baits that catch well in summer may not catch well at all in the cold. But even if you believe that your baits have been optimised for peak performance in low water temperatures you can easily do things to improve their catch rate and boost fish responses!
If you are one of those anglers who stick to their tried and tested methods and tend to struggle in the winter and spring you need to consider why you are fishing using the techniques and methods you use. Very often carp will be sitting or moving around off the bottom in layers of water that are more comfortable. A lot of the time one of the major reasons cold water carp do not get caught is not because they are not willing to take a bait, but because so many anglers use tactic that do not suit the fish.
How many times have you fished a swim where you have seen fish on the surface showing fins for example, but failed to catch while fishing bottom baits or pop-up baits just off the bottom. Much of the time fish in cold temperatures appear to be suckers for baits presented in the upper layers of the water but do not wish to feed in the lower water layers.
Many anglers fish with long hook links with a bait in mid-water for instance. It used to be that most carp were carp by float fishing for them and I am glad I was one of those anglers in the seventies still doing this before getting into the static multiple rod and bite alarm method which just relies on carp self-hooking themselves! This newer form of carp fishing really is less skilful - you can buy all the tackle, baits, rigs, etc and cast out on a commercial water stuffed with over-sized foreign fish and call yourself a good carp angler.
One of the problems for the average carp angler today is excessive expectations. The fact is that if you are an averagely skilled or averagely talented angler you will most usually catch average amounts and sizes of fish. Commercial readymade baits just keep going around in fashionable cycles yet the same old 20 percent of anglers carry on catching 80 percent of the big fish. Average anglers need to remember the way the game is rigged!
The vast majority of high profile faces you see in the magazines with big fish are thinking and doing things that ordinary anglers would normally never do. Think about it; anyone with half a brain can fish almost full-time, tune into a water, pre-bait and establish a going bait using maybe 100 kilograms of boilies or more and hook many-times more big fish than average weekend anglers. Terry Hearn does this kind of thing like many other figures in the tackle and bait industries. Another fact is that most of the big fish in the UK come from those waters which hold the highest density stocking of big fish!
These days the majority of these waters are syndicated and very difficult to get into. So many times in the media you will see the same old faces with the same old fish from the same old syndicates. It is far easier to catch big wary fish from a water that only has 50 to 100 members where swims are nicely widely spaced out where you and your mates are monopolising as few swims and baiting them regularly all year round to hold the majority of the fish (and if you are not in the clique - bad luck!)
This is most often the reality although really talented anglers will catch big fish without spending every week on the bank and without piling 100 to 200 kilograms of bait into a lake over months and months. It might be obvious but carp are energy-efficient creatures of habit and they are pretty lazy.
This means that the bulk of the big fish will monopolise protein-rich food areas over a period of time in the age-old classic baiting pyramid way. Almost any old rubbish bait based on wheat (i.e. semolina) and soya flour can catch most of the big fish out of a lake if anglers pile enough of it -some lakes literally receive a tonne or more of such bait in a year. This has happened for example on Darenth big Lake where such simple bait has actually been dominant in the past despite some anglers still putting in quality fish meal baits for example.
Basically big carp will exploit easy food. Have you ever noticed how most fish seem to come out on whatever bait is put into a lake the most at any point in time. You can see this effect all over the place over the years. Of course some fish respond more to some baits as opposed to others for a wide range of reasons from genetics to specifics of water quality and natural food abundance or scarcity etc through a year.
Much of the reason bait companies keep bringing out new baits is not because their baits have blown - far from it. It is simply that anglers respond strongly to new products on the market and it can really boost sales and even market share to keep announcing new wonder baits in the fishing media.
It is a strange quirk of human nature that we want to exploit lazy-mans short-cuts in the form of any new or different edge that comes our way. These days the majority of good quality food baits simply do not blow; the fish just feed more cautiously on them or adapting how they feed on them to avoid getting hooked.
