Folly or Necessity

I am puzzled by a strange belief amonst the boilie brigade that spodding large quantities of particle and fishing boilies over the top improves their catch rate. I have seen this done by an accomplished individual who has big fish to his name and others like Jim Shelley who simply blast loads of boilies in to a swim. I use boilies where i feel the need, my preference is particle and i reckon, so is the fish is, so why put tons of a bait that fish prefer in to a given swim and try to catch on the second division. Does this merely give a preoccupation with the superior bait, or is it a case of waiting till the fish get fed up.

See my other post for additional comments but i must say i have noticed some big names on the ol youtube now add Boilies of various sizes to the spod mix from whole to crushed in an attempt to get the crafty carp to take the hook bait, Part of the spodding is adding to the spod mix something that will cloud the water with the hopes of arousing carpy interest, I when i spodded mixed in a tin of condensed milk not that it landed me any kippers.
I fall into the Boilie hook bait popped or bottom in amoungst Boilie freebees and quite a few if i can get them in.

If i got into the spodding lark i think i might have to present some maize or corn on the hook to stay on topic so to speak..

The more i think about it the more Boilies over spod mix sounds counter productive but carpers do have good results using this method so it must work Steve ?

Not so sure Kev, seen someone you are familiar with try it on the syndicate, he is used to big gravels and has forties to his name from difficult waters, he spodded loads of particle and fished over them with boilies, no result, mass boilie baiting has worked to devastating effect, so has mass particle attacks, i wonder if its sensible to mix the two. One or the other, this is the question, why put one bait in then use another, Jim Shelley piles boilies in and fishes over them, Dave Lane fishes over particle, who is right, i dont know, so i am asking you guys for your observations so my next campaign will be a cracker.

wanderer said:

I am puzzled by a strange belief amonst the boilie brigade that spodding large quantities of particle and fishing boilies over the top improves their catch rate. I have seen this done by an accomplished individual who has big fish to his name and others like Jim Shelley who simply blast loads of boilies in to a swim. I use boilies where i feel the need, my preference is particle and i reckon, so is the fish is, so why put tons of a bait that fish prefer in to a given swim and try to catch on the second division. Does this merely give a preoccupation with the superior bait, or is it a case of waiting till the fish get fed up.

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It's whatever is thought to be required given the angling situation that determines how much is applied. Having access to free bait is an advantage, especially on the pre baiting front. Regular pre baiting on the right spots be it with particles or boilies will stacks odds in their favour.
Bait aside, The angler you mention certainly knows his onions. He has the angling ability, enthusiasm, confidence and time to experiment and successfully execute his campaigns, overcoming all obstacles.
Bait is just a part of his armory, like all the other elements / pieces of the jigsaw. He's certainly not a one trick pony when it comes to all the aspects of his angling, let alone bait.

Yes John, correct, i am familiar with some of his fenland haunts, you can go for years without results, Jim has his critics, but his results speak for him.

Particles are certainly more nutritious but carp anglers prefer a larger/convenient bait to hook or hair rig. The theory goes that adding a few chopped up boilies to the spod mix encourages them to take the hook bait.
I'd probably go along with the idea of an HNV boilie being better than an ordinary one, certainly better than any single type of particle - if it wasn't for the eggs used.

*Eggs locking in flavours, trypsin inhibitor

Question Chris, my mate believes that there are some carp that never eat boilies, what do you reckon, and also, i have used seafood baits before with limited success, i am going down this route again, come spring, cockles, mussels, whelks, prawns, what do you reckon about their effectiveness.

I don't carp fish much now but baiting say with wheat or hemp and then fishing a different hookbait (usually tigers) slightly off to one side of where the wheat or hemp was, worked too many times to be a coincidence.

Another way of baiting which worked was to make a flavoured jelly by heating it in a saucepan and then cool it by putting the saucepan in the lake edge so that the jelly set. Jelly sinks, I used to row out to my spots and scoop the jelly out into the lake with a spoon, row back and then cast out. The beauty of this method was that there was a smell in the spot as the jelly dissolved but nothing other than the hookbait, it worked well.

Using a rowing boat was a massive advantage, especially in the clear water where I could find spots clear of weed and also check the next day how much bait (if any) had gone! The amount of bait used, or none at all, was crucial on the lightly stocked gravel pit.

wanderer said:

Question Chris, my mate believes that there are some carp that never eat boilies, what do you reckon, and also, i have used seafood baits before with limited success, i am going down this route again, come spring, cockles, mussels, whelks, prawns, what do you reckon about their effectiveness.

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I think there are many hard to catch carp in big lakes that don't take boilies. Assume the lake is big enough to support just a few specimen carp that are used to eating naturals, these fish are seldom if ever caught on boilies.

