In one Friday night rush hour survey at Liverpool station very recently, commuters were offered a nice juicy healthy orange to eat, or a bar of chocolate; guess which most commuters chose! But what happens when you combine chocolate and orange? You produce what is for some people their most irresistible treat called a chocolate orange; where just one slice tasted inevitably leads to another - even after that full-up feeling is passed. Have you any guesses as to the relevance of this in carp baits!? Read on....

Anyone doing even a quick look at wheat for instance will discover what kind of substance can induce this effect, (rather like hemp too.) But the big point is that this is just one substance from very many which impact upon fish, beyond aspects the average angler on the bank can perceive - beyond simple taste or smell for example.

Many baits are in effect drugging carp but on a very low level, but enough to produce habit-forming behaviours if only very temporarily. Another example is that forms of breads can have as much betaine (the true feeding trigger,) as canned shrimps, for instance, although bread (and wheat) contain far more other stimulatory substances too...

The conventional carp angler interpretations of bait flavours and tastes, for instance are often very simplistic without truly appreciating the real power of what is possible potentially. A flavour may involve the chemical impacts of synthetic bait substances upon fish, either directly on carp receptors, or indirectly by causing very localised water changes, and so on which carp are highly sensitive to. But this still means you are manipulating carp behaviours and involving fish chemoreception and olfaction. There are so many other approaches can be utilised in specialised baits.

Some baits exploit perfumes as opposed to flavours as such and have proved very effective. Some baits exploit olfaction for instance using pheromones. Certain baits are designed to be probiotic making them very energy-efficient for carp to digest. Other baits are designed specifically to attract water and pump out attractors more effectively. Some anglers are experienced in isolating electrical effects with their baits and special rigs and carp are certainly attracted to certain weak electrical fields and currents.

And yes, you can catch very many carp with a brightly dyed coloured ball of soya flour and semolina. I have had many periods and memorable catches when using highly flavoured instant attractor type baits. But using these against baits with far more in them that stimulates different aspects of carp means your fishing has to be very much sharper. For the average angler fishing very busy pressured waters, your might well find you get out-fished simply because your neighbour has a better designed bait.

Baits do not have to be very complex in order to get an edge, often if your fishing results slow down it may be too many fish have been hooked on them already and they just require fishing slightly differently perhaps with a minor rig change. Or it may be that other baits are dominating the water due to their sheer regular abundance and it does not take a high quality nutritional value bait to do this either.

Or if results on a bait may slow down because just does not have enough in terms of essential nutrition to offer fish that are already well fed, either on competing baits, or with natural food, or with both. On heavily pressured waters baits which employ various combined effects in order to ensure they get the edge, and not merely over fish, but over other competing baits are often the baits with that little bit extra that covers a further need or simply does something that affects fish that other baits lack.

Sometimes such bait are so complex you have to ask what is truly possible and how far things can go before things actually become unethical!

As a simple example anyone can use, how many anglers truly exploit carp hearing in terms of low-frequency sounds, utilising particular ingredients which make sounds when crushed, to design their baits and ground baits with for instance? It might seem far fetched, but maybe not. Certainly the acoustic-lateralis brain areas are tuned in many cyprinids so finely that they can orient the head towards the richest concentrations of plankton near them; can you imagine just how little noise plankton make!

Among the animal (zooplankton) and other forms of life that make up plankton are algae which depend upon the nutrient concentration of a water, for instance in the minerals they essentially need. Carp are well known to suck algae off stones and filter-feed on algae and zooplankton which are very rich in many essential and stimulating nutrients. Next time you see the water go especially green as light intensity increases in the spring months, perhaps think about how sensitive carp and other fish truly are, even locating and feeding on plankton at night...

Certainly I’ve done very successfully at times when other baits have struggled, using crushed tiger nuts as an ingredient along with similar acting ingredients. Significantly, this has often been at times in early summer, when the water has been so rich and concentrated with plankton, you could not see a near forty pound fish as you held it under water upon its release!

Maybe next time you arbitrarily smell a bait, ignore the smell for a moment and consider its more profound impacts on fish that may or may not be present! This fishing bait secrets ebooks author has many more fishing and bait edges - just one might well impact very significantly on your big fish catches!

By Tim Richardson.

For the unique bait making and bait secrets bibles:
“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”
And: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP FLAVOURS, FEEDING TRIGGERS, FISH CHEMORECEPTION AND OLFACTION SECRETS!” now visit:

http://www.baitbigfish.com

Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait maker and proven big fish angler - his unique bait enhancing, bait making and fishing secrets guides are catching big fish for readers in over 45 countries around the world...