As a plea to the average carp and catfish angler; it is possible to double and treble your catches (and more but you probably would not believe me,) by treating fish as swimming tongues! It seems to go right over most anglers heads that fish can be manipulated (big-time) by what is dissolved into the water that surrounds them from specifically adapted baits… So why not let this be the start of something big for you too!

Carp and catfish often live in the same waters and are targeted by anglers fishing in similar ways for each so I’ll place these together. A good reason to use catfish and carp together as examples of tongues that swim is the sheer number of physical similarities in substance detection and also their shared quite similar essential nutritional needs that often means the same bait design can catch both; and very big ones too! Many anglers know little about the specifically adapted cells in and outside of fish that enable them to detect substances in water on a chemical level even down to a few parts in a million or even billion, and this is one of the most powerful aspects of fish we can exploit with our baits to make them far easier to catch!

I always laugh when I see someone sniffing a bottle of flavour, or tasting a bait, because this is really a measure of personal preference, rather that scientific testing of how a substance actually triggers feeding intensity or not in water, plus our senses are dulled compared to fishes by a gigantic percentage; these are the bloodhounds of the water world! We taste and smell using specially adapted cells in our tongues and noses; these have wet surfaces at all times to enable use to detect substances effectively in air, but fish evolved such cells all over their bodies, as well as internally, so they are like big tongues really. Specialist fish cells are part of many vital sensory input systems are found in various areas of concentration and cell forms; for detection of various substances, and other input information, like water temperature and pressure waves from your lead almost hitting them etc!

It is noticeable that carp will detect various substances using cells and groups of cells that are specially adapted for the purpose, detecting particular essential amino acids especially well in certain combinations for instance. To detect foods and your bait substances special cells are found in fish in the skin, the face and head, the lips, barbels, fins, nose, mouth, throat and so on. You might wonder how carp detect oils in water, but even these are very slightly soluble and adding lecithins is an important point here too!

Apart from cells involved in chemical detection in the water better known in olfaction and chemoreception, there are many others, such as the specialised lateral line pit cells. These continue from the tale, along the flanks and down around the eye and along the bottom of the jaw ending very near the mouth. These are so vital to Cyprindae fish for example, that the jaw of these fish is shaped to allow this distribution of nerves and sensory pit arrangements from millions of years ago in their evolution.

Over all the various systems and their different functions combined act like a biological radar system and enable the fish to be as aware as possible of its surroundings. Fish can detect the surrounding water oxygen concentration or dissolved carbonic acid concentration in various times of year and seasons. A lowered carbonic acid concentration in water on the end of a strong oxygenating warming south-westerly wind in the UK for instance, can often lead to fish preferring the water conditions where the bank faces this wind.

Your bait substances in solution (in the water) are detected by many various cells not least by the vital barbels covered in very high densities of receptor cells that help carp locate and identify potential foods (and threats too!) Your bait is very much more effective if it pumps out high concentrations of stimulatory substances that are easily dissolved or imbibed by water, and so much more easily detected by fish olfaction and chemoreception systems (and by others too!)

Fish will track-down your bait by following the concentration gradients of substances leaching outwards from your baits. Making the most of bait produced concentration gradients in many ways really gives you the edge, and making your own baits and ground baits, and being able to adapt ready made ones for this purpose especially is such a massive edge! A bait packed with many of the essential dietary requirements of carp will give carp far more reason to pick-up your bait and actually consume it compared to many baits with much less vital reasons on offer, and you can boost this effect in many extremely potent ways in your homemade baits and ground baits or in any ready made boilies, pellets, particle baits etc…

This kind of bait exploitation of vital fish senses approach can even give your own adapted or homemade baits greater advantages over other anglers competing baits. So as you can appreciate, it will certainly pay you to find out more!

By Tim richardson.

A thought-provoking piece about carp baits, nutritional stimulation, improving fish weights, and much improved catch results!

