Did you know that carp we train up carp every time we bait-up in many ways, both positively and negatively? To gain the most competitive edges it seriously pays off to be able to bait with free baits that condition carp to come back looking for more of your bait rather than other anglers baits and fish bearing in mind how fish behaviours are formed - this is a 6 page article so read on!
Big carp have a higher energy requirement than smaller carp and this is a vitally important fact to exploit! Bigger carp have to therefore eat more food than smaller carp so they are in many ways more vulnerable to capture than small carp. One of the big reasons some carp fishing baits produce more big carp is because they supply more energy to carp. Many angler mistakenly think this means such baits are made from carbohydrates and of course, many low nutritional value baits teamed with concentrated flavours catch fish. But carp get far more value from protein based foods as these are the dominant food sources they have in the aquatic environment and are most evolved to be most sensitive to detecting too!
Often balanced or high nutritional value baits supply a minimum oil content and this factor is extremely energy-efficient. Unfortunately the kind of baits designed for salmonids and other species having a higher lipid energy requirement means carp all over the UK are being mass fed things like halibut pellets. Where used so much carp often suffer horribly expanded fatty livers that look so ugly sticking our of the sides of carp in altogether too many photographs! (Instead of simply being copycat drones, why do not more carp anglers exploit lower oil pellet baits specifically designed for optimum carp health and nutrition for God sake?)
Most vitally, many of the most productive carp baits have the kinds of protein content that carp can actually digest and use in their bodies for all their needs at least energy cost to them by actually finding, consuming and digesting it. Most carp baits drain energy from carp because the bulk of them are actually to a large degree indigestible. This is due to poor design and low quality of ingredients manifested as all those commercial baits being limited by carp essential amino acids not being present in high enough levels to enable carp to digest these baits.
This is where sound bait design is a vital competitive edge and also where so many commercial bait designers lose their way. I do not mean every bait has to be sorted to the third limiting amino acid but the ratios, levels and choices of combinations and individual substances makes all the difference between an average bait and a seriously outstanding big fish-hauling bait that truly lasts!
Smaller carp may well feed hard much more frequently over any given 24 hour period. In contrast, a big old highly wary carp in a very much angling-pressured environment may well really binge feed on free baits intended for carp for maybe just half an hour in a 4 day period, or sometimes much longer than that!
The big difference between much bigger and much smaller carp is generally the much longer amount of time the older bigger fish have had to develop defensive behaviours in order to avoid hook baits and hooks! Avoiding hooks is made very easy for wary big (and many smaller carp) because on many carp waters they are practicing this art 24 hours a day so they can get to masters at it. In fact some old smaller carp can be extremely difficult to catch.
This point demonstrates just how misleading and utterly pointless success really is when it is only based on the weight of fish. You can go fishing for a week to a French lake and haul out 10 fifties while not catch a certain 23 pound fish from Redmire in 10 years of trying. Size is always relative and bait is a really vital edge in overcoming fish feeding caution and multiplying the chance a way fish will make a mistake on your hook bait.
Often a water might appear to have a so-called mug big fish or two that seems to fall to fishing baits far more often than average. Other carp may not see the banks more than once or twice a year and sometimes not get banked for some years. (This applies to smaller carp also.) The fact is that each and every carp is not just a dumb fish but an individual. Each carp has its own personal preferences such as particular tastes and smells, and with a unique set of levels of sensitivities, genetic requirements and sensory abilities as well as varying degrees of strengths at adapting to situations involving danger. It is frequently the case that upon changing to a new bait you will hook a fish you have been fishing for and not caught previously due to all these aspects combined!
Carp use anything and everything internally and externally within in their aquatic environment and everything about the non-aquatic external world that they can sense in order to detect and associate with opportunities and threats. Carp instinct for survival over-rides everything else and this is why carp can appear oblivious to us at spawning times when you can literally touch them as they push each other almost onto the banks in a spawning frenzy. I saw fish damage themselves severely on the bankside gravel at Dream Lakes in France and get very scratched on snags and rushes in many other lakes over the decades because the carp desire to procreate has been so very strong!
We humans are their biggest threat and therefore everything we do at the waterside is extremely important. This is because every single action we take and all we do dynamically conditions future carp behaviours and sensitises them even more to our tackle, baits and bankside presence and movements more and more! The old art of stealth in carp fishing seems to be as dead as the dodo on most carp waters today and it seems to me that the average carp angler is so manically driven to get in a swim set up and cast out they have no idea it is far better to think like the fish and not an angler first and truly give carp the respect they deserve that will guarantee to give them the catches their strive so manically for.
