When you are in the market for a secondhand boat you may wonder where the optimal place would be to find a nice used boat. In numerous instances, the optimal place to search for a secondhand boat would be the boat classified ads part of your newspaper. Ofttimes when people no longer need their boat or select to upgrade to a more novel or enormous boat they will list their present boat in the boat classified ads. This can demonstrate to be a good chance if you are in the market to buy a secondhand boat.

When purchasing a used boat from the boat classifieds there are various things that you want to bear in mind so as to insure that you purchase the optimal boat for your requirements. First, make sure that you consider more than just the price. If you are on a budget then it can be quite inviting to merely look for a boat in the boat classified ads according to the price. A reduced price isn’t the only factor that should be considered when purchasing a secondhand boat. While there are many utilized boats that are in great condition, if you need to ensure that you keep problems to a minimum later on, you want to consider the actual condition of the boat.

Call the number that is listed in the boat classified ads and ask a few questions about the boat that is listed for sale. Firstly, inquire about the age of the boat and the type of boat that is for sale. You should also inquire about the type of water that the boat was utilized in previously. In addition, ask how often the boat has been secondhand. Keep in mind that the age of the boat and how much it has been utilized is not the same thing. Even a relatively novel boat could have seen quite a bit of use.

When thinking of purchasing a boat from the boat classified advertisements you also need to ask the marketer what type of upkeep and repairs the boat has had. If possible, ask the seller to show you the maintenance log for the boat.

In Conclusion, do not forget that you should never buy a boat sight unseen from the boat classified advertisements. You should always make a point to scrutinize the boat in person and when possible you should have a mechanic scrutinize the boat to check that it is in good condition.

When you use carp bait blind without knowing how it works you are using blind faith. In contrast, if you understood far more how and why key aspects of that bait induced bites and had the power to manipulate these potent effect far more then your catches will definitely improve. Read on to find out more…

Most anglers use readymade carp baits because they have become conditioned to because of easy availability, but confidence form slick advertising and advertorials etc are most often the bait that hooks such anglers and certainly not first-hand experience. Often the catches on new baits are made by the best, sharpest and most aware anglers using the edge of a new bait, and most anglers over-look this. If you have not used a bait before and not only do not know what it is made with nor how it works in detail, then my friend, you are fishing on blind faith not confidence.

Why would you care of you knew anything more about bait anyway; after all you catch fish right, and you have confidence in your baits? The difference between you running against an Olympic champion and expecting to win is you can try hard as you can with the amount you already have or know, but the Olympic champion has prepared in as many ways as fully as possible for a very long time; and that is why he is the best; talent at the top is not enough! In many ways use of flavours is like a race, where so many are simple taste or flavour carriers and mere attractors, (not feeding triggers) but others are like live rocket fuel by comparison, but you could spend your life missing out by not finding out; because most anglers keep secrets to themselves…

Many secrets are hidden from our senses but uncovered very easily by a little messing about with baits and some very elementary science, for instance, many carp bait substances change when in water into different ones to those we experience as humans in air… Garlic releases that pungent smell when broken in air and we are all familiar with similar compounds from onions and chives for example. But the smells from garlic we associate with its success are not strictly accurate, as certain of the key chemicals do not get produced in water the same as in air, and this might suggest to some thinking anglers that far more is going on, perhaps on a more deeper level to do with the biology of the fish in response to bioactive garlic substances rather than just a smell or taste.

Perhaps you might begin to think maybe something other than just smell and taste was influential and impacting on the carp; maybe something more profound, internal and physiological, or even psychological… To help clarify this big point, I ate a wheat-free biscuit (and wheat-free doughnut today!) Comparing the ingredients with the wheat-containing versions, the only substitution was that the wheat-free foods were based on maize flour, tapioca starch, soya flour and rice flour. All the rest of the ingredients in the wheat-free products were the same as the conventional wheat-based biscuits and doughnuts, including the fruit flavours, sweeteners, acidity regulators, (preservatives) and enhancers etc.

What a disappointment it was to eat the wheat-free foods and not want more! Although they still have all the same ingredients like the flavours, sweeteners and enhancers etc, something vital was missing that made me want to keep on eating and this is why I only had one doughnut; Homer Simpson would have been shocked to say the least! There was no key vital substance in the food to make my brain release a rush of feel-good hormones that occurs naturally in the wheat-based foods.

Just imagine eating a food for years without that feel-good feeling after each morsel; making you want another one, and then eating one which does have this effect. Which one would you choose?! I don?t think you would have much choice; your brain will decide for you, and that is one reason why over-weight comfort food eaters who binge on cakes, biscuits, chocolate and many other foods, regularly can?t help themselves.