Often when studying bait and why it works, scientific tests utilise baits of gelatine and casein, but natural food is not present in tests and this is very important because it shows how many variables exist in real life fishing! Carp are evolved to digest natural food items they have found in their environment for eons of time, but angling baits need to be designed to be not only most nutritionally beneficial and digestible, but most potently stimulating to feeding too. The energy and nutrient requirements of carp in regards to baits we exploit are vitally important to us anglers because these can really boost our short-term captures and multiply cumulative catch results over time very significantly.

When most carp anglers think about baits they most frequently think about flavours, protein or other nutritional aspects, but very many miss all the other aspects of bait that induce carp feeding behaviour and curiosity etc, in general. One important variable factor in our fisheries is the changing levels of the abundance of natural food items present which can impact upon catches on baits very much at certain times and we can exploit this to make catches easier with more focus on ground bait and bait design. It can be tough to induce natural feeding carp to eat our baits unless we truly exploit the biochemical systems and other senses which carp use to detect their natural food so effectively.

When I began carp fishing in the 1970s a couple of cans of luncheon meat or sweetcorn, or a pound of homemade boilies, ground bait, paste bait or a pint of maggots or a loaf of bread would have been easily enough bait for a successful 12 hour trip. Now it is easily possible to introduce 1000 boilies upon arrival and get a fish hooked within 10 minutes on some waters. It seems very obvious that the use of more bait (despite far higher stocking levels,) has affected feeding behaviours at certain times of the year especially during the colder months.

It is true that the majority of the fish you could fish available to you prior to the boom in carp fishing in the UK were of double and single figures and it has been said that at that time there were as many twenty pound fish in Kent waters as the rest of the waters in the UK put together. New carp anglers in the UK today could never fully appreciate just what an achievement catching a twenty pound carp meant back in the 1970’s and early 1980’s; and the opportunity to actually fish a water that held a thirty pound fish was incredibly exciting experience! To many carp anglers fishing just a couple of decades ago, the first challenge was actually to locate a water containing any big carp over twenty or thirty pounds at all, and it might seem crazy to consider that to me it was once an exhilarating thrill to fish a water containing fish over twenty pounds, now having hooked a carp over eighty pounds a couple of years ago.

It is funny to think that once upon a time catching twenty individual twenty pound carp in a (UK) carp season fishing from June to March was a very tough goal, even up to 2 decades ago on most UK waters. But I know for certain this can be achieved in under a week on the right UK waters today. Bait know-how does make a great difference to potential results without doubt.

I recall catching 23 carp in 5 days averaging just less than twenty pounds, and topped by a mid-thirty from an Essex reservoir back in 1991. I know this type of result is very possible for anyone utilising good bait application on many UK waters today; especially now our UK carp stocks have grown on so much, especially during the last 20 or so years! If you understand more about bait and its application you can keep catching more when times are hard and also achieve outstanding results far more regularly, but avoid wasting expensive bait too!

I know anglers in Spain, France, and in the States and elsewhere can achieve catches that far exceed those possible in the UK; but still it is the effective suitable application of bait that really is a predominant and vital key factor in such giant fish catches. If you speak to leading anglers in various countries around the world, you discover that detailed bait know-how is one topic that is of crucial importance. Considering that carp are extraordinarily adaptive creatures, it is no surprise that by improving our knowledge of how our baits works and how to adapt and apply them creatively has always kept us ahead…

By 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.

Carp fishing gets more competitive every year so you need tricks to give you the edge over competing anglers and their baits and methods. Here are a number of well-proven big fish tactics and tricks and some deeper just as instant home truths about baits; their true effects on carp, and how much they are under-exploited by the majority of carp anglers!

You might think fish location is the most important factor in carp fishing, or a sharp hook, but my testing with big heavy blunt hooks, and random choice of old baits shows that neither in the absence of any application of watercraft nor any resemblance of an effective rig, big carp still wind up getting hooked! I used to think very conventionally that fish location is paramount followed by a very sharp hook on a proven rig for the occasion, but my results using basically rotten bait presentations in swims and areas looking about as unfavourable for a carp as possible, and using some of the most weird-smelling odd-looking old baits showed that unusual new bait is more than likely far more important and influential to success than first presumed!

