Carp Fishing Tips And Tricks-2

Carp Bait Tips And Tricks.

I think that there is a lot of hype where carp bait is concerned, for any one just starting carp fishing it must be very confusing. As with carp tackle carp bait is a big business with lots of different companies competing for business. Buying bags of ready made boilies can be very expensive with the top brands retailing at around £10.00 per kilo bag but do not despair there are plenty of alternative carp baits around that do not cost the earth. There are also ways that you can make your bag of boilies go further.

Alternative Carp Baits.

When Richard Walker and the Carp Catchers Club set the fishing world alight with their exploits at Redmire Pool the only baits that they had at there disposal were bread and par boiled potatoes yet thy still caught carp including the then record. Carp fishing tips and tricks in those days consisted of how to mount a par boiled potato or how to fish a lump of crust., so do not be put off of carp fishing by every one telling you that you need to use boilies.

The first carp that I caught way back in the 60s took a free lined fresh water muscle.It would be another ten years before I caught my first twenty but that was also caught on a freshwater muscle.Please do not use them today as I believe that they are protected but a good alternative is cockles that you can get from any fishmonger's.The carp in the picture above came a few years later on cat food paste.

By the late 60s carp fishing was taking off especially in southern England where more and more waters were stocked with carp making them a much more viable proposition up i the north of England where I live it was a bit slower due to there being less waters containing carp but I was starting to see the odd carp angler. By this time people were starting to use what we called specials ie cat food paste, trout pellet paste etc. Bread, bread crust and spuds were still catching carp but the paste baits were out fishing them by far.

TIP.

Do not ignore paste baits on occasions they can out fish boilies but be aware of why boilies came on the scene in the first place. You have to understand that good as the paste baits were the hair rig had not been invented so the bait was moulded around the hook this meant that we had to actually strike the hook through the paste resulting in a lot of missed takes, on top of that if the water contained a lot of other species we were constantly having to re bait. Some one had the brilliant idea to boil the paste to give it a hard skin to protect it from the smaller fish and thus the boilie was born.

One of the most successful paste baits at I have found has been trout pellet paste with Rod Hutchinsons  Skopex flavour To mix just add 10mill of the flavour to a large plastic bag add 1kg of mini trout pellets and shake well leave until the pellets have soaked up all the flavouring. Place the pellets into a heat proof container and just cover with boiling water, leave for 30 seconds and drain off the excess water, leave over night. You should have a nice stiff paste, you can add a water if you feel it is too stiff. Hair rig a small pop up boilie in the normal way on a longish hair and mould some of your paste around it, to add even more attraction and a crunch factor squeeze a few dry pellets around your paste hook bait.

Today you can have the best of both worlds by mounting a boilie in the normal way but then wrapping a skin of paste around it. The paste leaks out a lot more attractants than a boilie on its own.

Carp Fishing Tips And Tricks Particles.

A carps natural diet consists of mainly small food items such as blood worm etc so it is no surprise that small particle baits are so effective. It was Rod Hutchinson's exploits at Redmire Pool that brought them to the attention of fellow carp anglers. He was using huge amounts of particles in an attempt to get the carp feeding and feed they did his catches were legendary.

Using small particles such as hemp can be a devastating method to get the carp feeding but it can also get them preoccupied on the hemp to such an extent that it is the only bait they will take. You can have the carp rooting up the bottom for the hemp while you sit watching motionless indicators so do not go overboard. One of my favourite baits to fish over hemp is a tiger nut ( where allowed ). Other particle baits to consider are maple peas, tares, parrot mix, groats, wheat and maize. Make sure to soak all your particles for 24hrs and then cook for at least 30min.

One of the most devastating carp baits ever has to be sweetcorn, if you are new to carp fishing you just cannot visualise the difference that sweetcorn made to our catches when we first started using it, the little green giant made catching carp seem easy for a while but as with any successful bait it did have a limited life span. I believe that a lot of the success of sweetcorn was down to its color which was its down fall once the carp had been caught on it a few times. You could watch carp literally bow waving out of a swim that had been baited with it. do not however forget about sweetcorn it still catches a lot of carp.

Rigs for particles can be a simple hair rig with a couple of maple peas, tiger nut or perhaps a piece of maize as hook bait, keep your hook length short 2-4ins with say a 2ozs in line lead. I would not advocate using a pop up bait as when carp are feeding on particles they are digging into the bottom so that is where your bait should be.