Many foods are made with substances that further impact on the brain to eat you to eat it more because it means the producers make more money and you actually get into a habit of eating it, and finding foods without such habit-inducing chemicals can be quite a hard thing to do if you try to rid your diet, body and brain to become free from their influence! Think tiger nuts or peanuts, now these are not exactly the most packed nutritional foods on the planet, but even though hemp is a super food in its own right, it too has substances with brain influencing impacts and practical consideration these aspects of bait ingredients, flavours etc can really get you the edge over fish, and other competing baits. You can term it using habit-forming or addictive substances to manipulate fish behaviours or just call it good use of what a bait should really be – i.e. addictive! The bait secrets ebooks author offering this has much more to reveal to those wanting better baits and bigger catches but this will certainly help you!

Tim Richardson.

In these days of recession saving every penny helps and the great bonus with making your own fishing baits is they really can catch you as many if not more big carp ” for far less money spent. The vast majority of anglers really have no idea how their baits work in relation to the exploitation of vital carp senses and much of the discussion about baits in the past has often focussed on recipes and flavours, and more recently the first 3 limiting amino acids. But if you think you know it all; no-one does, so why not read on!

Of course it is no surprise that homemade bait-making is making a big come-back; the advantages these can very much out-weigh the financial costs and over-inflated expectations associated with constantly buying popular readymade baits which simply do not produce outstanding catches for the average angler. Regularly on a range of different waters I and my friends have fished with economical homemade baits against anglers using all the well-known brands of readymade baits – and we have held our own or out-fished the more expensive baits very many times. Our catches along with those of other homemade bait-makers over the past 30 plus years prove that they are potent and economical edges in carp fishing; in fact the bait company bosses of today mostly started-out at their own kitchen tables or in their own garden sheds!

Perceptions have changed in carp fishing to an unbelievable degree in recent years; my own twenty fish caught in the UK over forty pounds would be very average on some crazily-priced impossible to get into carp syndicates today, but the fact is that if your goal is big fish, you must fish waters containing them or never achieve your goals at least until the fish you have present access to grow that size if they ever do that is! Many limiting factors are involved in both bait details and fishing itself; commonly it is lack of time and good waters, (or restricted access to them,) exorbitant membership or day ticket prices or bait costs involved in truly being able to establish a bait on a water for an average angler that limits catch results very severely that results in average or lower than average yearly catches for average anglers. Obviously if you are a sponsored angler, in the tackle and bait trades, are a full-time angler, or have the time and resources, or personal support and contacts available etc (which can all come into the equation of success) then your chances of carp fishing success can be far higher than the average.

Like most carp anglers, I do not have the luxury of any of the advantages of the full-time sponsored angler or retired builders for example with loads of money and time to sit on big fish waters and rave about what great anglers they are (big deal!)! I have to fish against bait and tackle-sponsored anglers wherever I fish just the same as most of my fellow anglers, but one thing I have is desire, focus and willingness to constantly learn and refine my thinking which is so vital in fishing. Being able to make an effective homemade carp bait is a very well proven leveller to those advantages others may have in terms of money, time, personal contacts and up to date fishing intelligence and so on.

Many anglers are concerned about making their own baits with no reason whatsoever; over the years I have caught big fish on well over 90 percent of my own experimental homemade baits and even the mistake ones always turn out to be excellent solutions for different fishing situations and challenges and when fished against competing ready made baits too! Mistakes in bait making are simply where the bait or results did not turn out as expected but the nature of such baits and there impacts on fish are priceless feedback that lead directly and very fast straight to awesome homemade baits for many more fishing situations and solve many problems many readymades do not address at all and the cost homemade baits always means you can over-boost with natural carp feeding triggers – which is a gigantic edge (see my unique bait making and bait design books at Baitbigfish for details and much more!)

The average carp angler has been conditioned by appearances to associate carp baits with flavours; many are still on the basic level of asking other anglers what flavour they are using and this is a great shame as these anglers are missing out on tremendously better catches if they knew more! The real key to long-term success for average-skilled anglers is the use of nutritionally stimulating baits seriously packed with optimum levels of nutritional substances carp need in order to survive. Many versions of food style baits are being offered commercially by countless companies, but the large majority of these baits are in effect wasted by the fish due to being indigestible to varying degrees ” but make no mistake, they still catch carp on many carp waters.

