Why do humans eating meats suffer diseases caused by fermenting food in the gut, while vegetarians avoid such protein-related diseases? Why in contrast do carp naturally thrive predominantly on aquatic protein foods; and why are they so sensitive to substances that natural foods like bloodworms, snails, mussels, shrimps, algae and plankton release? How do we go about exploiting these secrets within our bait recipes to make them more addictive to carp and more competitive in order to seriously multiply our big carp catches? Read on and all will be revealed!

Ultimately we are the product of the vital energy food sources we have evolved alongside, that through evolution we have predominantly been dependant upon. Carp are just the same because they too have evolved in direct response to the food around them so they can instinctively detect and consume it and digest it as energy-efficiently as possible! Just remember for a second that by constant evolution over millions of years, we only see a miniscule number of all the creatures that have ever lived and that the majority were the constant refinements of creatures that only survived for limited periods in time, but led to us and the life forms we see today.

Most creatures and plants etc will never show up in fossil records but this just demonstrates how much of the history of life on earth has been lost to science! Note: the chances of finding a so-called human missing link are next to zero due the unreliable nature of fossils actually being preserved in the first place or found. In fact we are long-lost descendants of the ancient group of fishes called teleosts of which carp are a part!

Very many creatures that are now long extinct died out because their modifications and adaptations to their environment, and food availability that provided that vital energy necessary for survival, simply failed them! Thus they were unable to survive in order to pass on their particular genome. All creatures are subject to predation or diseases and if the mechanisms for survival are not evolved and refined sufficiently, it is very probable such creatures will not pass on their genes within future generations and they will go extinct. Fish are ancient and their form and design bear many features and characteristics of life forms that are hundreds of millions of years old that bear testimony to the success of their design!

Most people do not realise that man as a species is a work in progress as are carp! For example many older people will have noticed the increase in height of younger Westerners over the last 20 years. This is due to the readily available excess nutrition that is consistently available so triggering increases in growth. The instinctive genetic responses within life forms to their surroundings and food sources can be very fast and seen very quickly within just a few generations.

It is a fact that if your grand parents became hooked on certain foods, it likely you will too because your genes from them will ensure you have guaranteed extra sensitivity to the substances in those foods – even if they are harmful to you when eaten too much! Great examples anyway are milk and wheat which in some people can actually cause fatal illnesses due to their hypersensitivity to the bioactive substances in them which are addictive. Genetically modified maize foe example is banned in Europe because it is well proven that even the process of altering the genes is harmful not just to humans and test rats eating it, but also to crops and the environment; and genetically modified crops do not adjust to the changes of climate and pests and diseases that natural crops can!

This leads to the absolutely staggering fearful very real possibility of entire crop wipe-outs in the future causing mass starvation; because no natural seed might be available any longer in many areas due to very obvious aggressive and also far more insidious behind the scenes nobbling by Monsanto! Even the world seed bank holds seed for genetically modified crops that are actually harmful to humans and not resistant to the changes that occur in terms of pests, diseases and climate changes of so many forms! Make doubly sure you campaign against genetically modified crops when they next are argued-for in Europe; use your websites and Facebook pages etc; they are not safe! I trained at Writtle Agricultural College and I have relatives who are professors in testing substances in foods; I know the truth on the inside of the machine!

At least so far in Europe the powers have not been nobbled yet by the devious profit at all costs manoeuvres of Monsanto! Think about the food you eat –and avoid genetically modified soya and maize at all costs; for yourself and for use in carp baits! Another related point about genetic adaptation is that some people have vestiges of previous adaptations, such as sixth fingers or extra rows of teeth which are already manifested at birth. We all have spine vertebrae extensions that show we used to have tails for example.

It is a fact that some people have far better than 20:20 vision as do some tribes in Africa, and some people are proven to be sensitive to ultraviolet light. Humans are not supposed to be sensitive to ultraviolet light. I am one of those sensitive to the ultraviolet light in halogen bulbs used in cars and now in houses and it immediately leads to headaches – more healthy less stressful alternatives are required right now!