Detrimental actions and presence on the bank includes human voices; this may seem contrary to the old wives tales about them not being able to hear us but carp are proven to hear within the same frequency band in which we humans speak. It is all about danger by association by repetition so if you happen to turn up and play loud live rock music on the banks this may well have no effect on carp feeding whatsoever. This is because as a one-off thing for instance, it is not associated with any potentially dangerous fishing activities and you would most likely catch in the margins despite the loudest notes (within reason that is!)
By contrast there have been very many times I have been stalking fish where I have literally been crouching hidden, motionless, perhaps watching from behind reeds watching a big fish getting nearer a marginal hook bait. Just as many other people do in the excitement of the moment have I said out-loud an appropriate expletive and this alone has literally been enough to spook the fish away!
I used to think this was just a coincidence, that the fish were even more wary than usual being in shallow water where danger is associated even more with them since the days when they were fry in the margins and most at risk of being devoured or attacked by herons, perch or even their hungry bigger brethren! But having tested talking out loud in many situations with wary fish in very close proximity it is obvious they are alarmed by it! This is why I get so mad when you get idiots shouting across a water because it is obvious to anyone with half a brain that carp will not respond to positively to such abuse and also why all those digital alarms that go bleep 30 times when turned on are so dumb.
Think about and it will become so very obvious carp can detect your lines and locate your dangerous hook baits far easier with these alarms because on tight lines these many decibel sounds travels along all your lines down to your leads - great stuff! Most anglers miss the bigger picture and think that just because carp get caught on almost any bait and on such stupid alarms that that is alright, but they simply cannot appreciate just how much better results can be in actual reality with an actual fish-behaviour related fishing approach instead of a copycat one!
Here is an example. I turn up at a swim on a small water where the fish have due to severe angling pressure over the years developed extreme sensitivity to anglers' presence and tend to only really feed when they detect all anglers lines have been reeled in! But having already done my homework I know my fish (and their extreme caution in response to anglers activities and presence,) I know my chosen swim, weather conditions, exact feeding spots (and the movements of such spots) proven fish routes in and out of the swim and their timings intimately; and I fish in response to all these factors and more accordingly!
I very carefully cast out each rod - spot on (just one cast each) knowing that any more casting is futile and will alert the fish to my presence. I know from hard experience that any more casting will either make them not enter the swim or maybe if already there, not feed there, or exit the swim, or feed far more cautiously having been alerted! I test my alarms only after attaching and positioning my bite indicators to the line where I want them and can hear my low volume alarms at the sounder box by my head - but no sound vibrates down my lines from the buzzers as they are on minimum volume which is mute on my old style buzzers.
Next some moron completely dressed like a real tree turns up with an over-loaded tackle barrow in the swim next door in full view of the fish I have carefully ground-baited for and drawn to the area. Of course he is being fully silhouetted against the sky setting up right next to the water, bang goes in bivvy pegs, bosh goes in10 kilograms of boilies and pellets immediately, thrash goes marker rods, spods, repeated casts with heavy leads, stomping about, shouting down mobile phones. You get the picture?
The excruciating constant repetitive ear-shattering bleeping of fiddling with buzzers and indicators sending shock waves for miles around in and out of the water and down the lines means that my fish are gone never to return for duration of my stay. Such people need their heads examining because this is not fishing but pretty much setting up the living room outside usually o bringing a mobile pub along too. (And these neanderthals then complain that their baits don't work?!)
For many years now I have always turned my buzzers on with the volume turned right down and it has made a big difference in my catches and not just on small waters and margin fishing as you will see. In these days of sounder boxes and remote alarms this in possible for everyone although I actually still use a sounder box with leads as my alarms are the non-digital type that do not bleep a thousand times when turned on! (In fact I had a couple of the most well-known brands of these for periods of times and sold them because they were so bloody annoying and definitely send sound vibrations down the line and not only indicate where dangerous lines are but the location of leads and rigs and dangerous hook baits too!)
Now carp are also well aware of course of constant vibrations of angler foot falls and the rumble of tackle barrows down the bank and so on. So much about genuinely consistent big fish success is about reducing carp associations with danger in particular in regard to our own personal approach to fishing as a whole. I laugh all the time at how many turn up and guys cast to the horizon - or to the nearest bush, island, or overhanging tree and completely ignore the lake record carefully cruising in and nicking the old baits they pull off their rigs and have thrown in the margin under their own rod tips!
