Many anglers think that talking about bait is a waste of time because they would rather be catching fish and they miss the point that to achieve good catches of fish means actively overcoming the fact that fish catch up with our baits and fishing activities owing to their naturally programmed survival instinct! So if you want to catch more fish this year then further educate yourself now and read on!

Every single fish is a unique individual with the capacity to change and constantly adapt in response to changes of any kind in their environment, be it a new potential food opportunity, or a significant threat of capture! This uniqueness and eons-worth of evolution of fish sensitivities to danger reference points makes carp exceptionally resilient survivors, able to resist anglers attempts to fool them with baits and rigs of all kinds.

If it were not for this every fish in your lake would just line up to get hooked on your hook bait one after another! If you want to keep ahead of the fish and your fellow anglers competing for the fish on any water it most takes active and dynamic thinking, which is where having a superior knowledge of the workings of fish in relation to bait substances is a huge competitive advantage over-coming factors related to rigs, location and possibly lines and hooks and the fishing approach involving tactics and tackle to suit the challenges and opportunities presented on any water at ant particular time.

It does seem that much of the time there is too much focus upon the specifications and sleek space age fashions of tackle on the bank which costs hundreds to thousands of pounds which claim anglers attention. But if you do not have a bait in proximity to your hook which carp will actually get into their mouths (for whatever reason) you are largely wasting your valuable fishing time.

In fact many anglers spend much of their time fishing with hooks which although are chemically sharpened and do hook fish, are often simply not sharp enough to enable an efficient initial deep hooking of fish and enabling them to pick up bait and hook sometimes multiple times without ever getting hooked or giving the angler any indication at all. If you have ever tested the effects of using the finest sharpest pointed hooks you can produce for yourself and fished them against hooks straight from the packet, invariably the sharper hook used on identical rigs will catch more fish on average due to better hooking capability.

(Please note, even if you test your hook sharpness on your nail you can blunt your hooks relative effectiveness by just doing this.)

If you take some rig foam and see how easy or difficult it is to pull all your patterns of hook just 3 millimetres into it you will certainly notice a big difference between them. To my mind, the easier and faster a hook penetrates upon contact with a fish mouth tissue or lips the more chance that hook will stay in!

I have strayed off the main point here but could not help notice the impact of hook sharpness and patterns upon hooking ration in fishing for single figure fish recently.

Why such small fish you may ask, well for a start I’m using tackle designed for 30 pound fish plus and these fish have been regularly dealing with match fishing tackle. So I hope this puts things into perspective

Many carp and catfish anglers are well aware of the use of carbohydrate and protein based ingredients in their baits but do not think hard enough about such things thus missing out massively significant factors that can easily improve their success! Both of these groups of baits and all combinations in between catch fish, but in many cases it is not simply the bait that catches the fish, but the fact that the fishing method, practical approach or fine rig adjustments used by the angler on any particular day catches fish. However, it is obvious that some carp will be caught from almost any water simply because someone is fishing for them and by the law of averages some of the individual carp will have higher levels f physical or genetically programmed dietary needs or at the very least, la less well developed survival instinct, so making them appear to be mug fish and more easily caught.

Little things matter; for instance sweet cheap carbohydrate baits that have become damp and warm get much more effective as micro-organisms get to work pre-digesting the carbohydrates, developing attractive acids, flavours, making baits far more digestible and instantly detectable in the water as they are even more potent and soluble. Many sweet substances within cheap over-flavoured baits can act as prebiotic agents promoting activity within baits and this can be the case even in many forms of so-called shelf life baits as long as you give them the right conditions and in some cases maybe add additional corn steep liquor and liquid molasses for instance along with liquid betaine for instance!

As it happens, very often the bigger fish in any water are often the more catchable than some smaller fish. Big fish need more protein, and also in autumn and winter time they need more calories so are far more vulnerable to high fat, oily attractors and feeding triggers, as well as high protein digestible ingredients and additives etc. Individual big fish may also become so-called mug fish because they are simply less sensitive. This could for example simply be in terms of identifying potentially dangerous situations by association of fishing tackle in the locality and identifying and avoiding hook baits, plus larger fish by definition often eat more food than much smaller fish possibly giving us much more chance to catch them when they set off on a proper munch!