Of course flavours are such a popular subject for carp anglers, but most realise that the majority of flavours are just average or worse while a relative few are very potent by comparison to others and really do work, if not directly in effecting feeding responses, then indirectly helping enhance and improve ionising effects of other bait substances such as betaine and amino acids and so on etc! Some very most effective flavours are the type that by methodically testing against standard baits you can overdose and top standard baits so they catch far more fish at almost any water you visit than the very same standard bait from the same bag but with no extra added flavour, but please be aware that anything has a flavours of some sort even plastic and rubber baits, and carp can detect some substances to a few parts in a billion (this is fact.) Although chilli extracts are very popular few anglers rally appreciate the many aspects of their impacts upon fish senses, digestion and metabolism, long range chemoreception and lateral line sensitivities and mode of feeding they can induce and so on; it may come as a big surprise that carp actually enjoy the pleasure from the pain response initiated by the hot peppers ” just as we enjoy hot curries and spicy foods for the same reason (see my flavours and feeding triggers ebooks for more!)

When you understand and appreciate much more deeply the relationship between substances carp depend upon for their very survival and how these impact upon their senses, health, digestion and metabolism etc you will be able to boost and top readymade baits like crazy be supremely confident in making and using your own specially powerful boilies, pellets, particle and fake baits and be able to leverage substances in ground baits to pull even more fish to your hook baits and get them feeding far more intensively and competitively! Everyone is on a learning curve in regards to baits but I can save you decades of researching and practical experience in choosing ingredients, formulating recipes, making baits and applying baits for big fish success and I am biased only in regards what works – as I am deliberately not affiliated with any individual bait company whatsoever despite having contacts and friends at many of the leading ones. You can even boost the simplest of baits far more than you might have ever read in the vast majority of carp magazines ” I have written my ebooks to help you achieve your big fish dreams just as I have; so find out more at my site Baitbigfish!

By Tim Richardson.

Avid fruit-machine players are always defending their much favourite past-time of playing the slot machines. They stand against the skeptics who tout that slot machines, cards and even Bingo are nothing but crooks. A few years back there actually were some fruit machine cheats that were eventually exposed. By nature this didn’t do much for the defense tactics of the fruit machine believers.

One argument for the gaming industry which naturally includes fruit machines is that the industry is scrutinized by the law. So then does the workings of these fruit machine cheats get blamed on the law not being adequate?

It didn’t actually take all that long for computer geniuses to decrypt the slot machines and learn that they are not a game of luck, as a matter of fact theyre programed so there is Zero chance of beating them.

The so called scam claimed against the slot machines is in the soft-ware. It was said that the fruit-machine cheats programmed the software in such a way that it will never produce a winner. There is as a matter of fact absolutely zero winning combination to be discovered in the soft-ware.

To give you an instance of one region the fruit-machine cheats addressed, was the double or quit choice. This signifies that if you win, you have the opportunity to press a button to see if you’ll win double. its a game of chance right? Wrong, the machines were programmed to produce a loser every time. There was no luck required.

A group called Fairplay were the ones to actually discover the fruit machine cheats. They designed an emulator which was the key to helping them expose the fake.

No doubt there’re several hard to convince die hard fans of the fruit machines that will not accept that the fruit machines cheats were prosperous at their fraud. Their argument is well-played the other night and I won a good bit of cash, so it cannot be rigged or I wouldnt have won. The answer to this is simple. Some fruit-machine manufacturers will allow an average 70% pay-out of what it takes in. They are not forced to do this, they do as a way to lure people to play the machine. The remaining 30 percent that the fruit owner gets is still tremendous money. The scam comes in regarding the jackpot, the huge payout than no one ever seems to win.

Although this’s a terrible blow to both the gaming enthusiasts and the gaming houses after a bit of time all the attention involving it settled down. The anger of the enthusiastic fruit-machine players was not wild enough to cause them to boycott the fruit machines, thus the fruit-machine cheats just sort of drifted to the background after a period of time, soon to be overlooked by all those who like the game, as well as benefit from it. This nevertheless, has not silenced the skeptics claims that all gambling is rigged.

We fishermen pay lots of money for readymade fishing baits! The fact is that if they were so wonderful, companies would not have to keep on offering new baits all the time! Just the same number of fish or more, can be caught as a result of making your own unique baits and this will save you bags of money too!

Having a unique bait is one of the greatest competitive advantages in fishing. This is very often the factor which tips fish over from the state of just testing a bait, to actually taking it into its mouth along with your hook, and giving a very desirable run. There is no doubt in my mind after over 3 decades of making homemade fishing baits, that they can compete against commercial readymade baits on any water or venue.