Some of my biggest fish have been caught on single-fished washed-out baits positioned just a couple of feet out under the rod tips and often the closer to my own bank the more confident the fish appear to be too! The success of this is because virtually nobody does this and it takes courage and self-assurance to take the risk to be different and fish very close in and to go with the flow truly observing and exploiting what carp behaviours are being expressed, to leverage this to your own unique advantage and to be different to the herd!
If carp do not associate danger with a particular sound or vibration they will not be so affected by it. For instance, in many carp waters the warier fish can be actually turned off feeding completely if you cast a heavy lead more than once anywhere near them.
By contrast there are quite a few waters where constantly pounding the water with a big spod or other ground bait dropper loaded with free food acts like a feeding bell and in such situations it is not too unusual for the wariest fish to get used to homing in on just-landed spods and devouring the free food on the drop. It makes logical sense that if they have never been hooked near a spod they have little reason to fear it while it is in action and in some waters many of the biggest wary carp get caught on zig-rigs with baits fished in the top layers of waters in the region where spods are applied over head. This is learned behaviour and should be exploited as carp have associated spods with an opportunity of safe free food as opposed to being a threat.
By this is not the case on all waters and on some pounding the water with a spod will not just kill your swim, but many others nearby too! You might think carp have small brains and do not think like us humans so how can they possibly learn? Consider the fact that where the most bait goes into a water is mostly where the biggest wary fish come from over the years because they constantly feed there as it is the most energy-efficient food source in the lake. Many times I have tried to avoid the most popular swims for this reason because this is where the fish will often feed most carefully and be most hard to catch! In such situations very often locating their patrol routes to and from such areas and their safety areas can be far more productive!
Now onto the HNV bait bit finally! Because carp have the habit of monopolising food sources they can be trained by repetition to feed on particular food items o the extent they become natural to them and be treated with far less caution. This is the entire basis for creating new and unique baits that can be regularly introduced to a water to achieve this effect. It has probably proven over so many decades to be the most effective advantage over the carp we can use.
However this can backfire on us if we insist on using popular readymade baits that carp have already been hammered on a given water, because the first guys on a new bait really do get the best results on it before carp feed most cautiously on it. How do you know exactly how many big fish have already been hooked on your own readymade bait previously by others on your water and what negative implications will this most likely have on your catches now?!
Think about it because for instance, big fish angler Dave Lane baited up a water with a ready made bait for a long time at great expense of time and effort and then someone else caught the big fish he was targeting on the very same readymade bait he was using and completely ruined his chances for a very considerably long time! This is yet another solid reason to use your very own secret and completely unique homemade HNV baits!
Just because carp continue to eat a good quality HNV carp bait does not mean they will be any easier to catch on them once most of the fish in your water have already been hooked or banked on them by you (or inevitably by others in the case of readymade baits!) I remember a year when the popular readymade bait called Active 8 was used by the majority of anglers fishing on a water and it did very well initially. But as the months went by the bigger fish did not continue to come out at anywhere near the same frequency, until only a small number of small fish came out on it. By the following year you could barely get a bite at all on this bait and blanks on it were so common anglers went onto to use other baits entirely! This is why using readymade baits is a gamble and why making and using your own unique homemade bait is such a huge advantage as you will permanently be the very first person to use your bait and always be the literally the only person to use your unique baits. This way the fish do not get the chance to fear them unlike the popular readymade baits anyone has access to!
When you know far more about making and designing baits you will be able to adapt ready made baits so they become unique to you and be in effect new baits and this is an extremely vital edge to multiply your catches in the short and long-terms! This gives your ready made baits a whole new lease of life so if you are keen on using them you can keep them producing more fish all the time! Making your own recipe homemade baits of all kinds including boilies, pellets, all ground bait formats, meat and fish adaptations, special particle preparations, flavour-making, high energy oil and amino acids mixtures, and so on, teach you all the skills, and many substances to exploit. This all means you will have incredible competitive advantages over the standard approach straight from the bag instant anglers of today!
Really getting deep into the world of internal and external carp sensory systems upon which superior bait design is actually built teamed with a deeper practical knowledge and understanding of the substances that most trigger intensive feeding and which most overcome natural caution in wary fish transform and seriously multiply your big fish catches; literally for life! Find out more about topping and adapting readymade baits of all kinds and making the kind of instant and nutritionally-stimulating homemade baits that out-fish the most popular readymade baits. Why not get my unique bait making and adapting secrets ebooks plus free articles on bait and big fish success at my dedicated big carp and catfish bait secrets website called Baitbigfish, or click my link in my biography right now!
By Tim Richardson.