In the days when fishing over massive beds of boilies was the in-thing, after a while on many waters it was noticed that fishing away from the beds of bait caught the bigger or more wary fish. One trick I use based on such experiences in the Eighties is to fish balanced mini boilies to the side of a bed of big boilies (25 millimetre homemade ones that were highly digestible.) Many buoyant baits like this are fashionably called wafters these days and negate the tell-tale weight of fishing hooks - but you might as well say that Dick Walker caught his record carp from Redmire on a wafter bait (paste-balanced crust!) Just to show how Mr Walker thought about his fishing, after he landed his big common he became focussed on other forms of fishing and I definitely get the impression that part of the attraction of fishing for carp was for him the process of problem-solving and successful fishing solutions by design using measured scientific thinking!
Winter fishing is all about confidence. I see so many anglers jumping on the bandwagon of methods popularised in the magazines. Again you might have noticed how the majority of anglers are followers not innovators. Many times, by the time Mr Average gets on a method or new bait it has already done the business for those in the inside track as it were and used it before it was popularised.
It is a bit like those who claimed they invented the hair rig that revolutionised carp fishing along with boilies and bolt rigs. But I know for a fact that anglers were using many versions of hair rigs with success on the quiet having created these rigs using their own brains. Hair-rigged snails have been used to catch carp in Asia for God-knows how long now, and bass fishermen have hair-rigged live baits when fishing from shore for many decades.
If you want the best from your baits, rigs, fishing methods etc in carp fishing it is a very good edge to always strive to analyse what the fish are doing to adapt and avoid currently fashionable rigs, baits and fishing methods. These days the impacts of fishing pressure caused by anglers certainly causes many fish to behave, feed in highly unexpected and unnatural ways and be in locations that can make all the old classic carp fishing lore about fish location totally wrong. For example, on one water I winter fished most anglers would fish popular swims to the central island margins and deeper water features.
I noticed that there were some areas of bank that nobody seemed to ever fish in the winter and the water there was very shallow with quite exposed banks. Following a hunch and fishing for liners I found that fish crept in the margins there on occasional winter afternoons for a very swift browsing session maybe only lasting 5 to 15 minutes per 24 hours (when the sun had warmed that margin.)
Instead of messing around with copycat spods, stick mixes and Zig-Rigs etc, I used the fish as my prime reference to determine what was going on and how to exploit this new behaviour. Usually doing that takes patience and plenty of experience plus sometimes following gut instinct. All it took was some preparation to exploit this situation.
A plan was immediately hatched using the knowledge of when the fish arrived, how close in they fed and what direction they travelled in from. They were feeding right next to the bank in thick silt that normally would not be fed-in because anglers would have their rods right over the top in that exposed swim.
I had made some very odd-shaped homemade buoyant baits. These baits were used directly on each hook on the top of the shank and I moulded a small amount of specially made resilient paste bait directly onto each hook above and below the buoyant bait so the hooks only just sank.
Each rig was made from 10 pound multi-stranded hook link and was around 2 feet long. I retrieved a heavily water-laden twig from the margins and cut this into short lengths to form safe natural sinking weights. Each rig was tied to short using elastic bands and these I attached a big PVA bag of free bait to each hook.
I had prepared 3 batches of special homemade baits. I had buoyant baits and 2 sets of specially-boosted pastes. The homemade hook bait paste was made so it took a very long time in low temperatures to dissolve, while the other homemade paste was formulated so it literally started dissolving immediately it was immersed. These special paste free baits are a trick I came across by accident while making baits. (Even mistakes are never mistakes in homemade bait-making; most of my baits that did not perform as expected have formed the basis of most of my most effective homemade baits!)
On arriving back at the lake the most popular winter swims were all taken as usual which pleased me. It is sometimes so hilarious to see anglers simply turn up at a water and without any thought of their main reference (i.e. the fish) they set up their bivvies, tackle-up, bait up with their readymade baits and expect miracles - then complain when someone else catches instead!
The rods were no the ground in the mud as the fish could have seem them on sticks and the baits were literally only 3 to 5 feet from the bank in about 4 feet of clear water anyway. Only the main lines protruded from the top of the bank and the rods were kept well back with line in clips, reel clutches set and me in my one-piece thermal suit flat on my bed chair set low.
The free bait pastes were scattered widely around the entire area of the swim and were well broken down to sediment and solution by the time the fish were due to arrive. On cue, the fish arrived and all my free baits had by now melted (including in my PVA bag baits) so there were no whole or crumbed baits to alert the fish. The only whole baits available were the hook baits and the first fish took one of the baits straight way - at 32 pounds it was one of the biggest fish that winter from the lake.
