CARP / CATFISH FISHING BAITS -- That Consistently Catch The Biggest Fish!
+ Many top anglers have used the so called 'balanced nutritional profile bait' approach and thinking as the basics of their long term success, and some have even turned their secret bait formulas into some of the shop-bought baits seen today!
Using this balanced nutritional value ('BNV') approach, even relative carp fishing beginners can regularly start catching bigger fish far more consistently than using cheap carbohydrate flours based baits , when regularly applied to a water; to take advantage of the carp's feeding habits.
I fished one UK water where an average 80 % of anglers blanked for big fish during 12 to 72 hour sessions! The lake carp record at the time was 39.12 pounds and the big catfish were getting caught less and less frequently due to fishing pressure. I used a nutritional value bait the fish had never seen in this form. The first fish I landed was a 36.8 pound mirror carp, followed by a 68 pound catfish!
The following week I returned and again, I landed a different 36.8 pound mirror, followed by a 58 pound catfish! I consistently applied the bait to the water over an 8 week period. The highlight was catching two different 38.12 pound mirror carp in 24 hours, along with nine 25 pound plus mirrors and commons!
The total for this period was sixty upper 20s, and eleven 30 pounders; some of which were caught twice! (There were estimated to be fifteen 30's in the lake at the time)
To 'whet' your appetite a bit more, I applied my own design 'HNV' bait to a small heavily fished water with the specific intention of selectively catching multiple 40 pound fish in a session; achieving three 40's in three days including a new lake record. After catching five 40's from April up to July of that season, these boilies really proved this theory correct!
You really need a basic understanding of a carp's essential dietary needs, in order to produce a bait that will attract and catch the biggest or often, most wary carp, in both the short and the long term!
Your general aim, is to provide a practical boilie bait that is quickly and easily digestible, 'complete food source', that is extremely 'energy efficient' to eat, palatable, and gives out excellent strong, sensory signals of its beneficial nutritional values.
This bait could contain all the essential dietary needs a carp can be lacking at any particular time in your particular lake; e.g. even a specific nutrient that it cannot fill by any natural food source (or by anglers' baits!)
Instinct is hardwired into a carp's brain to detect and remember essential food sources. Naturally, carp patrol their environment, constantly unconsciously detecting potential food signals. They are like opportunistic 'cows', grazing the most energy efficient and abundant food. Depending on the individual, it may spend days or even months on one area, monopolizing one or multiple food sources.
The carp go into moods and modes of feeding, that are affected by many combined factors ; dietary needs, water temperatures, time of year and natural food availability, fishing pressure, wind - driven oxygen concentration, light intensity, bodily digestive rhythms, e.g. morning / evening, Solar / lunar cycles, dropping / rising / static air pressure, sudden changes in air pressures, etc.
It's our purpose in designing our bait, to ensure that whatever the carps feeding mood is, the carp have a hard-wired need to pick up your bait up. For example, day/night, place and time, slow, cautious, fast, anxious, erratic/confident, etc.
Just like blood worm, snail, mussel, insect larvae, shrimp etc, a carp seems to know where they are and will be, in advance of the correct feeding conditions to occur.
PICTURE THIS!
For example, if it was a very hot, dry mid-summer's afternoon, after 3 weeks of a high pressure anti-cyclonic system, static over the lake region. Quickly it may become very dark, and a thunderstorm could hit and lash the water with heavy rain and strong North East winds.
However, the carp may not feed at that time! Instead they could drift off the wind, gradually assembling in the opposite area of the lake to the wind-hit end. The wind then drops as the storm passes by. How would they know that the following morning a breeze would start blowing into the area they remained in that night!
Later that afternoon, they go on a sudden half-hour feeding frenzy that stops, just as suddenly as it began, as the sun starts to turn the sky red! The biggest fish in the lake are banked by an angler who judged the condition correctly and estimated in advance that they would feed there.
But why did he catch the very biggest, least seen, most wary and least-caught 3 fish in the lake, when other anglers were also fishing adjacent and on the carp route of travel, fishing regular natural feeding spots? His preferable bait!
The successful angler has designed, produced and regularly fed an alternative, highly nutritional bait, whilst fishing the lake over a number of occasions. This bait does not represent danger to the fish to the same degree as other people's boilie baits, because the fish find it different to any they have been caught on before and so consider them safe to eat.
They contain all the carps' essential dietary needs for that particular water. The baits are a different size, feel, buoyancy, density, texture, consistency, color, and shape to the usual found. There is a different smell, taste and aroma; maybe it's something that's missing, or in a reduced amount in its ingredients that makes it unique.
Perhaps it's the special herb extracts the angler tracked down, or a protein source the other anglers haven't seen in the bait adverts. Whatever it is, the purpose has been achieved, i.e. the carp liked the new bait so much, that they went looking for it, knowing it would be where it is regularly found.
This process mimics the carps' natural behaviour, except something is not 'right.' How is it only one angler caught, and why all those big fish in such a short time? It doesn't sound 'normal' does it! An average-ability carp angler can't normally achieve this feat can he??Um Yes !!! When he really understands the 'Balanced High Nutritional Value Bait' concept and how to make it work for him. He can achieve the incredible.
A carp may be so conditioned by anglers' baits and being hooked, that it is permanently on 'high alert' when near any bait. It may have a 'ritual dance' which may be repeated for hours - even days, before bait will be considered safe to eat. Apparently, the following is one of Terry Hearn's successful strategies; offering small bait amounts by hand, into natural looking feeding spots for days, even months, before fishing. This is to get the carp to eat the bait, feel it is safe to eat, and have it become a 'natural' food source?
The fish pick up the bait because it's attractive and a potential food source, but continue to visit the developed 'naturalized' feeding spot to eat it because they instinctively 'feel' it benefits them and is safe! When he notices the baits are being eaten confidently by the target carp in that area of the lake, Terry may only fish for one morning ?but catch all his target fish! Such is the power of this approach!!
I've seen a carp travel clean across a six acre lake in about two minutes to locate a preferred bait source!! And this is across many other anglers' baits, with many, varied qualities of nutrition, levels of attraction, and states of breakdown. But it sinks down and begins confidently feeding on one specific type of bait.
Its brain via its senses has made it select this bait because it features what none of the others have; the safest, most abundant energy efficient source, of an essential dietary requirement, that an individual fish is deficient in, at any specific time! This can happen for you too, by regularly baiting, two or three times a week, with the right bait.
For example, in your own secret bait recipe or formula, it could be just one mineral like phosphorus, or one particular essential amino acid like lysine, or it could be a particular group of higher quality and freshness long-chain essential fatty acids, or even, a specific seed, bean, or root extract that it finds almost addictive because of the stimulatory effect on it's digestion, immune system or metabolism.
It may be in tiny amounts in the bait, like only 4 milligrams, and form part of a pre-digested extract powder product, spirulina for example, or perhaps it's a vitamin like B6, found in very high levels in soluble yeasts which also gets the carp highly excited, because of the very high taste enhancing quality of the glutamic acids it contains!?
?Carp prefer ENERGY EFFICIENT FOOD!
Carp aren't that clever that they ignore an essential food source they need!!! Scientific tests prove this beyond any doubt! I hope your homemade bait ideas have been expanded a little now.
The author has many more fishing and bait 'edges' up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact on catches. (Warning: This article is protected by copyright, but reprints with a link are OK.)
By Tim Richardson. 'The thinking angler's fishing author and expert bait making guru.'
For more expert bait making information and 'cutting edge' techniques see the expert acclaimed new ebook / book:
"BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!"
http://www.baitbigfish.com
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