Choosing a Winter Bait - Quest Baits

|IIII|IIII|40gms700mlsWe all have good baits at our disposaland I don’t want this series to runalong the lines of ‘use this, usethat’, or ‘do this, do that’ because there areplenty of magazines out there catering forthis type of thing. What I do want to try toachieve is to simply put over a few ideas, alittle ‘food for thought’ to get the old greymatter ticking over.These days, in my own angling, I findmyself starting to question everything. Someof the major steps forward I have made inmore recent years have been from goingagainst what is normally accepted. After all,if someone says something often enoughit will be accepted and eventually taken asgospel. It is very difficult to turn away fromgms something you so believe is right, but thebrave ones who do so can find themselvesstumbling upon something just that little160gms bit special. There are so many excellent baitscurrently available to anglers that the days ofhaving 150gms to spend hours at home formulating120gmsyour own concoctions 140gms are130gmsalmost over. Well,that’s until we come to the subject of baitsfor winter fishing.|IIII|IIII|IIII|IIII|I|IIII|IIII|IIII|IIII|IIII|IIII|IIII|IIII|So many commercially available baitscan be far from ideal when it comes totempting the carp living in a cold-waterenvironment. Just because you have baitwhich takes waters apart during the warmermonths certainly doesn’t mean it will do thesame during the cold days of winter. It is myhumble opinion that the one major factorwhy so many carp anglers struggle to cometo terms with winter carp fishing is that theymake it difficult for themselves from thestart by offering something with little coldwaterattraction. So why is it, then, that anexcellent summer bait won’t necessarily be sogood during the winter?The fi rst sunrise of 2007, the fi rst day ofJanuary and I was still hopeful of a bite.1“My findings comefrom years of sittingbehind rods andhaving a great interestand willingness toexperiment. I also putmyself out to actuallywatch carp at all timesof the year, and notalways fish for them”Now, let me put this across right fromthe very start. I am not a chemist and Ihaven’t studied fish biology. My findingsEarly ’80s winter capture.come from years of sitting behind rodsand having a great interest and willingnessto experiment. I have also put myselfout to actually watch carp at all times ofthe year, and not always fish for them.The natural activity of carp can be verydifferent to their activity once they areaware of rigs and lines in the water. I learna lot from both scenarios. Waters whereyou can observe carp subject to anglingpressure during the coldest of conditionsare extremely few and far between in myexperience, but if you visit enough venuesyou will eventually stumble across a fewfish. Not only is this incredibly useful forlogging their reaction to different baitsand food sources, but it can also showhow very inefficient many rigs can be.The first major shock for me wasexactly how slow the carp move around ina natural state in the cold. It is possiblyworth reminding everyone here that carpare cold-blooded. The colder it is, theslower their metabolism. If a carp takes abait and heads back towards the lead witheven a shortish six-inch hooklength, thatbait can be in the mouth for a very longtime before they hit the resistance of alead – lots of time to eject the rig. Notonly that, but the slow motion movementsI observe make it most unlikely that thefish will hit the lead hard enough to prickitself. However this is all for another dayand another article. Let’s get back to bait.My findings come simply from bothobservation and bobbin action. They arenot armchair theories that ‘should’ beright. I have lost count of the numberof those I have read about. My findingsare based purely on actual anglingapplication.So, what do I look for when producing abait specifically to catch cold-water carp?From my own point of view it comes downto how well I know the water I’m fishing.If I know the carp are in the area I amfishing then I will use a slightly differenttype of bait than I would use at a venuewith which I wasn’t familiar. I often mixand match on the same water anyway,rather than have all my eggs in one basket.500ml400ml300ml200mlBait Quest Shaun Harrison650400m300m200ml17100ml100 l016_Bait_Quest.indd 3 16/1/07 18:31:07