Of course other factors such as a fish’s individual capacity to produce digestive enzymes and to actually fully digest and synthesise protein and carbohydrate nutrition into growth, and its personal rate of metabolism can differ from one fish to another, and genetics are very important in this equation too obviously. The same goes for humans; so people deal with sugar differently to others for instance; some people have a sugar sensitivity that actually makes them more highly addicted to refined sugars – and more prone to insulin-related imbalances and diseases...

An individual fish’s significant feeding may be regular but vary from fish to fish. A fish may feed more than others in different temperatures too due to genetic variations between fish, and this is something which might explain much! I remember the Mainline bait boss Zennon Bojko talking about this effect on one of my very early trips to his Dream Lake 1 water where the commons and mirrors strains often feed better in different temperatures.

Many angling-pressured fish can form the habit of feeding on free baits straight after they sense lines have been withdrawn from the water. At waters where bait boats are used predominantly fish often feed on free baits on the drop direct from the boats (obviously following them at depth) knowing these free falling baits are 99 percent safe!

On such waters fishing a very slow sinking bait when released from a bait boat along with free baits can be brilliant and I did this to great effect on one of my infrequent visits to the Waveney Valley C Lake in Norfolk, years ago. Even a bottom bait wrapped in bread flake sinking slowly with barely any shot or light lead on the line will work, and all manner of artificial foam, plastic baits and cork baits will work... The fish simply respond in order to survive and we are the ones training them up and conditioning their behaviour, by our baiting and fishing activities; so why not exploit natural instincts or even manipulate them instead of fighting to keep ahead of them all the time?!

The secrets of baits are significantly intrinsic to these relationships. Often the key is not just what you know, but seeing small details of fish and common angler habits and thinking and avoiding these, being different and presenting fish with a far safer alternative option that will far more easily fool wary fish! Round baits are one such joke that makes me laugh! Any angler who really understood how carp reference points are developed by repetitive negative experiences with round baits would never promote the use of round baits, or even of the now all too commonly used barrel, or pellet shaped baits either.

How is it so few carp anglers exploit the massive competitive advantages of square or triangular or oblong shaped baits just showed how brainwashed the herd really has become by commercial bait companies! Having the independent thought process and depth it takes to exploit irregular bait movement and different suction pressures with angled baits to make carp make loads more mistakes with hook baits, seems beyond over 90 percent of the cult hero celebrity type anglers today. Fish with a flavour, enhancer and liquid food-soaked cube of coarse rig foam, beside and angular flat-sided bait and compare that to fishing with round boilies.

I have used rigs with 2 hairs on for years; again so few anglers get the massive advantages of such rigs it is incredible! Getting the hook into the mouth even before the second bait has gone in is an awesome edge yet how many anglers use this winning edge? It is the same old story; unless Mr famous promotes it the herd do not use it. Still there it is – like all bait secrets waiting to be used by those with a will to exploit fish modes of feeding and natural behaviours and senses and physiology against them!

It may be an individual fish feeds twice a day, or in sporadic bursts over periods of weeks. Or it may be more obviously at key times when suitable feeding conditions prevail with a lessening of angling pressure. Also natural programming factors will manifest, as in the higher consumption of food in preparation for spawning, or onset of winter for instance, or simply when natural food stocks are comparatively less abundant.

The deeper aspects of the external and internal sensory systems of carp and catfish are very significant if you want to improve you fishing in a competitive environment. With this kind of applied knowledge and its most suitable applications to homemade bait design and readymade uses and adaptations you can out-fish far better more experienced anglers again and again even if they use the most expensive most popular boilies, pellets etc. I say much more about this on CC Moore TV each month as a consultant describing how and why to use a massive diversity of various substances to trigger feeding in many potent ways and also gain incredible competitive edges over competing baits!

You may have heard of leading brands being out-fished by anglers doings and using things different to normal; and having done it myself that can very definitely be you too! 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.