Now I’m not saying that you will produce a wonder bait which fish simply jump straight into your net and beg for! Even with the very best baits, all the usual skills of fish location, bait application and skilfully playing your big fish are still required. But on your own homemade baits, the rewards and joys of catching your personal life time best fish on your personal secret bait formula is just incredible. This is why it is so important to exploit the massive fish catching factor of making your baits very unique.

This is a point lost on most readymade bait users! The great edge of bait is being different to ones fish wary of already as a result of previous hooking and captures on it. So make your baits as unique as possible as frequently as you think your results indicate you may need to.

Homemade baits often succeed far longer than many readymade baits purely because you are the only one using that particular bait! Baits for carp are often termed attractor baits or food baits depending on their nutritional value to the fish biologically speaking. High flavour levels and high concentrations if used are sometimes an indicator of a bait being more of an instant attractor type of bait much more than a food or nutritionally stimulating oriented bait.

You might have read about making homemade baits and had the impression it has to be difficult and time consuming despite being more economical by far than using commercial baits. However it is in reality so easy to make homemade baits that catch fish over forty pounds that a 12 year old can do it and that is the real truth. There is no obligation for you to make baits anything like resembling commercial baits, all smooth, round barrel shapes perfectly formed and so on. In fact to copy them would lose you many hidden advantages that are not lost making very different baits! You do not even have to roll baits into balls at all or even boil them to produce boilies and there are very easy ways to avoid any time consuming parts in making baits.

As I said, round baits are not needed. Things have changed drastically in the last 3 decades. There are many methods which introduce free baits well over 100 metres accurately, including ground bait slings, spods and PVA bags and nets etc. So you do not need to ever roll your baits. To make a starter effective bait you need only use one ingredient or a couple like soya flour and semolina, add enough eggs to bind them together, and make a dough to use as bait (and every bait can be different!) These might be used as paste or cut or divided into many different shaped and sized bits which you might scald with water or boil for a few seconds to harden them up to make them more resilient.

The easy way to make a paste or boilie bait base mix is to use about 6 hen eggs in a pot or bowl, whisked with about 5 millilitres of a cake flavor and 1 millilitre of intense sweetener. Then slowly add a fifty – fifty mixture of semolina powders and soya flour or maize meal or corn flour, until you have a workable dough, not too sticky and soft and not too firm to pull apart easily.

Now you can use the dough as fresh bait or opt to label some sealed plastic bags and store it in the fridge for a few days or to freeze it in advance of going fishing. You most likely will forget what you made your baits out of so it is best to write this somewhere so you can remake your winning baits repeatedly! It is possible to get a ball of dough weighing about a kilogram from a 6 egg mixture; this will obviously vary depending upon the various ingredients you choose to include and their levels. Some ingredients will hold water better than others while some might dissolve readily in water, and the practical advantages of each kind are easy to exploit depending if you want hard baits which break down slowly or ones which dissolve and spread their attraction very quickly.

I understand value like anyone else so making homemade bait for 3 pounds as opposed to buying it for 12 pounds makes great economic sense. This is startling especially when you think of the saving on 10 or 20 kilograms of homemade baits compared to commercially produced readymade ones. The saving can be in the region of 80 or 90 pounds for just 10 kilograms of bait. You will have been using many kilograms in a season so figure your savings on homemade bait, it could easily total you not hundreds but thousands of pounds so easily saved!

If having a different bait can produce such a difference in results you may as well have the goal of being as innovative as possible with yours as you create new versions for those big fish you dream of catching. The spooky thing about new baits on a water is that they very often produce the biggest most sought after fish within a short space of fishing time because they are fresh and new. Now this is as great a motive as anyone needs to take up bait making and is the icing on the cake. You can use simple forms of bait mentioned here, but you will discover that with successful baits comes the excitement of making more creative ones, and bait making can be extremely exciting, even an integral addictive part of your fishing, as you thirst for more information!

By Tim Richardson.

Many fishermen avoid making their own baits but secretly wished they could to save money. The fact is that making your own very effective baits is far easier than you might think and you can use most of the ingredients and similar recipes that commercial bait makers have used successfully for years. You just need a little know-how in order to catch bags of big fish and to save yourself a fortune!

Carp live on mostly protein based foods which contain essential fats and oils which provide most of their energy; in their natural water environment carbohydrate foods are rare. In contrast to humans therefore, carp do not use carbohydrates, but oils and proteins for their energy requirements and process these extrememely efficiently which is not surprising as carp have long evolved to do this. This is why making baits using protein ingredients is more beneficial from a dietary needs of carp perspective and also why protein ingredients and oils are so feed-stimulatory to carp too.