To illustrate a point I went to Horseshoe Lake and tested a friends spod ground bait mix, and compared it to 2 of my homemade spod mixes built on more detailed scientific information; the result was surprising and very revealing to say the least. My friend had been a bailiff on the water and had become a top rod there using his own homemade spod ground bait mix recipe so it had been very successful. His mix and my ones (based on his identical mix but with some vitally important added extras,) were placed in the margins of a stock pond where the carp could be clearly seen; the carp headed straight for the adapted baits and soon were clouding the water and competing with tench and roach, even head-butting the bottom when the bait was gone and meanwhile, not even a roach touched the original spod mix which sat there as if it was invisible!

This was such a revelation to all of us that witnessed this test that it took us quite a while to accept what had happened and the strength of the reaction because after all, here was a proven consistently successful spod mix failing to even get nibbled whist in the presence of 2 other identically-based baits but with added extras. Of course I was expecting a strong feeding response to the substances added to the new spod mixes, but certainly did not really expect them to result in the original being ignored as if it did not even exist. Now if you have ever fished next to someone who is catching fish and you cannot get a bite on your formerly successful bait this could well be part of the reason and perhaps we all need to seriously ask ourselves if our baits are doing or not doing various things they are supposedly designed to do!

Bait is supposed to trigger a feeding response in order to get a hook into a fishes mouths, but for various reasons this obviously is not so straight forward in reality as carp dynamically learn in response to danger of being hooked on recognisable baits and bait substances and so on. Many times carp will eat free baits but identify and ignore hook baits entirely, if not mark them as dangerous, even fanning them to one side out of harms way and even silently communicating to other carp the dangerous nature of suspicious baits perhaps by hormones and body postures and movements etc.

New baits and unusual bait recipes with non-fashionable ingredients etc are very well proven to produce better catches than standard baits no matter how popular they once were on a water and having the personal ability and knowledge to make your own baits and ground baits and adapt readymade ones more to your specifications is an incredibly powerful edge over ordinary anglers dependant on expensive readymade baits!

By being able to make your own baits and adapt readymade baits you control many vital aspects of bait, from the ways they impact on carp senses, rate of metabolism and feeding and digestion, to your all important bait cost itself! Picture the effect on carp of being able to introduce free baits with far high levels of natural feed-triggering substances than bait companies can afford to sell profitably and the results you will be able to achieve! Probably the most obvious example for this cold water period is the possibility of including far higher levels of the famous green lipped mussel extract and betaine hydrochloride for instance which are very well proven to keep carp feeding more strongly and more repeatedly for longer, thus giving you far more chances of bites and hooked fish…

Although betaine and green lipped mussel extract are popular and well-known today they were not always and this demonstrates the possibility of many other substances yet to be fully exploited in various ways in baits of many forms; with homemade baits you can decide to put as much really stimulatory natural extracts for example into your bait as you like, (within recommended levels,) but above those commercial bait companies can afford! Use of liquid and powdered versions of the same exciting products used together in baits, can very much increase the performance of your homemade baits in ways the commercial baits used on your water may not operate due to having different recipes and differing ingredients and levels and forms of them and so on. As you can imagine, the possibilities for topping existing baits using homemade solutions and powdered combinations among other options are very exciting and really work effectively against commercial baits; homemade baits are certainly the equal of commercial baits for many very strongly proven reasons!

Carp bait success in many ways is about the efficient maintenance of a concentration of feeding triggers and attractors etc around your hook baits. Anyone who fishes with glugged broken boilies in glug-filled PVA bags, and compares their catch results to using whole readymade baits straight from the bag (and used alone in PVA bags,) will be shocked by the difference! But perhaps the most sobering thought about making your own homemade baits and ground baits is not just the impact they can have versus popular conventional baits, but the degree you can control their cost and produce incredibly effective baits to your own recipes, with far higher levels of potent ingredients than bait companies can offer profitably! Read on for my uniquely proven homemade bait and fishing bait secrets ebooks…

By Tim Richardson.