Sometimes it is very entertaining to actually be fishing instead of camping especially when you get action immediately as a result of being far more proactive in your fishing and getting more innovative and thinking about the fish, baits and their potential for getting around angler-conditioned caution successfully in different times of year and in diverse fishing conditions!
As you can appreciate, making unique homemade baits is a controlled and reliable edge in presenting fish with new and unusual baits they can have less reason to be cautious of plus and giving them more reasons than normal to take hook baits with confidence! (For much more valuable information see my unique website and biography 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 unique revealing information now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and more free completely original articles on carp and catfish fishing and bait success - make this year your best ever!
(The innovative bait and fishing author and bait consultant Tim Richardson has been writing articles for 5 years and has helped anglers in over 50 countries catch new personal best fish.)
Making Carp Baits More Irresistible to Big Wary Fish! By Tim F. Richardson
How many times have you sat behind motionless rods waiting for a bite while watching carp merrily clearing up your free baits and all the time wondering what on earth you can do produce a hooked fish?! One part of the answer is not simply what your bait is or how you apply it, but what your bait is not! Read on to discover more and get some proven ideas for hooking more fish!
Your observation skills may be good, or they may be bad but they can be very much a part of your carp fishing success. You learn so much by watching fish respond to your presence at the bankside. What they do when you cast out or bait up is also very interesting and almost as important as what happens when you pack up and vacate your swim, only to sneak stealthily back to observe fish over your baited area!
Is it such a mystery why so many carp get hooked either within minutes of first casting out or in the last moments of a hard session when perhaps all your non-essential tackle like bivvy, alarms and bank sticks are already packed up and your rods are on the ground? Do you get the feeling that the carp appear to be playing some kind of game with you where they are simply waiting for the right moment to eat your bait safely just when you are least ready? This is of course not a logical thinking type of process they are using, but responses in line with conditioned behaviours born of fears with angling associations and use of their natural survival instincts.
When it comes to fishing for big carp or achieving very consistent success it takes a degree of understanding of your fish. Carp fishing is not a sport like golf or football where even though there are variables, ultimately it is an inanimate object that you are aiming to control. Fish however are alive and this offers anglers countless other levels of variables that ball-related sports simply lack.
You can study a team or course or a pitch, the lie and angle of the grass and strength and direction of the wind perhaps, but of course carp fishing is played in an aquatic environment that much of the time is not possible to truly accurately analyse. Experience counts for so much, but so do all kinds of incredibly specific fishing skills that anyone can develop to a heightened degree more than average. It did not take me more than a few months to realise that free bait was one of the most in powerful methods of controlling carp behaviour in fishing, and this realisation came in the Seventies before things like the hair rig and boilie and bolt rigs where even used by the average carp angler.
I read in a carp magazine today that the gap between the understanding of so-called general course anglers and carp anglers in terms of baits and techniques is even wider than ever, but I perceive the opposite to be true!
Like the majority of carp anglers of my generation now approaching their fifties or older, most of us did a long apprenticeship of general course fishing. Other fishing such as sea, estuarine and game types of fishing, plus match fishing may all have been part of the background along the way, and some of these may be pursued right up to today. I feel those anglers who very proudly state that they are carp anglers and state they never ever fish for anything else are simply like ostriches with their heads in the sand afraid to learn what gems they are missing in their ignorance.
Thinking about is logically, just how do you know what other activities will teach you and new avenues of thought, techniques and further breakthroughs you will very likely discover or even master by studying something else?! I have done all kinds of fishing over the years in part because of the diversity of the challenges faced, the changes of environments and fishing skills required, plus the completely different fishing approaches and environments you can experience not sitting behind bite alarms, but working actively on your fishing and really investigating your environment.
Now this may sound rich coming from a person who is planning to go and fish a probably packed-out commercial fishery tomorrow. However, I have done my time on many carp waters in numerous syndicates where it was not uncommon to have only a handful of anglers fishing a water, and fishing less popular very difficult day ticket waters where you could fish for 3 or 4 days and not see another angler at all.
