The most successful baits are different to ones that have caught them previously so the biggest point is to make your bait alternative and new to versions of baits which have been previously successful! All fish have a strong survival instinct and will relate baits they have been hooked on before with danger, with enough exposure. To keep using a bait just because it worked previously is not necessarily the best thing to do when your fish may already be feeding far more warily on it, making hooking them far harder!
So if being new and different with your baits is the key to most consistently staying ahead of the fish and fellow anglers and making fish far easier to catch compared to over-used popular baits, how might you achieve this edge? The short answer is every substance you use to soak into your readymade baits or include in your own homemade baits has the potential to breathe new life into your bait and improve or prolong catches on it. This in effect turns your bait into a fresh new one which the fish may well regard with less caution.
Many baits simply tantalise the fish and evoke a curiosity response rather than provide anything nutritional and many angler get confused thinking that baits absolutely must be an perfect square meal to get takes, but this is completely untrue. Any change you make to a bait can induce a curiosity response from a fish regardless of any other olfaction or other chemoreception stimulation which might be present in the bait. Carp feed using far more senses than merely taste and smell and all can be exploited for improved and prolonged more consistent results!
There is much said about flavors. This probably because they have such vivid impacts upon our senses as most are mainly based upon strongly volatile solvent substances and many taste and smell like foods we recognise; like pineapple, cranberry, banana and strawberry. Changing flavors can easily produce a new bait and renewed results, but synthetic and solvent based flavors are merely a tiny tip of the real flavors iceberg available to us to exploit. Flavor components can do very various things to fish and the water surrounding our baits to induce bites.
We can associate flavors with fruits and sugars of many kinds from oranges and pineapples to apples, pears, butter and cream, spices and herbs, molluscs and crustaceans, fish and everything in between and those besides. But many flavors are beyond what most anglers would even term flavors and have bitter, sour, salty, sickly, acidic, highly pungent even repulsive effects on us humans, but carp absolutely love them. It is an interesting fact that complete digestion of many substances occurs as a direct result of bacterial action to help break down food in the gut which enzymes alone cannot digest. In this example, this means that flavors and ingredients that are partially digested or even represent or mimic these can be super attractive to fish
Big carp can come from any bait from highly flavored ones to ones with zero added flavor including plastic and rubber baits and even artificial lures and live baits. Carp do go predatory at times and are programmed to detect exploit any potential suitable new food source. Various anglers argue the cases for using rubber and plastic baits and others recommend highly flavored instant attractor baits or balanced profile biologically beneficial food baits.
When you realise that carp will pick up anything between its lips to more fully sample and identify its potential a food you can understand why practically any bait will hook a carp at least once or never again. This means that fake baits are not the super baits many seem to think as over time these bait forms too will lose their initial advantages and edges through over-use and repeated capture conditioning of fish. Just by handling them you are tainting them with substances carp can detect and associate with danger if hooked on them and encountering them in the future.
Out of the potential millions of substances you can exploit to make your bait different, new and totally unique consistently over time there are those which have been proven very successful, especially for the bigger fish and many are well known ingredients and flavors offered by bait companies. But there are of course many ingredients and substances not known by the majority of anglers which are either quietly being used by bait companies or not at all and many have yet to be discovered. We can use our own food ingredients as useful guides to what to use to enhance and differentiate our baits to improve results, as we share similar senses and essential needs as fish (albeit in very specific areas.)
Fish and humans share many of the same vital processes and body chemicals we need to survive. A familiar and popular bait additive today is betaine which fish and we use in digestive juices which is also significantly used to remove harmful products in the body. Betaine is one of those substances which is found naturally abundant in nature and which our and fish bodies extract from natural foods for a balanced healthy body. So it makes sense being abundant in our natural foods that our bodies can instinctively senses its need for it and our food detection senses code for this substance strongly.
Betaine even rivals many essential amino acids carp require in their natural diet and its effects upon food palatability and synergistic interactions with amino acids in baits and in the carp body demonstrate how important this substance is in carp baits! Betaine is a bit like sugar and salt and even flavor components like malic acid which really intensify the effects and profiles of other substance like amino acids and other flavors etc at carp receptor sites all over its body from lips, face, fins, flanks, in the throat and gill areas and even in the gut itself. Yes betaine is a big fish substance for sure!
The vast diversity of substances that you can exploit and manipulate in our baits and many forms of ground baits etc to induce bite from carp are endless. But to make things clearer I have been able myself to categorise great numbers of these extremely desirable substances, ingredients, flavors etc into groups including their sources, uses and biological effects on carp. This has been extremely valuable but took over a full year to complete. You can do a bit of this yourself next time you read an ingredients list on a can of cola, bar of chocolate, readymade meal, can of beans, microwavable curry, and try and identify the substances which turn your body and senses on and make you want to eat more; it makes you think! The popularity of camp and fishing, boating and hunting and outdoors hobbies for sport and recreation combine well together, but bait is always the deciding factor if you catch fish or not despite all your efforts; so learn as much as you can and transform your catches!