Get the best out of your bait in winter and maximise the money you spend on it! These are a handful of very well proven expert tips to help you catch more winter and spring fish. Discover more now!

Carp get filled by boilies and other potentially more difficult to digest baits, and it is well known that feeding too many of them in winter is not only often the kiss of death of a swim, but a big waste of money too which certainly does not maximise your chances of bites! Many methods have evolved to provide attraction near your hook bait without over-filling carp. Boilies threaded onto a water soluble PVA stringer next to the hook is very effective and this kind of idea has also spawned countless variations on the theme and really helps maximise bites, while minimising bait costs and usage.

In ground baiting for winter and spring carp it is wise to pre-bait if at all possible and then apply minimal bait while actually fishing, perhaps using soluble pellets, stick or method or spod mixes incorporating broken boilies as opposed to whole boilies at this time. You choice of what to ground bait with and how to do it is a skill and art form that very many carp anglers really need to develop far more as it is vital in manipulating suitable carp feeding behavioural responses to your hook baits! Ground bait using bread is a very reliable method and almost anything excluding indigestible oils can be added; for example boilie base mix and homemade boilie liquid additives and foods.

Bread is often and over-looked ground bait base and it is soluble and digestible enough to really be ideal for the job at this time, and it is very well known not to be just a small fish bait! Fishing over all kinds of forms of bread-based ground baits in winter and spring has proven successful time and again. You can always fish reliable boilies on your hooks and these will of course always remain successful.

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

If you find you struggle by still sticking with your usual halibut pellets for winter and spring ground baiting try something like CSL or hemp pellets instead! Cold water-soluble attraction is so vitally important to fish attraction at this time! Soluble attraction dispersing easily from bait through the water column is really the name of the game at this time.

Pre-soaking pellets in liquid triggers, like liquid betaine, and other protein liquids and other proven goodies effect very great benefits to carp feeding responses, especially in winter. Bait dips and soaks and glugs etc are not just for the realm of particles and boilies, but for all forms of baits; even live baits such as maggots and fake baits like rubber, plastic and foam baits too. Of course this is simply a brief over-view of a handful of tips that can make an active difference to your catches in winter and if you really want to do well you really need to exploit as many of the carp sensory systems at once as you can and cover all your options!

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

By Tim Richardson.

When it comes to saltwater fishing there are many species and sizes of fish to be caught, unlike freshwater fishing which is more limited. This is why it is so important to have the right kind of saltwater fishing tackle for the type of fish you are going after whether it be onshore fishing or deep sea fishing.

For inshore fishing some light fishing tackle would work well. By this I mean either a spin casting rod and reel, or a spinning rod and reel set up. I would recommend the spinning rod and reel set up, and look for a reel that can support 5 to 20 pound test fishing line.

When it comes to fishing line there are two main types that are used, these are monofilament and braided. Monofilament is popular and has been catching fish for years, so if you are on a budget you can stick with this type of line, although it does have some flaws.

Braided line is a lot stronger than monofilament line, and you can fit a lot more line on a reel compared to the same pound test for monofilament fishing line. The only drawback to getting this type of fishing line is that it is a lot more expensive than the other types of fishing lines that are out there.

The line that you use at the end of the line on the reel is called the leader line. Leader lines can be made out of many types of material, even steel. The leader line is made to absorb initial striking from the fish, and they are usually 3 times stronger than the line that is wrapped around the fishing reel.

Leader lines can be attached to the regular line by either tying a know, or by using a swivel. It is common to have weights and sinkers on a leader line, you can also have corks and multiple hooks attached also depending on what you are fishing for.

Hooks are sized by number, 1 being the smallest for inshore fishing. For inshore fishing you will be using sizes 1 through 10, 10 being big enough to catch a medium sized shark. If you are deep sea fishing you will need to use much larger hooks if you are going for big game fish that are 50 pounds and up.

