Carp Fishing: Anything You Ought To Know
The choice of rod is very important when you are chasing after that specimen carp. There are so many different types of carp fishing rods on the market every one for a specific kind of carp fishing. You will find three main kinds of rod to consider every one of them dependant on where you are going to fish.
You will often see when looking to select a rod a mention of a rod’s test curve. The most common test curve is 2.5lb which is normal for close to medium range fishing. If you are looking to fish long distances then a 3lb test curve would probably be more suitable.
When you are thinking about choosing new readymade carp baits, where is the best place to start? Fortunately for you I have written this very revealing 9 page article to help you choose the best carp baits for you – so read on right now!
Buying carp baits is often the last thing on the list for a great number of anglers but it should be at the top of the list for many reasons because bait can make your name or lead to endless frustrations and disappointing session where promised expectations are not fulfilled!
You might expect that big bait companies are the only ones producing quality baits. For this reason bait companies do aim to get larger and more profitable pretty quickly. Competitive advantages of getting big include buying power and efficiency in production and the cutting of cuts of many kinds. But many bait companies sell a huge amount of bait but may appear smaller – however they choose to have big companies roll their baits for them – due to the advantages of economy of scale.
But there are very many other choices just as good. Just because a bait company is less well known or because they have been established for less time does not necessarily mean that the quality of their baits ingredients additives and flavours etc are lower – far from it. The impacts of their chosen additives for instance could very well have the edge over those of some better-known companies.
Compared to the internationally-supplying big bait companies of today you could well consider that very well known bait companies of the past were small – Bait 78, Catchum, and various companies that specialised in selling sold the high protein pastes especially; including the highly effective Slyme baits of Duncan Kay but also the flavours for instance sold by Geoff Kemp may be argued to have been small companies.
These days the smaller bait companies get quite a bit of unwarranted negativity – but being a small company does not mean untrustworthy. At various points in time you might well have said that names like Rod Hutchinson, Premier and Mainline were small in terms of scale or production and turnover – but obviously this does not mean trust and confidence did not develop in anglers buying and using their readymade baits and ingredients.
You might think that small bait companies make crap baits – devoid of the quality of nutritional attraction and stimulation that you are looking for.
In fact I found them even better if I made a solution that included the nutritional benefits and impacts of nutritional boilie base mixes either of my own design or readymade ones. I used these solutions in many ways – as bait soaks and dips, as bases for ground baits, in particle preparations, in soaking meat and marine baits and even foam baits in the early nineties.
In the early eighties I even soaked Richworth baits in them to great effect and this was even after the original highly flavoured readymade baits had effectively blown when catch results had slowed down considerably for other anglers using these baits.
The three main styles are as follows.
I noticed decades ago when doing some bait testing for Rod Hutchinson that in some cases he was combining the impacts of instant highly flavoured type baits within very high quality nutritional bases. Attractor baits do not have to be semolina and soya flour, limestone powder and other cheap ingredients after all!
The fact is that even if you get a cheap low protein readymade bait – or have doubts regarding the effectiveness of your readymade baits there is a wealth of substances and approaches and methods that can turn such baits into winners against practically any other bait – if you get this kind of information and get creative. Doing this can easily top the best most popular baits on your water; this has been proven time and again!
It might surprise many people that often bait companies will combine their financial power in order to source larger quantities of highly expensive ingredients and additives etc.
A fact little known by many anglers on the bank is that the big companies are frequently tied up with very many of the same suppliers – or if they control supply of certain ingredients and additives into the UK (literally or in effect) then they supply other bait companies with ingredients and additives that they are using in their own baits. For example it might be noted that CC Moore is a supplier a huge number of bait companies in the UK and around the world.
All through action
Another interesting example of how bait companies are often connected very much behind the scenes. This means that many work symbiotically and not just competitively against each other.
Certain flavours made for newer bait companies can be strikingly similar to certain discontinued flavours that were very popular in past decades. This is no exaggeration because the same flavour house is employed in making these popular custom made flavours are still being used today. Many flavour formulations may remain secrets of the flavorists involved in the production of flavours although they may well be working to a very specific brief given by a bait company.
Some even get help in formulating their baits with help from some of the more well known bait maestros behind the scenes. Do not take it for granted that any bait company is static in what it does and the potential it has to develop.
Many carp anglers seem to develop a weird mental fixation for one brand of readymade bait. That to me is a big problem with the readymade bait market; it is largely built upon blind faith of the buyer because so few anglers genuinely understand in depth how their readymade baits are designed and why such and such a bait differs from another in its effect and impacts on carp.