In fact I very much prefer to fish in isolation away from other anglers and social fishing is not normally my main prerogative as I would go to a club or pub or some other activity instead. Of course fishing with friends has always been important to me but if I really want to catch fish perhaps when fishing a pressured water then often social fishing can be a real disadvantage and being off your rods is simply not an option as any sensible angler knows.
When I say off your rods in this case I mean the act of actually reeling in and leaving the swim. On some waters doing this at the wrong time can ruin your chances and perhaps waste a session spent working hard building up a feeding scenario or in exploiting some natural phenomenon that is only very brief such as a hatch, a change in wind direction, a sudden drop in pressure or rise in temperature, or absence of competing anglers perhaps!
I guess I am one of those people who really appreciates being besides a water fishing in peace and quiet. I spend many years in self-employment working in isolated natural environments but I am not saying this suits everyone of course! However these days fishing away from the crowds is just not always an option and you have to go with the flow, and make the most of the available fishing that you can as is the case for the vast majority of carp anglers.
But I do differ from the stereotypical carp angler in that I decided when I was 21 while recovering from a near fatal illness that I would recover and make fishing my main focus in life and design and live my life with this aim. For this reason I have fished more hours on banks of rivers and lakes and estuaries, ponds, reservoirs, on beaches, dykes, streams, cuts, and other places, than anyone I have ever met. The last 4 years have been different because I have fished infrequently because other goals have materialised which have become very important personally, but the cumulative effects of experiences over thousands of hours of fishing and observing fish and different interrelated situations remain.
Now getting back to this fishing a commercial water has got me thinking a great deal because I mostly hate the thought of just being at such commercialised places where often the interests of the fish are pretty low down the list compared to other considerations although this is not so in many cases of course!
One thing that struck me when fishing in February at Elphicks North Lake in Kent was how all the natural bankside vegetation had been razed to the ground leaving the banks about as barren and unsheltered and unnatural as could possibly imagined. This removal of the vegetation was apparently something to do with protecting the interests of the carp in regards to water quality if I recall correctly; probably something like avoiding leaves etc falling into the lake and eventually leading to a lowering of available oxygen and acidification of the water that obviously could easily affect the health of carp in such an artificially stocked water.
Personally I would rather see the yearly natural growth of bankside vegetation development noting new species taking advantage of the unique habitat as an oasis of food and resources and a suitable place to thrive away from controlling environments of farms, controlled parks and urbanisation etc. Getting in tune with a water is so important in carp fishing in my view. This tuning in and deeper appreciation of the terrestrial and aquatic environments and how all the variable constant changes are interrelated really is part of the attraction for me because you begin to feel as one with the environment you are in and not as a separate entity just visiting.
When I visit the commercial complex of lakes tomorrow I will be giving myself as much opportunity to tune into each lake as possible before making any choices of which one to fish or which swim and spots in swims to investigate. I realise it is not often the case that one can take a good number of hours to study waters before fishing and that often it really is a matter of a mad dash and beating the crowd just to get any swim at all if you are not to be disappointed. However, in this case I am testing some new baiting combination designed just for this period when water temperatures are still approaching 15 degrees and when the carp are still in consistent autumn feeding mode and so more care is being taken. This is true also because I may be fishing lakes I am totally new to.
My choice of which lake to fish or swim or spots in swims to fish will obviously be decided very much with regards to the activities and presence of fellow anglers in mind. For example the impacts of their lines, their fishing styles and methods, their free baits and actual bankside activities etc. this will not be figured out by what gear they are using, but probably mostly by simply observing how much they are part of the environment or not and how much they may appear to be aware of their surroundings and what looks like is happening underwater.
On pressured waters fish will very frequently prefer to avoid angling pressure. It is often the traditional angling lore that many fish will follow the wind - but fish are contrary creatures! After all, if this lore was always true all the time then all the fish in a lake would be caught by just a couple of anglers in a couple of swims in many cases; but most very experienced pressured fish wise up do they not!
At the end of the day I shall be setting up using a mixture of observations and gut instinct. In part the goal is not fish hooked but to observe how the bait impacts on the fish hopefully even more favourably for me in comparison to the baiting and fishing tactics and thinking of fellow anglers. This will also provide invaluable feedback in what is a realistic fishing situation for most carp anglers today which I can pass on.