An alternative to using live bait would be a fishing lure. Fishing lures can come in many varieties, while some are designed for a certain species of fish and some are for a wide range of fish. Every angler should have a good collection of fishing lures in their tackle collection.

The most important thing to have whether you are fishing deep sea or on the flats inshore, is a tackle box. These are completely necessary to keep all of your sinkers, line, hooks, lures, rigs and other terminal tackle neatly organized. They are made in every size imaginable and most fishermen have several of them.

Top fishermen know that by exploiting the way your target fish feed at any time of day or night or time of the season, they can reliably improve their catches and keep catching more consistently than the average angler. This is one very significant bait and rig subject which is neglected by the majority of anglers. In fact fish like carp change their mode of feeding all the time even over a 24 hour period or in an instant and you can manipulate and induce changes in feeding to catch far more fish!

If you ever fished a match using tiny hooks for bloodworm or jokers as bait, you will know how powerful these fish catching baits are. One of the best feeding triggers for carp and one of the most abundant amino acids found in mature carp tissues is alanine which also happens to be found in abundance in blood worms and jokers. Fish instinctively feed in the most energy efficient way depending on the food supply available and how and where it is located and how spread out or dense or large or small the food items are.

You may have watched koi or goldfish sucking algae off the sides of a pond. But carp can also feed by filtering tiny items from the water, while moving and even while stationary. The position and concentrations of natural foods like algae and crustaceans called zooplankton or daphnia fluctuate depending on sunlight angle and intensity, temperature and water mineral and oxygen concentrations among other time and seasonal variations. The successful use of very fine ground baits is one way to induce the filter feeding type of modes whilst on the way to the angler inducing feeding on larger food items such as boilies for instance.

Because carp gain their energy predominantly from amino acids and even their tissue lipids are composed of them primarily rather than from oils or carbohydrates, it makes great sense to leverage them in inducing filter feeding to get them in an excited state! In this way you can know the fish can truly positively assess your hook baits and free baits in advance of physically sampling them, by the particles and substances in solution and in suspension in the water columns coming from your baits. In doing filter feeding mode of feeding, carp will taste what they are filtering using taste buds in their pharyngeal cavity, and can feed like this while moving or stationary and on difficult pressured waters stationary filter feeding on bait substances in suspension etc is very common.

Filter feeding is very interesting because fish like carp can gain masses of nutrients to promote their growth in safe ways without eating your baits. But they can also derive nutrients from your baits in suspension and in solution as they leach out amino acids, nucleic acids, oils and slats for instance, without actually eating your baits. So it makes sense to drive fish into a feeding frenzy mode as far as possible by inciting this natural feeding mode.

It is natural for fish like bream, roach, carp, tench, barbel, and even bass and trout, to filter feed at times by capturing various sized food particles within their branchial sieves. However there this sieving can be adjusted in order to capture patches of fine particles or to capture larger single items and the characteristic speed of this feeding can vary between species. In the case of carp which are termed slow suction feeders, although they can suck up finer particles from one head length away from it at surprisingly high velocities indeed.

Not all attention should be placed upon the chemical sensing of food items as with carp as other sense may also predominate including sight and even electrical lateral line detection of the tiny movements in the water of zooplankton! In the case of bait size, the diameter of the fish’s mouth is not always the limiting factor in certain feeding details, but in fact the diameter of the throat where chewing of food takes place. Small items are more natural to feed on for carp for much of the year round except at times when larger nutritious items are abundant such as fry in spring and molluscs like larger snails in the autumn etc.

