The Bait Stick

Stix and mix

I read up about the Korda Boilie Funnel and the turning of this simplistic system into a solid groundbait stick by Nick Helleur a few months ago. I must confess to not giving it much thought, but after spending most of the winter trying to whittle down exactly how much bait and tackle I need to tag along to each session and looking at ways to speed up my tactics when getting waterside then this system was the perfect aid to my ultimate goal.

The last couple of months have once again seen me scratching my head in trying to invent a quick release system for all of my carp fishing, whether it's to change reels onto different rods in mid session or placing a glugged bait back onto the hot spot within seconds - and without getting my fingers sticky! I'm pleased to say I'm now 99% happy with my new system, which I'll detail on here soon.

So what exactly is the upside of the Korda boilies funnel system and how can it pay dividends over and above your usual approach? Well, for me, and if I have a couple of hours spare before each session, I like to get ahead of myself by preparing 6-8 of these sticks and place them into a dry bucket (dry, for all the obvious reasons). I like to make up a dry mix with a concoction of all sorts of bits and bob's but with one main difference: I like my sticks to contain pop-up baits too. Mad eh? Perhaps not!

I start by defrosting a handful of my usual hookbait boilies. Once dried out I break them into small morsels and put them in a small bucket. In addition I like to throw in a few whole boilies. On top of this goes some smashed up tiger nuts and maize, a few big handfuls of groundbait, a couple of handfuls of mixed pellet, a cup full of scalded pellet, Vitalin and pretty much anything else you fancy. Add to this a dash of whatever glug I've got to hand and I'm mixing away. The completed mixture must remain as dry as possible and where you feel necessary add more groundbait or breadcrumb to keep it that way.

Exploded stix

I won't spend time on explaining how you then put this mixture into your PVA funnel, as you'll pick that up by yourself (trial and error - ouch!). What I will do is explain the exploding mechanics of this system and why I add pop-up boilies to further its attraction. As shown in the accompanying pictures, look how quickly the PVA bait stick starts to unfold in the white bucket after just ten seconds. Within just a couple of minutes your mixture has almost quadrupled in size and started spewing tiny particles to the surface.

On experimenting and testing I found that this system can easily hide your surrounding rig pieces such as hooklength, etc, as the mixture oxygenates and expands burying the attached rig. The other thing I noticed is that where the stick of bait had been so tightly compacted, that bit by bit and over the space of ten minutes or more it was still releasing its tiny particles to the surface. Imagine this arrangement lying causally on a bed of gravel or weed with, let's say, ten feet of water above it.

Yes, it will pull in those fish looking for food from the middle of the water to the bottom, but with a few subtle changes to the mix there is no reason why we cannot attract the carp at all depths to get their heads down on our morsels of goodies even if they are cruising the surface. That's where the pop-ups come in.

A simple concept but potentially deadly. If you're anything like me then you've probably got loads of different 'In Baits' hanging around spanning the last few years. I had a look through my bait cupboard and found eleven different tubs of pop-ups from Active 8 and Grange through to Apple and strawberry. Taking 6 or 7 of each, I put them altogether inside a tea towel and took out the days stress with a club hammer. When all the pop-ups were smashed into tiny, tiny pieces I then added them to my mix and stirred the whole lot in thoroughly.

My theory on this is that once the bait stick has started to unravel itself on the lake bed, the morsels inside will slowly push towards the surface, and to exaggerate the process the crushed pop-ups will encourage fish to investigate the hookbait from all levels giving off the sexiest clouds and fragrances imaginable.

That's my theory anyway, but in all honesty it also allows me to start spring cleaning and making more space for the magnitude of baits I'll be putting back on the shelf in their place. The beautiful part for me is the agility it gives to you as an angler allowing you to prepare at home and also the ability to make up whatever mix you want and have fun in the process.

The one downside is the price of the Korda PVA tubing. At a RRP of £5.99 and supposedly 5 metres in length, I'd perhaps look around for a cheaper alternative. But that's just my opinion and I hope it all helps in getting you closer to landing your next carp!