The fact that carp angling is so popular today is because many variables can be taken care of and controlled to much more of a measured degree, and the leverage of free baits is one of particular interest to me. As is my habit my approach will not be normal and I will be endeavouring to approach the actual fishing and baiting up in as unconventionally as possible. I am fishing for 72 hours so this will give the baits at least 2 chances to pass through the fish to feel their benefits if you consider an average internal passage times of 36 hours or less for my baits.
I will be using binoculars to really study the baited areas for any clues to wary feeding activity including single bubbles, fish rolling underwater, the sudden appearance of a leave or twig not apparent on a spot before, flat spots in the water, and so on. Many anglers use finely tuned bite indicators and their indicators to help determine fish movements, feeding and locations etc and this is part of my approach. Natural bait presentation is not simply about things like negating the weight of your hook or whatever in regards to rigs, but in how you bait up in specific terms.
Think about how fly hatches for example occur. Consider the way blooms of things like bloodworm and abundances of snails or mussels or aquatic weeds may impact carp and very importantly, how carp actually feed naturally on such items. Natural carp food items will often be drawn to baits for many reasons. How can this help you and also how can you replicate such situations so more natural bating situations can be provided that make for more confident feeding on your hook baits and free baits?
I honestly do not think the average commercial water angler will be too interested in such things and will probably grumble as usual when someone else catches fish but whenever someone else catches a fish it is literally always a moment to remember and learn from - and if you have been awake and aware, then you will probably have already figured out many of the factors and actions that the angler took that made the capture possible.
Now for a little bait tip. Although I will not be using particles tomorrow, if you fancy using something different, why not prepare some maple peas as hook baits and fish them actually on you hook link as opposed to on a hair rig. Rig up you hook with foam so it sits just off the bottom and enters the mouth of the fish first. Have you ever made a paste or even boilies using cooked maple peas, crushed hemp and crushed chick peas with chick pea flour and maybe some blood and haemoglobin powders and powdered eggs, ground almonds, a little mustard, lemon grass and ginger perhaps?
Why not ring the changes and try it; it is simple thought but this is just one idea that experienced fish will not had the pleasure of dealing with every day for the last 365 days of the year! (If you do decide to be different and try it you can let me know what happened!)
Before action is thought; before thought is observation. If stillness comes before observation you will probably notice that bit more. I like quiet carp fishing and it can be done even on noisy busy waters when you truly tune in; the rewards can often be worth the effort and so often the key to success is in observance of the small seemingly minor insignificant details and creating something new! (For more information see my website and biography 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles!
Views: 74 | Comments (0) | Rating: None yet | Rate this article
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Your observation skills may be good, or they may be bad but they can be very much a part of your carp fishing success. You learn so much by watching fish respond to your presence at the bankside. What they do when you cast out or bait up is also very interesting and almost as important as what happens when you pack up and vacate your swim, only to sneak stealthily back to observe fish over your baited area!
Is it such a mystery why so many carp get hooked either within minutes of first casting out or in the last moments of a hard session when perhaps all your non-essential tackle like bivvy, alarms and bank sticks are already packed up and your rods are on the ground? Do you get the feeling that the carp appear to be playing some kind of game with you where they are simply waiting for the right moment to eat your bait safely just when you are least ready? This is of course not a logical thinking type of process they are using, but responses in line with conditioned behaviours born of fears with angling associations and use of their natural survival instincts.
When it comes to fishing for big carp or achieving very consistent success it takes a degree of understanding of your fish. Carp fishing is not a sport like golf or football where even though there are variables, ultimately it is an inanimate object that you are aiming to control. Fish however are alive and this offers anglers countless other levels of variables that ball-related sports simply lack.
You can study a team or course or a pitch, the lie and angle of the grass and strength and direction of the wind perhaps, but of course carp fishing is played in an aquatic environment that much of the time is not possible to truly accurately analyse. Experience counts for so much, but so do all kinds of incredibly specific fishing skills that anyone can develop to a heightened degree more than average. It did not take me more than a few months to realise that free bait was one of the most in powerful methods of controlling carp behaviour in fishing, and this realisation came in the Seventies before things like the hair rig and boilie and bolt rigs where even used by the average carp angler.