Not really surprising. In a situation where there's plenty of food and little competition, they might come across a few boilies thrown in and eat em, but its not sustainable Imo. It would be an expensive, prolonged and determined baiting campaign that makes em switch to an unnatural man-made bait and the bait better be good.... very good!

I believe for a campaign to work well, it must satisfy the carps needs in terms of both quantity and quality of food.
It must overcome their natural instinctive behaviour to feast on something else, easy to do on a lake stuffed with fish and little else to eat, not so easy on a lake that already provides them with everything they need.

Nothing to do with shape or size of the bait, its the processing that puts em off... cooked eggs and flavours.

Fishmeal is, as you probably know, mainly processed bi-catch and waste (crushed bone, skin, heads, bony fish, starfish, urchin you name it) from the fish processing factory which has been cooked to high temperatures, boiled, steamed and dried. There's all sorts in there and a real mix of denatured amino acids. Very confusing to the carp Imo.

Fishmeal specific, i.e. crab, GLM, anchovy, sardine, shrimp, krill... these are processed in a similar way but their amino acid profile, although largely denatured, is unique to the species. The advantage being; many can be bought fermented/predigested, kapi, belachan, KPH for example which is, to my mind, several times more effective to ordinary none descriptive fishmeal baits. Solubility from the pre-digestion process is key to what makes a bait work in our favour as opposed to cooked, alcohol poisoned and denatured.

Fresh, raw uncooked, prawns, mussels, cockles.. only work to a degree (of uncertainty) as their amino acid profile is minimal due to the lack of solubility but they're better than cooked and much better when the enzymes get to work on em... 2-3 days old should do it!

Thanks mate, your educated words are well listened to.

It also works in practice, which is the main point I always try to make, and for other species too not just carp.
It really is astonishing how many anglers dismiss the ability of a fish to seek out certain nutrients and think nothing of adding alcohol based flavours and cook/process the bait to death.

Thanks for the compliment and the opportunity to answer, sometimes words fall on deaf ears but then I'm a purest so cant expect everyone to agree

Happy new year :w

Ps. Question for your good self... how many fish do you suppose 2 anglers caught in 10 months fishing a naturally stocked 7 acre natural lake each week using boilies bought from a shop?

Happy New Year Chris, to answer your question, i suspect that you would need something of high quality, liberally prebaited over a reasonable period to familiarise them, but if it was me i probably wouldnt use boilies, i would be inclined to go for zero, but without knowing the baiting regime, that would be a pure guess based on similar scenarios that i have faced, AKA the Marina lake.

The answer in none, zero, narda, zilch on shop bought boilies... the same boilies everyone in the land raves about.
Two lads, very able have consistently fished this venue for a total of 600+ hours between them and prebait the night before. Now we don't all expect to catch every time we go fishing but you would have thought the 'best' boilie in the land would have caught for these guys wouldn't you?

Granted, there's not a lot of fish in there and 30ft deep, but at least one or two biguns gets hauled out every week, sometimes 2 and 3 but to fish that many hours on a wonder bait for none?

Popped up fermented prawns and Thai shrimp paste wrapped zigs a foot off the bottom catch the big ones on here (up to 35lb) and its no coincidence, just saying.

Not surprised mate, seen it all before on these venues, it isnt as simple as buying your bag of marble magic and turning up, and thanks for the hint about the seafood baits, it is duly noted for further experiment.

It is good and also very interesting that we can all have different opinions about bait and baiting strategies.

We call these baits all sorts of fancy names: high protein, low protein, HNV, **** baits, long-term baits, natural baits, etc, etc. We can analyze and break down bait ingredients, flavours, oils, etc, yes, all very clever and impressive stuff.

BUT - at the end of the fishing day any reasonable bait will catch a carp. It doesn't have to be a super wonder scientifically formulated bait to catch a carp. Chuck out a bit of garlic sausage, a tiger nut or a not over flavoured boilie without too many freebies and a carp will eat it. Forget all the nonsense spouted about wonder baits just find the fish, don't spook 'em and make sure your hook is sharp!

Dont know what type of waters that you have experience of Peter, but Chris has highlighted a specific type of lake with low natural stocking levels, full of naturals and absolutely no reason to take your bait other than curiosity, his findings concur with my own, frankly mate you have very little chance of success, with the methods that you mention, it isnt about wonder baits, they dont exist. You must imitate something natural or use a bait, prebaited over a long period of time that gives off natural bait signals.

Wanderer, I find your comment most interesting especially the bit about "little chance off success".

The lake where I used to carp fish was about 50 acres, an old, lightly stocked gravel pit in the Colne Valley. There was masses of weed, if you raked a swim it practically crawled back in by itself there was so much insect life in it, there were swan and painters mussels, leaches but no signal crayfish (yet). Some years the water was heavily coloured by clouds of daphnia and made the carp fishing very difficult indeed. Some areas were silt and there were both straight and curved bars across the lake.