There are great advantages to extra sensitivity and carp vision includes sensitivity to both the ultraviolet and infrared parts of the light spectrum. This enables extra detection of potential foods and threats in turbid water and the dark! Carp have other so-called super powers for example, how is it that they feel the vibrations of concentrations of minute water fleas in the water around then when feasting on the, and how is it that carp detect bloodworm when it is deep under silt? Answers to questions like this can really help you maximise your baits and their performance but only when you think out of the rigid box of standard readymade boilies!

The growth rates and sizes of carp in the UK and in other countries have sky-rocketed in response to many multiple factors. In the 1970’s and early 1980’s the average UK carp angler would very often have been ecstatic to catch 20 twenty pound carp in a year or even just 5. This is because such big fish waters were few and anyway the carp in them mostly did not exceed the low thirty pounds in weight. At most the average carp water held a few twenties at best and only the odd far rarer thirty although this varied between regions in the UK. At one time the vast majority of the twenty pound carp in the UK were estimated to be found in North Kent waters despite the Colne Valley and waters in other areas!

In fact during this period most average carp anglers never even saw a thirty pound carp or even visited a carp holding more than 2 or three thirty pound fish, let alone caught one! During the Seventies and very early Eighties it was exceptionally rare to meet a carp angler who had landed a thirty pound carp because such fish were just so rare!

On one syndicate water I fished it took me 8 years of very regular fishing every week to catch my first thirties from there. This was simply because they did not grow to that weight until they had been in the lake for 8 to 10 years. This scenario has been echoed in so many waters around the UK and even the legendary Darenth only held a small number of big thirties. But now those twenties and thirties from 20 years ago are now in the forty pound bracket or rapidly approaching it and beginners today know no different and it is taken for granted! (However, the big fish of today average 25 to 30 years of age or much more!)

For example my results sheet at one Essex syndicate water for one season started with no twenty pound fish landed in a year’s fishing (circa 1983.) This was because that year the biggest fish the lake contained was a mere19 pounds! How things change; by contrast, during my last ever session on the lake around 1991 I banked 20 fish averaging 19.12 pounds, caught in a 5 day session that included the biggest in the lake at 35 pounds; this was the best catch ever by a single angler (not a team) by that date.

Of course this all sounds crazy to new carp anglers today. A complete beginner can go to any of the new brand of commercial instant carp angler fisheries, armed with ready made baits and all the fancy over-priced rods, reels, bivvies and alarms etc. Now beginners can hook thirties, forties and even fifties and above on their first ever cast; and such catches are pretty meaningless now! Such fisheries really were not a part of the carp fishing scene 30 years ago when I really started after bigger carp, but all this just demonstrates how meaningless it really is to set targets based on fish weights alone like Mr Maddocks etc did.

This method is basically meaningless today with instant carp fishing beginners going to some carp waters and banking thirties, forties or even 50 pound fish on their very first trip; it is hilarious when I think that a beginner just 30 years ago had a very long way to go to even catch 20 pound fish consistently because he had to find a lake with fish of that size for a start before even plotting baiting schedules etc!

I recall a young angler I fished beside at Darenth big Lake on one trip who landed a 47 pound carp on his very first cast there ever! To put this fully into perspective, when I was a young angler you were very fortunate to ever meet a single angler who had actually landed even one thirty pound carp in their whole lives and the numbers of anglers who had caught any fish of any species weighing over 20 pounds was rare!

I remember taking a walk around a well known commercial water at a fishing complex in Sussex where I met a complete carp fishing beginner who had set up in the morning and had landed 2 thirties and 3 good twenties by late afternoon. What a joke; I mean I bet he never appreciated each of those fish and barely even remembers each one now! I chose to fish to fish what was regarded as the hard water on the complex instead and in about 14 sessions came away with 15 forties and a huge amount of jealously and resentment from other anglers.

What they did not realise was that I was no rank beginner I had previously paid for my success having fished for 10 years on a very similar water which was extremely hard and where I only landed 2 forties and something like 30 thirties in 10 years of very consistent regular fishing throughout each year I fished it. (In 2009 only one thirty was caught from this water despite heavy fishing pressure by hundreds of anglers.) Add to this my other previous 10 years on an extremely competitive Essex syndicate and my various club and day ticket waters over 20 years previous to this and hundreds of thousands of hours had been accumulated in my experience.