I read in a carp magazine today that the gap between the understanding of so-called general course anglers and carp anglers in terms of baits and techniques is even wider than ever, but I perceive the opposite to be true!
Like the majority of carp anglers of my generation now approaching their fifties or older, most of us did a long apprenticeship of general course fishing. Other fishing such as sea, estuarine and game types of fishing, plus match fishing may all have been part of the background along the way, and some of these may be pursued right up to today. I feel those anglers who very proudly state that they are carp anglers and state they never ever fish for anything else are simply like ostriches with their heads in the sand afraid to learn what gems they are missing in their ignorance.
Thinking about is logically, just how do you know what other activities will teach you and new avenues of thought, techniques and further breakthroughs you will very likely discover or even master by studying something else?! I have done all kinds of fishing over the years in part because of the diversity of the challenges faced, the changes of environments and fishing skills required, plus the completely different fishing approaches and environments you can experience not sitting behind bite alarms, but working actively on your fishing and really investigating your environment.
Now this may sound rich coming from a person who is planning to go and fish a probably packed-out commercial fishery tomorrow. However, I have done my time on many carp waters in numerous syndicates where it was not uncommon to have only a handful of anglers fishing a water, and fishing less popular very difficult day ticket waters where you could fish for 3 or 4 days and not see another angler at all.
In fact I very much prefer to fish in isolation away from other anglers and social fishing is not normally my main prerogative as I would go to a club or pub or some other activity instead. Of course fishing with friends has always been important to me but if I really want to catch fish perhaps when fishing a pressured water then often social fishing can be a real disadvantage and being off your rods is simply not an option as any sensible angler knows.
When I say off your rods in this case I mean the act of actually reeling in and leaving the swim. On some waters doing this at the wrong time can ruin your chances and perhaps waste a session spent working hard building up a feeding scenario or in exploiting some natural phenomenon that is only very brief such as a hatch, a change in wind direction, a sudden drop in pressure or rise in temperature, or absence of competing anglers perhaps!
I guess I am one of those people who really appreciates being besides a water fishing in peace and quiet. I spend many years in self-employment working in isolated natural environments but I am not saying this suits everyone of course! However these days fishing away from the crowds is just not always an option and you have to go with the flow, and make the most of the available fishing that you can as is the case for the vast majority of carp anglers.
But I do differ from the stereotypical carp angler in that I decided when I was 21 while recovering from a near fatal illness that I would recover and make fishing my main focus in life and design and live my life with this aim. For this reason I have fished more hours on banks of rivers and lakes and estuaries, ponds, reservoirs, on beaches, dykes, streams, cuts, and other places, than anyone I have ever met. The last 4 years have been different because I have fished infrequently because other goals have materialised which have become very important personally, but the cumulative effects of experiences over thousands of hours of fishing and observing fish and different interrelated situations remain.
Now getting back to this fishing a commercial water has got me thinking a great deal because I mostly hate the thought of just being at such commercialised places where often the interests of the fish are pretty low down the list compared to other considerations although this is not so in many cases of course!
One thing that struck me when fishing in February at Elphicks North Lake in Kent was how all the natural bankside vegetation had been razed to the ground leaving the banks about as barren and unsheltered and unnatural as could possibly imagined. This removal of the vegetation was apparently something to do with protecting the interests of the carp in regards to water quality if I recall correctly; probably something like avoiding leaves etc falling into the lake and eventually leading to a lowering of available oxygen and acidification of the water that obviously could easily affect the health of carp in such an artificially stocked water.
Personally I would rather see the yearly natural growth of bankside vegetation development noting new species taking advantage of the unique habitat as an oasis of food and resources and a suitable place to thrive away from controlling environments of farms, controlled parks and urbanisation etc. Getting in tune with a water is so important in carp fishing in my view. This tuning in and deeper appreciation of the terrestrial and aquatic environments and how all the variable constant changes are interrelated really is part of the attraction for me because you begin to feel as one with the environment you are in and not as a separate entity just visiting.