By Tim Richardson. - 15359
So if being new and different with your baits is the key to most consistently staying ahead of the fish and fellow anglers and making fish far easier to catch compared to over-used popular baits, how might you achieve this edge? The short answer is every substance you use to soak into your readymade baits or include in your own homemade baits has the potential to breathe new life into your bait and improve or prolong catches on it. This in effect turns your bait into a fresh new one which the fish may well regard with less caution.
Many baits simply tantalise the fish and evoke a curiosity response rather than provide anything nutritional and many angler get confused thinking that baits absolutely must be an perfect square meal to get takes, but this is completely untrue. Any change you make to a bait can induce a curiosity response from a fish regardless of any other olfaction or other chemoreception stimulation which might be present in the bait. Carp feed using far more senses than merely taste and smell and all can be exploited for improved and prolonged more consistent results!
There is much said about flavors. This probably because they have such vivid impacts upon our senses as most are mainly based upon strongly volatile solvent substances and many taste and smell like foods we recognise; like pineapple, cranberry, banana and strawberry. Changing flavors can easily produce a new bait and renewed results, but synthetic and solvent based flavors are merely a tiny tip of the real flavors iceberg available to us to exploit. Flavor components can do very various things to fish and the water surrounding our baits to induce bites.
We can associate flavors with fruits and sugars of many kinds from oranges and pineapples to apples, pears, butter and cream, spices and herbs, molluscs and crustaceans, fish and everything in between and those besides. But many flavors are beyond what most anglers would even term flavors and have bitter, sour, salty, sickly, acidic, highly pungent even repulsive effects on us humans, but carp absolutely love them. It is an interesting fact that complete digestion of many substances occurs as a direct result of bacterial action to help break down food in the gut which enzymes alone cannot digest. In this example, this means that flavors and ingredients that are partially digested or even represent or mimic these can be super attractive to fish
Big carp can come from any bait from highly flavored ones to ones with zero added flavor including plastic and rubber baits and even artificial lures and live baits. Carp do go predatory at times and are programmed to detect exploit any potential suitable new food source. Various anglers argue the cases for using rubber and plastic baits and others recommend highly flavored instant attractor baits or balanced profile biologically beneficial food baits.
When you realise that carp will pick up anything between its lips to more fully sample and identify its potential a food you can understand why practically any bait will hook a carp at least once or never again. This means that fake baits are not the super baits many seem to think as over time these bait forms too will lose their initial advantages and edges through over-use and repeated capture conditioning of fish. Just by handling them you are tainting them with substances carp can detect and associate with danger if hooked on them and encountering them in the future.
Out of the potential millions of substances you can exploit to make your bait different, new and totally unique consistently over time there are those which have been proven very successful, especially for the bigger fish and many are well known ingredients and flavors offered by bait companies. But there are of course many ingredients and substances not known by the majority of anglers which are either quietly being used by bait companies or not at all and many have yet to be discovered. We can use our own food ingredients as useful guides to what to use to enhance and differentiate our baits to improve results, as we share similar senses and essential needs as fish (albeit in very specific areas.)
Fish and humans share many of the same vital processes and body chemicals we need to survive. A familiar and popular bait additive today is betaine which fish and we use in digestive juices which is also significantly used to remove harmful products in the body. Betaine is one of those substances which is found naturally abundant in nature and which our and fish bodies extract from natural foods for a balanced healthy body. So it makes sense being abundant in our natural foods that our bodies can instinctively senses its need for it and our food detection senses code for this substance strongly.
Betaine even rivals many essential amino acids carp require in their natural diet and its effects upon food palatability and synergistic interactions with amino acids in baits and in the carp body demonstrate how important this substance is in carp baits! Betaine is a bit like sugar and salt and even flavor components like malic acid which really intensify the effects and profiles of other substance like amino acids and other flavors etc at carp receptor sites all over its body from lips, face, fins, flanks, in the throat and gill areas and even in the gut itself. Yes betaine is a big fish substance for sure!
The vast diversity of substances that you can exploit and manipulate in our baits and many forms of ground baits etc to induce bite from carp are endless. But to make things clearer I have been able myself to categorise great numbers of these extremely desirable substances, ingredients, flavors etc into groups including their sources, uses and biological effects on carp. This has been extremely valuable but took over a full year to complete. You can do a bit of this yourself next time you read an ingredients list on a can of cola, bar of chocolate, readymade meal, can of beans, microwavable curry, and try and identify the substances which turn your body and senses on and make you want to eat more; it makes you think! The popularity of camp and fishing, boating and hunting and outdoors hobbies for sport and recreation combine well together, but bait is always the deciding factor if you catch fish or not despite all your efforts; so learn as much as you can and transform your catches!
By Tim Richardson. - 15359
About the Author:
For the best bait secrets get these: "BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And: "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And "FLAVORS, FEEDING TRIGGERS and BAIT SECRETS!" SEE: fishing bait Visit and get more secrets unique articles and leading bait books!