Although filter feeding modes in carp reflect their most dominant small sized natural foods you can overcome their preoccupation with these to get them to feed on your fishing baits by also using fine particulate feeds and smaller baits at least to begin with in your ground baits, method mixes, stick mixes etc. Many carp in pressured fisheries regard eating 21 millimetre pellets nad boilies as natural as they literally depend on them for essential dietary requirements, but it does not mean using hook baits of this size make it easier to catch warier fish. The finding is that smaller baits do often fool carp better than large baits and this is not merely due to the fact that proportionately far greater numbers of anglers use baits over 1 centimetre in size…

If you exploit the various filter feeding modes of fish using various grades of ingredients both soluble and insoluble in your ground baits you can certainly induce far more intense and suitable feeding for hooking wary big carp. You might recall the fact that fish are lateral lines are tuned to feel the movements of live foods like maggots and sound is important in ground bait effectiveness, but smaller hook baits are well recommended in conjunction with this. With carp one thing is for sure and that is when you leverage their mode of feeding or preferably specifically induce particular modes of intense feeding, you can vastly improve your catches all year round and all you need to know is a bit more about effective bait use and ingredients manipulation…

By Tim Richardson.

It might sound strange to imagine a fish as a tongue, but that is what they are in effect in water; and exploiting this fact is well proven to catch you a shocking amount of fish! Too many anglers think like anglers instead of seeing and sensing things from a fish perspective and this often is the difference between an average angler and a big-name one! It’s the substances leaching and dissolving into water from your baits that seriously impact on specialised taste and smell cells, (plus other senses) all over the external and internal surfaces of fish and realising that this is similar to taste buds on your tongue is something you can hugely exploit with bait to totally transform your catches…

Many anglers like to catch specimen carp and large catfish because of the great sport they provide, but the big ones are often far from easy to catch, but you can easily use specially adapted bait or nutritionally boosted ready made baits as a big lever! Both species have similar essential nutritional needs and physical structures and biology for instance to exploit in regards how they detect potential food sources and your baits! Catfish and carp have special cells in their skin all over the place in specific concentrations and adaptations that truly maximise their ability to find specific nutrients they need to survive; even down to 3 just 3 parts per million in the case of certain chemical molecules; so you might say fish are tongues that swim!

I always laugh when I see someone sniffing a bottle of flavour, or tasting a bait, because this is really a measure of personal preference, rather that scientific testing of how a substance actually triggers feeding intensity or not in water, plus our senses are dulled compared to fishes by a gigantic percentage; these are the bloodhounds of the water world! We taste and smell using specially adapted cells in our tongues and noses; these have wet surfaces at all times to enable use to detect substances effectively in air, but fish evolved such cells all over their bodies, as well as internally, so they are like big tongues really. Specialist fish cells are part of many vital sensory input systems are found in various areas of concentration and cell forms; for detection of various substances, and other input information, like water temperature and pressure waves from your lead almost hitting them etc!

Some specific cells and systems detect various substances like particularly essential and also very stimulatory non-essential amino acids, or mineral salts or individual vitamins etc. Many different substance-specific cells and different functional-orientated cell are found in the surface skin for example and are distributed over the body, and in particular areas like the face, fins, nose, throat and interior of the mouth etc. As a side note here; even oils are partly soluble and this is significant especially in the use of lecithins in lower temperatures, improving digestion, more effective bait substance distribution in the water etc.

The lateral line in carp and many Cyprindae fish extends from the tail to the mouth and utilises specially adapted pit cells. This line of pits and cells are obviously highly important as they extend along the entire length of the fish. In carp the lateral line is so important that through evolution, the jaw bones and head has become shaped so to accommodate this system providing vital external sensory inputs!

Over all the various systems and their different functions combined act like a biological radar system and enable the fish to be as aware as possible of its surroundings. Fish can detect the surrounding water oxygen concentration or dissolved carbonic acid concentration in various times of year and seasons. A lowered carbonic acid concentration in water on the end of a strong oxygenating warming south-westerly wind in the UK for instance, can often lead to fish preferring the water conditions where the bank faces this wind.

