subject: How To Catch More Winter Carp By Improving Your Fishing Baits! [print this page] How To Catch More Winter Carp By Improving Your Fishing Baits!
When you think about it we all know that winter conditions will severely impact on fish activity, how can we improve our bait impacts to maximize fish responses, induce fish activity and fish feeding activity proactively? This article is new and unusually revealing; so whether you use readymade baits or wish to get into making your own homemade winter baits this reality-based highly practical article is for you; read on now!
I have been designing and making very successful homemade baits for about 35 years; since before readymade boilies appeared in the UK. Here I will give you insights and tips on the bigger picture from my experience and perspective on the subject of the composition of boilies for cold water fishing. Boilies are really bait ingredients, additives and liquids etc all combined to produce optimum feeding and other types of behavioural responses that induce fish to mouth these baits and by doing this be hooked so we can catch them. Boilies are dough or paste heated so binding substances congeal or coagulate to make such baits resilient and so more practical when immersed in water when fishing for hours.
But it need to be noted that for instance, a simple bait made by mixing together bread crumbs, sausage meat, or fish meal, or milk powders, for example, plus yeast extract and a concentrated flavour (with eggs to assist bait binding,) can be used as successfully if used as paste bait, when not heated by steaming or boiling in water at all! Boilies in my opinion are far better made to be as water soluble as practically possible and this really is important for cold water baits.
Obviously cold water can mean anything below optimum carp feeding conditions which is really above 15 degrees Celsius in my view anyway, but carp feed very well in temperatures much lower even in temperatures around freezing point. At this point cold water becomes less dense and it seems that this is a trigger for carp feeding; so as your lake for instance is beginning to freeze over, then this can be a great time to get some frantic feeding activity so don't give up!
Cold water is denser than warm water and this means that cold eater fishing baits need to be exceptionally able to disperse the substances they are made from out into the water column in order to attract and stimulate fish feeding on your hook baits. Cold water baits are about solubility and reactivity with water. These factors make them easily detected by fish and things like nutritional profile and digestibility come second because an oily tight textured bait that is highly nutritional but will barely be detected by fish because it is not soluble is going to fail badly compared to a bait that is significantly optimized to disperse soluble attraction and nutritionally-stimulating substances, enhancers, sweeteners, salts, peptides and amino acids (soluble protein) and so on.
Creating highly stimulating cold water baits can be a very complex thing, but in fact you can create a wealth of baits with relatively few ingredients and additives, and other substances that work well, as long as you are aware of basic key points. Obviously baits that have been optimized for their potency of feed-triggering and digestibility teamed with their ability to be detected as easily in cold water and dispersal of bait substances, will out-perform other forms of baits in many situations, especially if these baits are fed regularly to fish so they come to expect and look for these particular recipes of baits.
In regards to baits that are designed to be used for instant and long term use the same ingredients etc can be used, except in very instant acting baits levels and concentrations may be massively boosted to make baits react far more in contact with water and fish senses internally and externally to produce very intense responses. Some instant baits made using high levels of concentrated flavours for instance can actually work simply by inducing fish curiosity and the intensity of the flavours on fish senses can be the key these baits success as much as anything else. Often such baits can be rejected equally fast as they are tested because concentrated flavours can overload fish senses, even burn them!
Very simply baits for cold water can consist of just 2 or 3 ingredients or additives with eggs and liquid flavour for instance. At the most basic level, many successful winter baits are highly water soluble, and have very open textures. Open texture is something that really can make a massive difference to bait performance in cold water. The actions of water entering bit structure actually creates a pump action that forces bait substances from the bait out into the water column, which is exactly where it should be in order to attract fish and induce them to test and mouth your hook baits and to keep on consuming your free bait samples.
Identifying ingredients and other substances ideal for cold water baits:
Many anglers get confused by the great range of ingredients and so on that baits can be made from. The starting point that causes confusion is this; that anglers tend to think like anglers. But to be most successful, you need to think from the perspective of your fish!
When you really do understand and appreciate this then all your fishing and bait design and bait-making efforts will be maximized for success! Fish provide all the answers. So to begin with, why and how do fish respond to boilie baits? A boilie is a foreign object in the aquatic environment; so why is such a thing investigated? Fish know their aquatic environment intimately, so certainly notice something new appearing within it, and all their senses, processes and so are primed to detect all opportunities for food, the most energy-efficient foods primarily that their bodies have evolved over millennia to be able to fully digest and assimilate to gain vital nutrition they need just to live!
The need of fish to always consume vital nutritional components means this is an extremely powerful weakness in their defense against being caught; and we can maximize this weakness by exploiting their vital needs! By maximizing such needs in our baits in practical forms and concentrations that most easily leach out of baits and most impactfully contact fish all possible fish senses and internal systems etc, will can elicit maximum potential of numbers of bites on our baits and fish caught.
Fish are also finely attuned to detecting threats and these may be any association they have with danger. So this is where factors such as using different bait flavours (and levels and combinations of them,) and altering substances within baits so that fish have least possible reason to have any caution when experiencing them, especially where angling pressure is significant and fish are being hooked repeatedly on angling baits such as boilies.