When speaking with a fellow angler on the bank last week I questioned him about his choice of readymade baits. I asked why he chose the formula of bait and brand of bait he was using.
Now forgive me for stating the obvious, but if you are targeting a few big fish in a pressured water, the last thing you want to do is get on a bait that other anglers have already been fishing with. These guys might well hook (and even inadvertently lose) the few fish you are aiming to catch instead of or before you. What impact does this have on wary fish and where does this leave your chances of catching the fish you want – are your chances raised or in fact lowered considerably? It can be extremely costly to get onto a popular bait without thinking hard about the fact that the biggest advantage a bait has is if it is totally new to pre-programmed fish caution!
But like most readymade baits, this one was available to anyone. Surely anglers would see the massive lesson in this example?
Some bait companies do obviously keep offering bait formats and bait recipes that seem mainstream and standard to say the least. They may just add extra chilli, or Robin Red, or squid, or betaine, CSL or a new flavour such as Maple Pineapple or whatever currently fashionable extra to provide a new angle on a popular bait. But in general all bait-making individuals are passionately involved in what they do and are dynamically learning all the time, developing their skills and honing their practical knowledge using their customers feedback.
For readymade-buying anglers this is a very positive thing because in general it means that in very many cases you can easily have easily as much trust in the smaller companies as the larger ones. In fact in some cases even more because lets face it – not all of the larger company products are their flagship baits (to put it mildly,) and all companies have to compromise to a degree to make profits!
Examples include CW Baits, Newfields Baits, Formula-Carp, Essex Carp Baits, and AA Baits. But there are many more companies that are certainly not ignorant when it comes to bait design and producing baits that can easily match many baits of the kind much larger companies are offering.
You must have noticed the relatively recent appearance of companies such Quest Baits, and Baitcraft. Ultimate Carp Nutrition and their Enzyme bait is an excellent example of a small company coming up with a very seriously technically proficient bait tested and refined over many years before release to the market.
Dynamite Baits have grown and leveraged the fame of Terry Hearn for instance to sell their baits but who can forget the time he used Nash Monster Pursuit baits? Jim Shelley is another good example; how many bait companies has he represented and recommended – it makes your head spin. If you are looking to him for a readymade bait recommendation based on all the companies and readymade baits he has used it must be completely confusing for many anglers!
Formula-Carp is another bait company established for some years now that has been more closely associated with match fishing and the supply of live baits such as worms, maggots and casters etc for match fishermen and fishing shop. Last year this company had a completely bona fide concept for a new online discount club for bait buyers along with a competitive match fishing series proposal with big cash prizes guaranteed available literally before any entry tickets were even sold.
As with many things in business it appears that currently dominant commercial interests scuppered this plan. One individual even aired a completely ignorant falsely based discreditation of the new series proposal on a Sky Sports fishing programme, which is a great shame. However the fact is that Formula-Carp have a credible pedigree in carp bait design and products supply and they supply many other bait companies with their ingredients, additives and specialist and customised liquid and powdered components for use in big carp baits and match baits alike.
Specialist Bait supplies is a name many anglers in Essex and the rest of the UK will remember going back to the eighties. This is another smaller bait company with a big reputation. In the eighties when I was using Rod Hutchinson powdered appetite stimulators and so-called Sense Appeals years before the Nash palatants etc of today, I also used powdered palatants and other additives from this company – known to most anglers as sbsbaits of course!
I still use my old pressure cooker from the eighties. In immersing baits in water to boil them you also lose valuable nutrition into the water and also you lose invaluable soluble and volatile substances of the kind that have great impacts on carp senses!
Prematurely hydrating using boiling water is not necessarily a good thing for many reasons, including impacting negatively upon the action of enzymes in additives and ingredients that may have been included and perhaps even reducing naturally developing bioactivity in your baits!
Individual Baits is a newer smaller bait company with a nice twist – producing baits they call steamies. It is a great promotional and marketing gimmick – but this time with a very sound and well-proven basis. I was steaming my baits on the bank in the eighties and using them hot – quite openly for all to see because this edge is not exactly new in carp fishing. I did this in winter or summer too. This kind of boilie preparation method has many benefits and competitive edges so readymade baits like this are certainly advantageous.
In the Anglers Mail this past week there was a piece written about catching your first big carp. One of the gems of advice given was to only get your baits from big bait companies that you can trust. Well of course bigger bait companies have a good track record but guess what – it does not mean you cannot trust smaller companies because after all, the big companies of today were also small too!
If you loved this you could also enjoy learning about Bc Fly Fishing and also Montana Fishing License.
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