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How to get more bites in winter is very much about exactly what your bait is made of, how they work and how you actually fish them! By finding out more about vital factors in your winter and spring carp fishing success instead of lazily thinking and doing what you always do really does reap big rewards. You never know how just one new edge or insight can make all the difference to your catches so read on right now! Often you read about successful carp anglers winter fishing using very little bait, but frankly this is often a very vague and misleading perception! Using less bait could well mean that less baits are actually applied as free baits to attract fish because certain ones are proven not to be digested well in low temperatures. In fact you can use lots of baits to very good effect in winter when you know what you are doing in regards to fish senses and digestion exploitation etc! Too many baits these days are used by anglers without a second thought about how they might actually work – or not work in colder temperatures. You might say you do not care – but you will when you realise why this can definitely be an incredibly vitally important factor in your winter and spring carp fishing success that can treble your catches (or more!) If you are using high protein baits in winter it is likely much of your baits will not be digested and therefore wasted. Not only this but many high protein baits can easily reduce your chances in winter by slowing the fish down in certain ways so they feed even less. A useful very simple rule of thumb is to use oily fishmeal type baits for example in water temperatures over 10 to 15 degrees Celsius for instance, and use sweetened low protein baits when temperatures drop significantly. If you are using standard round boilies or even round dumbbell shaped boilies or boilie pellets, then this little fact might make you consider a little deeper how your baits might or might not be working for you! In boiled or steamed baits the heated coagulated proteins seal in the majority of the actual attraction of the bait right up until the point it becomes soaked with water. At this point the actual main structure of the bait can begin to break down in the water to most efficiently attract fish as it becomes part of the water column. This is if your bait has not been made like a rock of course and packed with very glue-like or more insoluble ingredients like caseins and egg albumin for example. What is the point of soaking your baits in things like liquid foods and flavours and so on? This type of trick is now commonly used in winter and all year round. However boosting the purely initial attraction of baits and speeding the hydration of your baits by doing this does not solve the problem caused by heating proteins so that only the outer portion of a bait is actually working pulling fish! Ideally the bait itself needs to work without any additional soaks, paste wraps and so on at all! When you realise that your bait is under-performing due to its own poor design then you can begin to see for yourself far more powerful routes to success instead of trying to patch up under-performing baits when these are the problem in the first place! A winter bait containing around a 30 percent protein content is totally adequate to supply essential carp needs when those all too often low temperature digestive enzymic activities are more seriously taken into consideration! Protein is one of those things that confuses so many anglers but just consider that older fully mature carp need less protein than young actively growing carp, and in winter in lower temperatures carp simply do not require the same protein levels (nor lipid levels either) to sustain them! Just think about it, how does it effect you when you eat a big high protein steak meal? Does it energise you? Steak can be so hard to digest being so high in protein that it can actually rob give you an energy deficit because in digesting it you can use up more energy than the steak actually provides (a beef farmer reluctantly revealed this to me on the quiet!) So why use very high protein winter baits if fish have low metabolisms; when doing so can rob them of vital energy that could have led them to feeding more on your baits so providing more chances of bites? Low protein baits have taken lots of criticism but we are aiming to get lots of bites – not over-feed the fish! Think about this too; even bird food baits used in winter can be very high in fats and oils. Many soya products are very high in fat as are many bird seeds such as Niger seeds. Eggs are high in fat and even ingredients like full fat (yellow) semolina are used in baits used in winter. Do the fish need all these fats and oils in the cold of winter when they have already built up their vital reserves already, and do all these fats and oils maximise digestion of bait ingredients and thus give you more winter bites and more winter fish – certainly not! If you must use oil-rich ingredients make sure they are very water-soluble in lower temperatures – why not test them yourself at home; you may be shocked! Instead of using oils in winter try sugars – they are very water-soluble and easily digested and this is just one reason why Robin Red is a great winter additive. (Of course Robin Red contains oily seeds for example but the exact form of these healthier oils added to certain metabolism-raising ingredients in Robin Red work very effectively together internally in carp!) Your general aim with your baits should be to keep fish metabolism as high as possible to encourage the ability of fish to consume and be able to better digest more of your baits or at least ensure they are willing to feed as often as possible (thus multiplying your chances of bites which is surely the point of baits!) A bait with around 26 to 28 percent protein (maximum) is ideal in winter as this means your bait has a minimal chance of actually filling up your fish (and stopping feeding) prematurely, before your free baits have produced the maximum chances of the bites you desire. Oily fish meal boilies and pellets may catch in winter but they are very far from ideal for such conditions and can be out-fished by many much lower protein baits designed to be rich in any substance that promotes the easiest and fastest digestion of baits as possible! Remember that milk protein baits were originally used as paste and this maximised their attractive qualities and their highly soluble ingredients as these baits broke down. Is it not ironical that more open textured baits such as bird food boilies (ironically often high in fats anyway) were often used in preference to tightly bound milk protein boilies to deliver more attraction in cold temperatures, when all you needed to do was not boil these baits to get the most from them?! Many anglers have used extremely expensive hydrolysed liquid casein products to little effect. Maybe they needed to consider that such products are often simply an attempt to make an inefficient bait perform slightly better and that what they really need to do is re-think their approach to bait completely. Attempting to make the best of a bad job in terms of carp baits is like putting paste around poorly designed readymade boilies. In winter such a basic factor will make all the difference to your catches so it is wise to think about it! Why bother blowing 3 grand on rods, reels, buzzers, bivvies etc and then spending as little money as possible on bait and using hardly any thought about bait whatsoever beyond reading a magazine and swallowing the second-hand opinions of bait-sponsored anglers?! Remember it is the angler behind the rods that makes all the difference and not the gear! If you are not one of the most talented, most experienced and most skilled anglers on the bank, then you had better work harder on finding out more about what bait is and how to maximise it, because this will very quickly reap big rewards – especially in winter and spring time when your chances of a very big fish can be very much higher! (For much more more information on making homemade baits and boosting and adapting readymade baits of all kinds see my unique bait secrets ebooks and articles at Baitbigfish right now!) By Tim Richardson. Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” For these and much more now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles is BAITBIGFISH.COM
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Winter, carp, fishing, bait, paste, baits, fish, boilies, pellets, boilie, flavours, ingredients, protein, spring, soya, eggs, Robin, Red, semolina, casein, caseins, milk,
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