Proteins are composed of amino acids which carp can easily detect and find stimulating; and there are around 10 plus essential ones which carp cannot synthesise in there own body and must consume in their food to survive. The carp essential amino acids list includes: Histidine, leucine, isoleucine, valine, tryptophan, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine and arginine and carp will eat foods and baits containing any of these as they are essential to them. Exploiting protein ingredients in your baits is obviously a good thing as you are offering something fish need to survive.

Our bodies and carp bodies have evolved and adapted to extract energy in the most efficient ways from food found in our natural environments. With carp we can simulate or even boost the natural attraction and stimulation of substances found in their natural foods in our baits. The range of ingredients, extracts, liquid attractors, flavors etc we can use to exploit carp natural food detection senses is phenomenal and ensures we can always make unique homemade baits!

The fuss made about protein carp baits is fair because exploiting dietary essential, particularly highly stimulatory ones such as amino acids is very significant for good results. But just because amino acids are popularly exploited by using protein ingredients does not mean you have to use protein ingredients at all in our baits, and there are very many other angles and approaches to take which are very economical indeed and even wheat, rice or corn flour based baits made with some know-how work a treat! All you need to do is manipulate and exploit any of a range of attractor and stimulator substances, many of which you can add by way of proprietary liquid dips and soaks etc.

There seems to be some snobbery in regards to protein based baits compared to using cereal or carbohydrate based baits for example based on wheat or semolina or soya flour. In fact many very economical baits can be made from these ingredients which will just keep catching carp on many fisheries for years. All you need to do to keep catching carp on many waters is to keep changing your attractors regularly as in flavours, various specialist protein extracts, and proprietary fish stimulants and so on.

These days there is an abundance of over-stocked carp fisheries to choose from and your bait, whatever it may be is generally regarded as natural food by these hungry fish. This is one big reason why homemade simple baits will catch anywhere, but then any bait fished correctly will catch the biggest, wariest fish on the richest of waters. When you know a bit more about bait and how to really make it work for you efficiently are far reduced costs, the rewards will shock you; I have made homemade baits for decades and saved myself a fortune and caught enough big fish on readymade dominated fisheries to say that 80 percent of all my homemade baits over the years have caught big fish whatever they have been based on!

Other ingredients like bird foods containing hemp and corn, crushed seeds and nuts etc, can be utilised to make very nutritious stimulating baits simply bound together with eggs to make a dough and boiled in water. You can combine these with both carbohydrate and protein ingredients to make any recipe of bait you so desire and bait making does not have to be rocket science to catch fish! However, if all you remember from this article is that carp love amino acids and it is recommended you treat your bait as an amino acid carrier, then you can leverage this fact in your homemade baits and readymade bait dips for the rest of your life; and for more consistent big fish catches!

By Tim Richardson.

Possibly the most overlooked secret to winning the fishing game comes from saving money on bait; but how, do you ask?! Many anglers miss-out on fantastic catches even though the baits they use are popular big fish catchers seen in the press and so on! But you can save yourself a fortune in wasted bait and improve your catches drastically!

Most often carp and catfish anglers use boilies, pellets and hemp, maize and sweetcorn and prepared commercial ground baits, as free baits to attract and hold fish in their swim. And these are obviously consistent baits for fish like carp and catfish. But often the hidden (or obvious) problem, is that you end up with many fish gorging upon your free ground baits and not getting hooked at all, or comparatively little, compared to the feeding activity going on in your swim. This happens far more than anyone is really accurately aware of and is a more truly shocking thing when you calculate just how much of your bait is consistently going to waste…

After all, why bother putting free baits into a fishery when most of it ends up just feeding the fish and not translating into your catch results? One definition of insanity is to expecting different results from doing the same old things… Carp especially are extremely expert at keeping ahead of our angling activities, commonly-used baits, methods and in detecting your hook baits of course!

This point does not just apply to angling-pressured carp, but catfish too, of that there is absolutely no doubt. So the point is, how to stop wasting money on feeding your fish with free baits when this does not consistently convert into increasingly better catches! The cost of simply spending time fishing often involves loss of earnings in time, or at the very least the increasing travelling costs, food and drink costs, fishing permit costs and all those renewed tackle item costs and so on!

