Why not ask yourself how you can stimulate fish senses more in order to excite a more favourable instant and long-term response to your bait? This can insurance qoute easier to achieve than you might currently think…
For those that have not seen fish react to a ’spod’ (or bait carrying devise’ being cast into the water, this has to be seen to be believed. Fish will actually feed on baits on the way down; often the bigger fish will monopolise this baiting-up ‘dinner bell’ effect. This way, they can get all the free ’safe food without a hook’ they want by gobbling it up as it falls through the top and middle water layers. Few anglers I’ve spoken to appear to realise this.
Until you’ve caught auto insurance comparisons fish ‘on the drop’ when you definitely had a ‘PVA stringer’ or a ‘PVA bag’ of bait still attached, it may be difficult to more fully appreciate the full impact of this behaviour in so many ways! (’Match fishermen’ manipulate and exploit such fish movements often in order to win.)
Boilies can often follow a ‘wobbly’ route to the bottom of a lake or river; even rolling upwards and sideways. Many pellet type baits can be even slower to sink. Pellets made mostly by extrusion methods and some are not as dense as a boiled or steamed ‘boilie’ bait. Some pellets have a slightly flattened shape and are often packed with oils which can produce slower sinking being more buoyant in water. Cheaper fish and animal pellets may have more air in them too.
In fact, such properties and characteristics are all important weapons at your disposal in the correct fishing situations. For example; getting your free offerings down quickly to the larger fish, where smaller ones abound is sometimes important. Or conversely getting you free baits to stand-out on silt or weed. By having them land much more gently than denser or heavier baits which sink and become obscured, catches can sometimes be much improved. (Even fishing slow-sinking bread flake on top of weed beds as an ‘instant bait’ can be extremely effective, despite the plethora of various baits available today!)
An angler may use a ’spod’ or ‘bait rocket’ throwing stick or catapult to introduce his free ground baits of various forms into a water. The fish can very physically directly ‘hear’ and experience the sounds of the baits and tackle etc via the lateral line and vibrations in the swim bladder etc. Think about the last time you went swimming and heard sounds under water, like people talking around the swimming pool and the characteristic echoing splash of someone jumping in! (This can be deafening in water.)
These sounds can seem magnified in strange ways to our ‘terrestrially designed’ ears. So why not imagine the affects of a big heavy lead sinker or a full large PVA bag, or a heavy ’spod’ striking the water. Those highly evolved aquatic senses of a fish must be so well aware of such activity and such a bang in close proximity in shallow instead of deep water must be akin to a bomb going off! As an example a fully laden pre-wetted bait carrying ’spod’ hitting the water, produces a very significant set of sound waves. These are vibrations which fish receive directly through the water even from long distances away via their lateral lines specially adapted cells.
The fish may respond or react using various behaviours , in particular one being to associate this sound with a threat and retreat away from it. However, do not fall into the trap of always applying this ‘rule’ as some big fish in particular waters will respond completely differently!
For instance, I’ve used small balls of mud to ‘bait-up’ a swim, (when I’ve run out of bait) quite a few times and the clouding of the water and sound seemed to keep the fish interested. I notice that renowned anglers like Terry Hearn are fond of using special tactics using injury compensation claim materials to alter the characteristics of the bottom of a swim, cloud up the water and so on.
I admit to pouring gravel onto spots, introducing soil, sand and even garden compost rich in natural worms, and larvae in to a spot to enhance it in various ways. Stirring up of the bottom sediment to release bloodworm and other benthic organisms can really attract fish into an area. Carp are curious creatures, always checking out objects and changes in the water refinancing homes potential opportunities and threats, so take advantage of their natural behaviours.
The detection by fish of movement in the ‘bait,’ chemical changes in the localised water involving flavours etc, colouration, presence of suspended particles, bubbles rising in the water and so on, all add to potential attraction. There is yet another bait fashion, that of ‘active ground baits’ and these certainly aim to exploit more carp senses more effectively than conventional less active baits and ground baits. (Very many modern ground baits can be used as a base for effective boilies and paste baits and ground bait digestibility has become a far more significant factor in ground bait design than in previous decades.)
It is worth remembering that a well designed bait can break down in water within 12 to 24 hours and fishing over bait like this is very effective, most especially where fish have become very wary of ‘whole free offerings.’ Crumbling boilies and pellets before use as free offerings is well recommended too. Mixing these with certain other ingredients to make the bait more active in the water is just one ‘angle’ to this however.
You can make a spot less obvious by darkening a bright sand or gravel spot, or lighten it perhaps the feeding spot is in clay or silt or weed etc. The trick is knowing where to attract attention and where to try and disguise and minimise attention to a natural or artificial ‘feeding spot’ you are planning to fish.
You can to make a spot ’safe-looking’ so fish can potentially be far more willing to remain in the area and feed there. Colours or shades at least matter most in water where light can penetrate down onto the spot being fished. Red, yellow and white ground baits work well in many situations due to for similar purposes and reasons, but many others like coloured boilies, pellets or sweetcorn etc do this too.) This is a very useful aspect to apply and is often over-looked, there are many cheap, easy and simple ‘kitchen ingredients’ to exploit in such ground baits…
In the winter I’ve used gravel and small stones to attract the attention of fish, where I do not want to introduce anything edible that could fill any feeding fish before taking a hook bait. These things certainly work. I know I’ve done well at times when work on a water has driven fish into a particular area of a lake. The interesting thing about work done on a lake, whether removing a snag, like a set of branches and roots in the water, even to flailing and removing marginal rushes and reeds, is that usually within 2 or 3 days these disturbed spots can be more productive than is usual and therefore worth exploiting if you get the chance.
Always be safe, with a friend at the ready and a life jacket and a life buoy if available. Too many have lost their lives needlessly at fishing waters. It is extremely easy to fall from a boat cutting branches or clearing obstructions. Getting tied-up in underwater roots and even a collection of old fishing lines, rigs, hooks, leads etc is another very common but unexpected sudden threat. Easily shifted, sliding deep silt and soft moods and sands are also unexpected threats as are sudden drop-offs!
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do swim maintenance and restoration work like this before some sessions of 3 or 4 days duration. Even getting into the water to pull out reed, rush and lily pad roots and other such snags if necessary can teach you lots about your swims ecology; the food chains and natural foods involved that naturally tempt fish regularly to a spot in a swim.
I’ve caught big fish as a direct result of this very specific knowledge. Food supplies and certain features in swims can result in habitual visiting by fish over the years and such knowledge can be a huge edge over those without it!
Swim maintenance activity can seriously disturb the water and fish can completely disappear from the area for quite some time; many hours, a number of days or weeks on some waters even. But on most fisheries a swim so disturbed becomes a temporary attraction to fish. So having become sweaty, muddy and not to mention very possibly stinking from the smell of black silt etc, the benefit of fishing in or near the disturbed area is this can really produce memorable catches.
I used to have a weed rake which I used to clear areas of a swim to make it more fishable where this was allowable in the ‘rules.’ Often the combination of light raking with ground baiting produces far better instant hosted exchange services for short fishing visits especially for smaller fish. But if the big ones are what you’re after, you may as well do everything you can think of to get an ‘edge’ and exploit those highly attuned carp senses in your favour!
The author has many other ‘edges’ to reveal…
By Tim Richardson.
For the unique acclaimed expert bait making ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:
“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!” AND “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” (And the forthcoming bait flavour secrets book etc) SEE:
http://www.baitbigfish.com
Tim is a highly experienced homemade bait maker big carp and catfish angler of 30 years. His bait enhancing books / ebooks now help anglers in 34 countries improve their results. See this bait and fishing secrets website now.
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