The worm-like projections around the mouth of a carp help in the vital decisions and behaviours made in testing or eating an item, or rejecting it, and these are packed with high concentrations of specialised receptor cells; so getting your bait right is essential! You baits can absorb water so releasing substances, or even simply dissolve into the water in the case of highly soluble or hygroscopic additives, ingredients and flavour components like glycerol for instance. Now the chemical substances from your bait are most concentrated near your bait and this message in solution gets weaker travelling further away and this is obviously very significant in drawing fish to your bait!

Fish will track-down your bait by following the concentration gradients of substances leaching outwards from your baits. Making the most of bait produced concentration gradients in many ways really gives you the edge, and making your own baits and ground baits, and being able to adapt ready made ones for this purpose especially is such a massive edge! A bait packed with many of the essential dietary requirements of carp will give carp far more reason to pick-up your bait and actually consume it compared to many baits with much less vital reasons on offer, and you can boost this effect in many extremely potent ways in your homemade baits and ground baits or in any ready made boilies, pellets, particle baits etc…

This kind of bait exploitation of vital fish senses approach can even give your own adapted or homemade baits greater advantages over other anglers competing baits. So as you can appreciate, it will certainly pay you to find out more!

By Tim richardson.

Most anglers who buy baits use them with blind faith because they really do not appreciate what actually happens in the fish that induces them to take a bait into their mouths and in doing so get themselves hooked! Imagine the power of being able to harness this knowledge where applicable. How much do think this advantage over the fish and over other anglers will multiply your catches?

Bait always involves confidence and indeed many anglers constantly doubt their bait because they do not understand how they truly work, except having very limited and even incorrect ideas or impressions about proteins or flavours; as a result, many anglers are negative about certain baits, without even ever having used them personally! Confidence catches fish for many reasons because it makes you fish better and be sharper and more tuned-in and expectant of success, so you tend to do more things right at the right time, more often, but you can all the confidence in the world and still blank because of a lack of knowledge and understanding! Confidence is the thing that sells commercial readymade baits and anglers take second-hand opinions from so-called big-name anglers thinking they will emulate their success using the same bait, forgetting that many (not all) big-name anglers are the most skilled and talented anglers of their generation.

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…

Science is tricky and seemingly irrelevant for many anglers until they realise the enormous significance that chemicals change in solution with water and many substances are simply not the same in water as air, and fish are experiencing different chemicals all over their bodies and not just on the tongue like humans. Imagine garlic on the tongue; it is mixed with air and saliva, but in mixed just water, garlic produces different compounds and the tastes and smells we experience as humans will be different ones that carp experience. This means that the flavours or pungent smells we might imagine impact on the fish may well not be present in the same form at all, and this might mean that something else is triggering a response from carp, even an internal one where something in garlic is acting to produce thermogenic (metabolism and digestion speeding-up effects for example,) and even have very potent antioxidant and antimicrobial impacts etc.

Carp may be influenced far more profoundly by internal impacts on their bodies than a simple flavour or taste offers and many proteins are thermogenic involving extra releasing of energy, and salmon is a very successful example of this, but poultry too for instance, but bait ingredients and substances impact on the brain, some far more powerfully than others! I tried an experiment today by eating wheat-free biscuits and an wheat-free doughnut too! However, after even the first bite, even though ingredients were virtually the same as the wheat-containing biscuits and doughnuts (but for only one key aspect,) taking another bite was more of a pain than a pleasure. All those good sweeteners, taste-enhancers, fruit flavours etc should have made me want to eat more right, but they did not, because I had got used to expecting something else to happen that did not; a release of feel-good hormones in the brain…

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.

If you apply this to fishing, it is like using a bait with a flavour and sweetener, and fishing next to it a bait with the same ingredients exactly, but with that extra vital brain chemical releasing impact. Which food or bait will catch more fish and which might you go for preferentially?! As it is your brain the makes the decision for your body you may have no choice and you may have noticed that so many people over-eat wheat-based foods and store-up fat as a result despite this being far from a healthy thing to do; it’s natural drug-induced behaviour for sure, even though certain emotions are frequently still involved!

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!

By Tim Richardson.