So converting your bait money at the very least into better catches, is perhaps even more of an issue, especially in tough times. Of course every fishery is different and these days there are many waters that are over-stocked to the degree that it appears everyone catches fish successfully. But who is to know just how much better your individual catches can really be until you truly get innovative and prove it to yourself?

It is a very common phenomenon for the more wary fish to simply not feed upon fresh baits introduced by anglers upon first arriving at a fishery at all. This in effect means that the first 3 or more days and nights fishing can be mostly a waste of time. The fish just hang back while the baits become leached of flavours etc, and the fish become more confident on feeding on such baits because they have associated leached bait with safe feeding.

On very pressured fisheries, Mr average angler will bait-up upon arriving and perhaps fish for 48 hours, maybe blank, and then be followed into the swim by another angler who simply does the same things with the same thinking approaches, and gets the same poor catches as a result! This is a pattern that is prevalent on so many carp waters today and the conveyor-belt like manifestation of the straight-jacketed thinking the majority of average anglers seem satisfied with. Yes, occasionally the fortunate angler who happens to be in a previously such pre-baited swim with get good results and hence the appearance of so many so-called popular swims! But all this incessant baiting on many water in certain swims can backfire as fish respond to captures, and in such a case all the bait can go off and kill the swim (as Mr average carp angler arrives and baits up again , adding to the problem!)

When your fishing activities become habitual and a kind of automatic process, this often means you have by-passed your thinking processes and are not focussing upon the constantly changing challenges that changing variables and fish behaviours and impacts of other anglers seriously have, and your results will severely reflect this! After all, you might well act differently every day in order to fool predators just to see the next day and carp have this instinct to survive which they use all the time which means what we do or think that worked yesterday is not guaranteed to work today…

For instance, it was very lucky of me to catch a carp of 38 pounds; an amazing very pale white mirror (not koi carp) from one very pressured UK water. In over 7 years it was seen but not caught, but it was the combination of new bait, rig, baiting method and frequency and other things combined that produced this fish, (that all those anglers did not do previously,) and this unique combination produced dozens more good fish following this capture.

In this case I chose and applied new attractor and feeding trigger substances in bait forms that had not been used or rarely if ever exploited at this water before along with a new baiting approach with an unusual frequency of baiting and these and associated differences have made such a difference to results personally, on a range of waters. All it takes is consideration of the particular ways the fish have become conditioned by the anglers’ baits, methods and thinking that dominates the water historically and each water differs in various key ways in this, that you might well be able to exploit in your own unique ways. You can make a big difference by being different in almost any individual or combination of ways!

Your fully considering the short and long-term impacts of the competing baits and similar rigs and methods upon fish behaviours over time is essential, for consistent success, on so many pressured waters and even easy waters! With the application of a little thought, your catches on many waters can become far better and more consistent; and the advantages of doing your own unique thing always pay-off handsomely with correct fine-tuning. But this is without spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on popular baits that fish may already behave cautiously towards; hence such bait wastage!

Your effort is never waster when it comes to making differences that can catch you more fish and save you a fortune in bait that simply does not translate into fish. Imagine the next occasion you arrive at a water and start automatically going through the motions; perhaps you will stop and think what this truly costs you, and how to make your bait really pay! Many great solutions thinking anglers will think up in 10 years may become apparent to you personally (right now) with a little extra thought… If you have been stimulated by this article then this bait and fishing secrets ebook author can help you in many other ways!

By Tim Richardson.

The most successful baits are different to ones that have caught them previously so the biggest point is to make your bait alternative and new to versions of baits which have been previously successful! All fish have a strong survival instinct and will relate baits they have been hooked on before with danger, with enough exposure. To keep using a bait just because it worked previously is not necessarily the best thing to do when your fish may already be feeding far more warily on it, making hooking them far harder!

So if being new and different with your baits is the key to most consistently staying ahead of the fish and fellow anglers and making fish far easier to catch compared to over-used popular baits, how might you achieve this edge? The short answer is every substance you use to soak into your readymade baits or include in your own homemade baits has the potential to breathe new life into your bait and improve or prolong catches on it. This in effect turns your bait into a fresh new one which the fish may well regard with less caution.

Now it is true that much about baits is marketing and gimmicks to catch the attention of angler, just the same as a the flashy paint and spoilers of a car have bear zero impact on its function. However, the fishing bait industry provides us with numerous trustworthy substances to exploit to alter our baits to prolong their effective function and effect. But many of these get over-used and it is a top idea to find new and interesting other ingredients and flavors etc not currently sold for fishing purposes!