When I visit the commercial complex of lakes tomorrow I will be giving myself as much opportunity to tune into each lake as possible before making any choices of which one to fish or which swim and spots in swims to investigate. I realise it is not often the case that one can take a good number of hours to study waters before fishing and that often it really is a matter of a mad dash and beating the crowd just to get any swim at all if you are not to be disappointed. However, in this case I am testing some new baiting combination designed just for this period when water temperatures are still approaching 15 degrees and when the carp are still in consistent autumn feeding mode and so more care is being taken. This is true also because I may be fishing lakes I am totally new to.
My choice of which lake to fish or swim or spots in swims to fish will obviously be decided very much with regards to the activities and presence of fellow anglers in mind. For example the impacts of their lines, their fishing styles and methods, their free baits and actual bankside activities etc. this will not be figured out by what gear they are using, but probably mostly by simply observing how much they are part of the environment or not and how much they may appear to be aware of their surroundings and what looks like is happening underwater.
On pressured waters fish will very frequently prefer to avoid angling pressure. It is often the traditional angling lore that many fish will follow the wind - but fish are contrary creatures! After all, if this lore was always true all the time then all the fish in a lake would be caught by just a couple of anglers in a couple of swims in many cases; but most very experienced pressured fish wise up do they not!
At the end of the day I shall be setting up using a mixture of observations and gut instinct. In part the goal is not fish hooked but to observe how the bait impacts on the fish hopefully even more favourably for me in comparison to the baiting and fishing tactics and thinking of fellow anglers. This will also provide invaluable feedback in what is a realistic fishing situation for most carp anglers today which I can pass on.
The fact that carp angling is so popular today is because many variables can be taken care of and controlled to much more of a measured degree, and the leverage of free baits is one of particular interest to me. As is my habit my approach will not be normal and I will be endeavouring to approach the actual fishing and baiting up in as unconventionally as possible. I am fishing for 72 hours so this will give the baits at least 2 chances to pass through the fish to feel their benefits if you consider an average internal passage times of 36 hours or less for my baits.
I will be using binoculars to really study the baited areas for any clues to wary feeding activity including single bubbles, fish rolling underwater, the sudden appearance of a leave or twig not apparent on a spot before, flat spots in the water, and so on. Many anglers use finely tuned bite indicators and their indicators to help determine fish movements, feeding and locations etc and this is part of my approach. Natural bait presentation is not simply about things like negating the weight of your hook or whatever in regards to rigs, but in how you bait up in specific terms.
Think about how fly hatches for example occur. Consider the way blooms of things like bloodworm and abundances of snails or mussels or aquatic weeds may impact carp and very importantly, how carp actually feed naturally on such items. Natural carp food items will often be drawn to baits for many reasons. How can this help you and also how can you replicate such situations so more natural bating situations can be provided that make for more confident feeding on your hook baits and free baits?
I honestly do not think the average commercial water angler will be too interested in such things and will probably grumble as usual when someone else catches fish but whenever someone else catches a fish it is literally always a moment to remember and learn from - and if you have been awake and aware, then you will probably have already figured out many of the factors and actions that the angler took that made the capture possible.
Now for a little bait tip. Although I will not be using particles tomorrow, if you fancy using something different, why not prepare some maple peas as hook baits and fish them actually on you hook link as opposed to on a hair rig. Rig up you hook with foam so it sits just off the bottom and enters the mouth of the fish first. Have you ever made a paste or even boilies using cooked maple peas, crushed hemp and crushed chick peas with chick pea flour and maybe some blood and haemoglobin powders and powdered eggs, ground almonds, a little mustard, lemon grass and ginger perhaps?
Why not ring the changes and try it; it is simple thought but this is just one idea that experienced fish will not had the pleasure of dealing with every day for the last 365 days of the year! (If you do decide to be different and try it you can let me know what happened!)
Before action is thought; before thought is observation. If stillness comes before observation you will probably notice that bit more. I like quiet carp fishing and it can be done even on noisy busy waters when you truly tune in; the rewards can often be worth the effort and so often the key to success is in observance of the small seemingly minor insignificant details and creating something new! (For more information see my website and biography 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles!
Views: 74 | Comments (0) | Rating: None yet | Rate this article
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