Think about this very important point for a while: fish are to a great degree the result of the food items they have had most easily and abundantly available to consume, over millennia. This has shaped the design of their entire bodies and all processes to make them most able most energy-efficiently to detect these foods and be able to move and locate and feed on these foods in all conditions and seasons of the year in order to enable their ensured survival of their species.
Humans are similar to fish in many aspects. In fact humans are long lost descents of teleost fish like carp, but humans live on land and in gravity forces and depend far more predominantly upon carbohydrate types of foods as opposed to protein-rich foods. This is why humans suffer from problems consuming too much meat, but carp and catfish for instance thrive on protein-rich foods because they have evolved internally to far more efficiently detect and process and use these foods within their bodies!
Notice the majority of natural foods carp generally find in their world are protein-rich such as algae, insect-larvae, mollusks and crustaceans etc? A really good example of this fish sensitivity is to the very high level of betaine found in green-lipped mussel extract. This product is world-renowned in successful carp baits, yet few anglers really stop to consider the great lessons it can teach us in how to choose the very most potent bait substances to use in our baits! In fact sources of betaine are many and include natural raw molasses which is also an outstanding exceptionally very well proven cold water ingredient.
You will find the bulk of the most easily detectable substances fish notice in water naturally in high concentrations in such natural foods and many others. This is very important to know in order to be able to choose substances to exploit this fact within your baits OK! This applies especially to cold water baits as we need to maximize impacts of very easily detectable bait substances that fish may be extremely sensitive to naturally. Of course we can also use many substances that are analogues of or similar in certain waters to natural substances, may be totally new to fish. Fish constantly adapt, for instance they keep changing their senses to enable them to become more sensitive to more abundant food items in their aquatic surroundings, so for instance it is like a human that has never eaten sugar before developing a taste for sugar as taste buds adapt specifically for these kinds of molecules for example.
Although fish do have access to carbohydrate sources, perhaps fallen fruit from vegetation beside waters, and cellulose in aquatic plants, and sucrose within these and so on, proportionately speaking carp do not particularly find much carbohydrate food in their world. This really means that cold water baits can really be maximized by using protein ingredients in many ways, especially if they are water soluble and pre-digested or enzyme-treated. But many cold water baits can be very successful when they contain carbohydrate foods including grains, seeds and pulses etc. for example, crushed hemp seed, Niger seeds, wheat flour in the form of whole meal flour or semolina, or indeed in the form of quality soya flour. Note that if the soya meal you use for example has been is micronised and treated against anti-digestive impacts then these are even more successful!
Natural substances they most easily detect include algae, salts, bioactive components very essential for health such as betaine and other potent antioxidants, proteins, lipids, sugars, carbohydrates, and much much more. Notably these things that are most easily detected are very water soluble or have even a small percentage of solubility. For cold water baits anything we can do to improve the water-solubility of our baits can improve how effectively fish detect them, but also can greatly assist in digestion of bait substances.
Obviously, if a fish with a slowed-down metabolism in winter and spring is going to eat less than fish in warm water as their digestive enzymes and physical requirements for vital nutrition and for energy are much lower are such times. So anything you can do to make your baits easily-digestible, and also speed up internal fish metabolism is going to result in more chances of fish continuing to feed for longer, able to eat more bait so producing maximum numbers of fish caught potentially!
Liquid lecithins are a really great addition to boilies for winter. These emulsify bait substances so they leach out of bait and disperse to maximum effect in the water column, act as energy-rich nutritional feeding triggers in themselves, and improve the capacity of baits to become hydrated by water boosting bait performance and also bait digestion and assimilation once inside of fish once eaten.
Baits that offer fish rewards that are repeatedly consumed, obviously entrain and condition fish responses to be more and more positive so that if you pre-bait using such boilies then fish can habitually expect them and look for them so eating them with confidence.
Proteins are the basic source of nitrogen and amino acids fish need to survive at the most basic level, providing the components for chemical reactions so cell respiration can occur, and providing vital components for digestive enzymes for example, without which fish would literally starve or not be able to breathe, respire for example! Such is the power of exploiting proteins and other vital nutritional components within our baits; give them what they vitally need and you will be very successful, especially as you refine everything in doing this!
It takes loads more time and energy for carp to digest high protein baits particularly in lower water temperatures. So cold water baits do not have to be rich in protein ingredients etc and actually be low in protein to be very successful. For example, proportionately they might have 30 percent protein content or less. What matters in many ways is how you trigger feeding, because fish feeding is not only triggered by amino acids, and peptides, but other substances are feeding triggers too. Sometimes you can be given the impression that in carp baits the only thing that matters is amino acid profiles and sorting limiting amino acids but this is far from the truth.
Cold water baits are well proven to be successful when proportionately lower in protein compared to baits used for example in warmer autumn months of the year. Cold water baits can be optimized in lots of very powerful significant ways to achieve the maximum numbers of bites and fish caught.
For instance using less whole protein ingredients and using ingredients that have been pre-digested or enzyme-treated, but far more than this, in terms of bait reaction with water and also fish senses and internal physiology can be induced and exploited to catch far more fish and to create chances that standard fishing using maggots, boilies, stick mixes, method and spod mixes etc cannot achieve! Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!