It has been said that even changing to a new flavor can improve results and this is true. Flavors are probably the most famous and popular but least understood fishing bait ingredients for thousands of fish species. They can be exceptionally varied in their contents and effects upon fish senses and how they work is often shrouded in theories and tank tests with little in common with real fishing conditions.

We can associate flavors with fruits and sugars of many kinds from oranges and pineapples to apples, pears, butter and cream, spices and herbs, molluscs and crustaceans, fish and everything in between and those besides. But many flavors are beyond what most anglers would even term flavors and have bitter, sour, salty, sickly, acidic, highly pungent even repulsive effects on us humans, but carp absolutely love them. It is an interesting fact that complete digestion of many substances occurs as a direct result of bacterial action to help break down food in the gut which enzymes alone cannot digest. In this example, this means that flavors and ingredients that are partially digested or even represent or mimic these can be super attractive to fish

In the case of big carp, they can be caught on baits containing strong powerful flavors or minimal amounts or none at all. The angling fishing pressure they receive 24 hours a day will often influence which approaches and which forms of flavor are more stimulatory or more repellant! But even using rubber and plastic baits will eventually be associated with previous captures and be less effective for this reason.

When you realise that carp will pick up anything between its lips to more fully sample and identify its potential a food you can understand why practically any bait will hook a carp at least once or never again. This means that fake baits are not the super baits many seem to think as over time these bait forms too will lose their initial advantages and edges through over-use and repeated capture conditioning of fish. Just by handling them you are tainting them with substances carp can detect and associate with danger if hooked on them and encountering them in the future.

So what is the translation of making a bait different in order to achieve perpetual edges over your fish especially in regards to bigger fish? The fact is there are thousands of substances to exploit and just one can make all the difference and transform your results. Put as simply as possible, fish and humans share numerous very vital processes which all relate to energy and its efficient use.

The natural foods which carp have survived and evolved to exploit in their natural environments have had more than just impacted upon the senses which detect these foods. Even the carp body itself has evolved physically in order to best detect, consume, digest and extract the maximum essential nutrition and energy it needs for survival. Betaine is found in many natural foods from root crops like sugar beet to molluscs and crustacean and fish themselves and even we humans contain betaine and it is a real essential!

Not surprisingly carp are highly stimulated by betaine as it has essential parts to play within its body and its feed triggering effects upon carp sensory mechanisms are is well recommended; especially with amino acids in your baits! The needs of carp for betaine are so high that it beats the intensity of feeding response to a range of well known stimulatory amino acids, the essential building blocks of proteins for growth for example. In fact betaine plays a great role in the formation of digestive juices especially for the digestion of proteins; human and carp digestion and enzymes are significantly similar in very many ways which we can exploit in our baits!

You can help your bait enhancing and bait making efforts enormously by looking at how the food we eat is formulated. The food industry go to great lengths to get substances in our food which make you eat more of it, even to the extent of training our taste buds with all that sugar, salt, yeast extract, and the vast number of other healthy and unhealthy additives hidden away in long ingredients lists. When I began writing books and articles many scoffed (please excuse the pun,) at my claims that there are many addictive substances to exploit for use in baits for big fish; just 2 clues are the capsaicin receptors found in carp, and the addictive effects of certain cereal gluten substances which release feel-good but addiction forming endorphins in carp brains! Fishing blends well with other outdoors recreation and sport activities like hunting, camping, boating and other such hobbies and but so knowing as much as possible about your improving your fishing baits will ensure you always have better results; guaranteed!

By Tim Richardson.

When your catches are not as you wish there are many tricks to try; and improving the pulling-power of your hook baits is just one of these but it is a massively important one! Carp can be very difficult to tempt when previously hooked before on any bait, so aiming to make your hook baits unique can really pay-off. Liquid bait soaks have always been successful but you can make you own homemade ones very easily…

Easy homemade bait dips can be produced using the spare oil from canned fish or fresh mashed fish juices. Sandwich pastes and pates mixed with warm water are very effective too and shrimp, crab, duck and liver plus many others all work. You can mix easily available flavours in too, like fine rock salt, ketchup, fish source and anchovy source and fruit cordial juices etc. You will find your homemade boilies work better if you steam for a couple of minutes instead of boiling in their stimulating attractors and so on.

Paste or dough is great used as a coating around all kinds of other hook baits. With paste you know there is no barrier from boiled protein as with conventional boilies that prevent most of your baits attraction from reaching the fish to stimulate them into feeding! Among the items around the kitchen to use are tinned salmon, tuna, herring, mackerel, anchovies and pilchards which can all be made into paste with added eggs and wheat flour to bind; it’s simple but works!