Although I can complain about the huge numbers foreign fish now present in UK fisheries which many angler catch in waters that obviously contain them and those that contain rogue fish that anglers do not realise are foreign, imports have allowed far more anglers access to big fish without having to fish for over thirty years as I have. But it does totally belittle catches of smaller fish which may in the past have been some of the mostly highly regarded, most significant and difficult fish to catch in the countries best known carp waters from the past! In fact they also make past achievements that rank very highly in the memory look stupid if you only focus on fish weights. I vividly remember the season I first caught 2 English thirties in a season. By comparison I’m not so sure of the year I first caught over ten thirties from a commercial fishery because these catches were so easy compared to old English fish captures!

Frankly the 20 forties I have banked to date from UK commercial waters do not compare at all with the achievement of my first few thirty pound fish although they all came on homemade baits. This is because of how many years the thirties took to grow in a water where I caught them at double figures and twenties first; before catching them at over thirty pounds. This is despite the captures of some of my forties that were the result of some of the most intelligent fishing and creative bait designing and bait applying I have ever done!

Probably one of the biggest most dangerous problems of imported foreign fish is the mixing of slightly differently adapted carp immune systems and carp bloodlines etc, naturally developed in response to various conditions, diseases and parasites etc. We all know about the koi herpes virus and spring veremia; which have tragically killed many carp, both imported and more recently indigenous to UK lakes; but other threats exist too of course now!

Much comes down to your personal reference points and opinions in regards as to when exactly does a carp count as an English carp! Perhaps if a carp is imported as a fingerling (as were many of this country’s biggest carp,) or maybe when their progeny reach adulthood, perhaps then you might consider that these qualify as English fish? If I remember correctly the fish in Redmire came from Polish parents bred in Holland, so strictly speaking Richard Walker’s record fish and Chris Yates record fish were Eastern Europeans with a Dutch accent!

We may moan about Romanian immigrants eating our carp but then the major source of protein in Galicia and surrounding regions are carp. As we have no indigenous carp at all as they all have been imported right from Roman and medieval times etc there are no absolute true English carp just as there are no true English rabbits!

Maybe you think the only true English carp might be considered to be the original wild carp but I think it was the Romans who introduced these or at least monks from the continent over time. The irony is that these fish are notoriously slow-growing and attain very low weights compared to other strains. To catch even a high double-figure truly wild carp would be a fantastic feat – if you could actually find any of this weight and verify that they are pure-strain that is! How many more UK records will be nullified because the fish claimed as records are not pure bred strains?

Anyway, the arguments continue, but inspected legal foreign carp are in the modern carp fishing system and here to stay today just as they have been since the last forty years and more. And few anglers realise how much corruption of fisheries and carp blood lines has taken place over the decades due to foreign fish. Just a few of the big carp most of us know of by name are not necessarily fully English (if you get my meaning!)

There have even been cases of un-certificated fish movements within the UK that have involved English fish where the big name angler involved has actually been paid damages from winning a court case against a fishing paper. This is a case where in truth they really did do what they were accused of but there was a lack of evidence!

It is a fact that even clean certificated foreign fish (as well as English fish) can still pass certification but carry unknown factors which can kill our naturalised indigenous fish because the scientists do not know enough about them yet in order to identify them!

Considering it can take a carp over 30 years to realise its potential as a sport fish and such a fish can be lost in an instant, importation whether legal or not is something every carp angler has great reason to be concerned about, but the same applies to risks involved even in moving fish from one English lake right next door to another! But having said that, carp are an incredibly adaptive species and fish wipe-outs frequently safely leave alone those more resilient individual fish which are naturally far more immune to various threats.

Often seemingly minor genetic changes and mutations that turn out to be highly beneficial occur in humans and carp all the time; after all what are koi carp, ghost carp, goldfish and mirror and leather carp (and all king carp) after all but natural and artificially induced crosses - and mutations! 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!

By Tim Richardson.