Winter Carp Fishing Homemade Bait And Pellets Secrets!

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!

One of the problems with fishing with boilies at this time of year is the inability of carp to consume and attempt to digest most of the commercially-made ones without getting prematurely filled-up and stopping them feeding before you get highest chances of bites. The obvious solution is to apply minimal baiting; for instance just using a small PVA net of crushed baits, or a net full of stick mix or perhaps method mix incorporating a few broken boilies. Use of PVA string or tape tied to your hook with a few half boilies is a very well proven edge.

Of course you can apply as many various baits in your attack as you like, from readymade ground baits, to maggots, to hemp, to various crushed boilies and soluble carp pellets and so on, all in conjunction with PVA products and methods (and specialised bait feeding cages and droppers etc. Ground bait application is the art and skill that is a genuine cornerstone of successful carp fishing so it is absolutely essential especially in winter to do it to suit the situation and conditions taking into account all the possible variables that may challenge your fishing. Ground baiting for some carp anglers might mean launching spods of pellets or hemp or slop or method mix etc, instead of just firing out whole baits; which may well fill carp up too fast and bread is a very useful ground bait base often over-looked.

Bread-based ground baits breaks down and attract fish without filling fish up anywhere near so much as protein-rich boilies, (which take far more energy to digest than carbohydrate bread-based types of ground baits.) Even in the depths of January you can often tempt a carp to bite using a carpet of bread-based ground bait boosted with any of the usual liquids one might most commonly associate with boilie-making. Hook baits at such times can of course be boilies in various forms and they will always work.

In winter, any edge to increase active feeding behaviours of carp for more sampling of baits is extremely important. If you fish over a bed of boilies say, in contrast to a bed of bread and crushed hemp, boosted with crushed highly soluble and very digestible carp pellets, you will more than likely do far better. Those pellets exploiting soluble milk proteins, spirulina, green lipped mussel extract, fermented shrimp powder, yeasts and any of a whole host of very soluble and digestible products are well proven to be especially productive in cold water conditions.

Many forms of popular pellets substantially lose their edge in winter owing to their high oil levels, including the halibut pellets and others which are designed as commercial feeds for fish with comparatively higher dietary lipid requirements. Pellets with low oil levels and wheatgerm are great for winter and spring carp fishing and you will normally get far more bites in the long-run fishing over such digestible free ground baits than over ordinary high oil halibut pellets for example. As oil is pretty much insoluble in water low oil pellets and boilies are much more able to draw fish towards your baited area as more water soluble attraction is dispersed more effectively in low water temperatures.

If you add a liquid to your boilies and pellets for whatever period you choose whether long or short, you can raise the water-soluble proportion of your baits making them far more effective. Baits like particles, boilies, pellets etc all benefit from glugs, dips and so on, and so do fake and live baits such as maggots. These tips are just a sample taster to give you a perspective on the importance of you bait choices and the seriously important free bait application methods and ground bait formats you might select; preferably you will try to stimulate as many carp senses as possible at this time by gathering as many tips to help you as possible!

The fact is that in winter, if you do not plan and think hard to ensure you get your hook baits and those vital free-baiting tactics and approaches absolutely right, you will too often miss out on action; and no-one wants that...

By Tim Richardson.