Many readymade baits have a surface which does not maximise their fish attraction in the water and it is important to break their surfaces to achieve far more takes. By making a boilies or pellets surface more irregular you can improve attraction leakage from the centre of the bait and fool fish into thinking your bait is safe, having previously been tested by other fish chewing on it! Using sharp scissors, knife or baiting needle you can easily improve the catch potential and attraction of your baits!

Try coating your baits with a dough or paste. This does not have to correspond to the hook bait you use at all; it could be you use a red fish meal boilie coated with a yellow bird food paste mix. Or tiger nut coated in shrimp paste, or luncheon meat coated with aniseed flavoured ground bait based paste.

You might like to try using paste around buoyant baits like pop-ups. Your hook bait and paste covering do not need to be like each other to produce great catches; in fact far from it! The method of coating a pop-up bait with a very different dough is a huge edge and is very well recommended!

Many big fish can tell which baits are hook baits by their behaviour in the water and their weight and buoyancy. Using a more buoyant hook bait can seriously fool these fish where blank sessions could well occur on mere conventional bottom baits! It might come as a surprise but you can easily make pastes from scalded pellets and other baits too.

You might liquidise your readymade baits and mix with eggs and a little wheat flour or other glue-like ingredients (caseins and caseinates are extremely effective containing high protein levels.) This way you can fish a conventional bait which has an unusual coating which is alternative but different and closely matches your hook bait; there is no doubt about it that fish learn and experiments with goldfish performing tricks using food rewards like dogs shows the 15 second memory is just a myth – carp learn! So do yourself a favour and try being different with your baits especially as it is your the bait that truly hooks your fish and the more you know about bait the more power you will have over your fish!

By Tim Richardson.

Many methods can be used to enhance your hook baits effects and productivity. The carp ability to learn is beyond doubt, otherwise they would simply be as easy to catch as they are when virgin fish which have never been fished for. One of the easiest ways to change your bait to get an extra edge over wary fish is to use a liquid bait soak consisting of flavours, oils or amino acids.

Oil rich dips and those rich in amino acids are outstanding and can come from simple homemade sources like tinned tuna oil mixed with liver pate and garlic salt for instance. Or maybe try shrimp paste with diluted fruit cordial juice and yeast extract; you do not need to spend a fortune on readymade dips or soaks etc. Don’t boil your hook baits; steam them instead to allow far more nutritional attraction and stimulation to release into the water instead of being sealed inside and largely wasted!

Coating your baits in even simple paste or dough bait certainly increases catches. Because most of the stimuli which incite fish feeding are water soluble, it is sensible to get many soluble attractors in your paste for best effect! There are many feeding triggers in fish and using mashed tinned fish like tuna, anchovy or salmon to make paste to go around your hook baits is easy; just mix with eggs and wheat flour or with ground dog mixers to bind!

Many anglers under-exploit their readymade baits they use because they have a relatively impervious surface. You can break-up this surface with a baiting needle, or sharp pointed knife or scissors to get more attraction out of your bait. Making your hook baits irregular shapes with irregular surfaces helps by making fish think your bait has been previously chewed on by other fish and so is safer.

Try coating your baits with a dough or paste. This does not have to correspond to the hook bait you use at all; it could be you use a red fish meal boilie coated with a yellow bird food paste mix. Or tiger nut coated in shrimp paste, or luncheon meat coated with aniseed flavoured ground bait based paste.

You might like to try using paste around buoyant baits like pop-ups. Your hook bait and paste covering do not need to be like each other to produce great catches; in fact far from it! The method of coating a pop-up bait with a very different dough is a huge edge and is very well recommended!

Many big fish can tell which baits are hook baits by their behaviour in the water and their weight and buoyancy. Using a more buoyant hook bait can seriously fool these fish where blank sessions could well occur on mere conventional bottom baits! It might come as a surprise but you can easily make pastes from scalded pellets and other baits too.

It is a commonly held angling myth that fish do not learn, but in truth very many species can be conditioned by angling activities, bait introduction etc and even koi carp can be trained to take baits from out of a keepers hands and be in a particular place in advance of feeding time! If you think carp do not learn just consider that over time when repeatedly hooked by anglers, they do not get easier to catch but harder! It’s just the same with hunting of other kinds. For this reason alone it is definitely in your best interests to find out as much as possible how to maximise the impact and effects of your hook baits and free baits because a trap is only as good as the bait!

By Tim Richardson.