From this lake and with my "little chance of success" on garlic sausage I caught carp to 44lbs 12oz and again with "little chance of success" on tigers over or near wheat I caught carp to 43lbs 15oz. The best season I had I caught 19 carp and the average weight was 31lbs 4oz. These carp were educated and constantly fished for by some very serious anglers over a period of many years.

I can assure you that expensive wonder baits are not the answer. I really feel for newcomers or youngsters who start carp fishing who are conned into thinking that supposed scientifically wonder baits are necessary for success because this is not the case.
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I used to make my own boilies, I had the big rolling tables, baby Burco, bait guns, freezer etc. I used to buy eight dozen eggs at a time, roll thousands of boilies and dry them out on old sheets in the back garden. The stink was terrible (my poor neighbours). Mainly I used semolina, potato starch, soya flour and a flavour - this is cheap and certainly not high tech. Using cheap, basic baits I caught a lot of carp from different waters including around 300 twenties, 42 thirties and three forties.

Admittedly I was lucky, over the years I have fished some of the best carp waters but all of these fish were caught on cheap baits, please don't be misled by some of the rubbish written by the bait companies. For them it is great business, the mugs buy bags of bait (dearer than best steak!) and then chuck into a lake and go back for more!

laguna said:

The answer in none, zero, narda, zilch on shop bought boilies... the same boilies everyone in the land raves about.
Two lads, very able have consistently fished this venue for a total of 600+ hours between them and prebait the night before. Now we don't all expect to catch every time we go fishing but you would have thought the 'best' boilie in the land would have caught for these guys wouldn't you?

Granted, there's not a lot of fish in there and 30ft deep, but at least one or two biguns gets hauled out every week, sometimes 2 and 3 but to fish that many hours on a wonder bait for none?

Popped up fermented prawns and Thai shrimp paste wrapped zigs a foot off the bottom catch the big ones on here (up to 35lb) and its no coincidence, just saying.

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Curious, Are you suggesting boilies don't work on this venue, or the particular ones employed by those mentioned ?

If i wrapped some prawns and Thai shrimp paste around a Dynamite 10mm Spicy Shrimp & Prawn boilie and caught a biggun would that be classed as caught on a boilie or the paste ?
I imagine you'll say the paste as it could have been wrapped around a cork ball, But it's still boilie shaped.

Peter, i suspect your captures where not of the chuck it and chance it kind, i am not an advocate of boilies but for certain applications, i do use them, i have used garlic sausage and caught, i have also caught lots of carp on tigers, i prefer fermented particle to anything with peanuts as my primary bait, but the experience of the chaps chris mentions is all too familiar to me on the sort of venue he describes. I am sure there has been more to your angling approach than chucking garlic sausage at shows, i do beleive in systematic prebaiting and for me it works. I still stand by given the scenario Chris painted, those guys would blank and if you chucked garlic sausage in the same swim without some previous bait introduction, the likelihood is, so would you.

Wanderer, I used to spend literally hours out in the boat looking for 'spots' which were clear of weed and over four and half foot deep so that the swans could not eat my bait. The coots used to drive me potty, I'm not pulling your leg, I'm sure that they watched you until you sat in the bivvy and then they would sneak into the swim to eat the bait - in the end I used to feed another area away from my hookbaits as decoy just for the coots - they were the fattest coots for miles!

Actually, I didn't prebait and I used very little bait, a few samples of hookbait over or near wheat or hemp.

Of course some of the shop bought baits are very good, but please don't believe the ridiculous hype produced by the bait companies. Just for the record the garlic sausage was also liked by other species: I caught several double figure pike from the pit on it, bream to 14lb, a couple of 8lb tench, several 4lb eels, barbel and chub from the river Lea, a catfish from another pit and small roach on small bits of garlic sausage from the GUC. Apart from a tench all I caught on tigers were carp.

It was vital to find the right spot, if I found the carp I would deliberately fish away from them and hope that they moved onto the bait, it was useless (for me) to actually cast to them, it just spooked them. They were not scared of the rowing boat and you could drift right near them but as soon as you lowered the oars into the water they dashed off.

The flavoured jelly idea worked well, lots of smell in the swim but no bait other than the hookbait. I used to imagine carp entering the swim, smelling the dissolved jelly, looking around but finding only the hookbait. I must have looked ridiculous sat in a rowing boat in the middle of a big pit spooning jelly into the water! But for what ever reason it worked.

Those old carp did not like big beds of bait, they didn't need it, it was a matter of tempting them with something a bit different so that they made a mistake.

Save your money and use something different, carp are scared of tight lines and little round balls, good luck.