Discussion
In these hot days, you should see the carp cursing around the lake on the top alot so bread or soaked dog biscuits would be good and cheap bait. Luncheon meat on a hair has always been a winner for me with a couple of bits of side hooked sweetcorn.
What you are asking is pretty much impossible to answer in my opinion. Boilies I would say is the bait of choice but there are so many varieties. Some flavours work a dream on one venue and you could not get a nibble using the same bait on another lake.
I have never had a fish using pop ups but I have never persevered with them, they are particularly good when the lake bed is busy with leaves or anything that you wouldn't want your bait disappearing in to as they are boyent and will 'pop up' from the lake bed so any passing hungry carp will not resist a lovely presented free meal and a trip to your net.
The fun is in working out your venue and seeing what works best. A mate once said to me 'it's called fishing, not catching'.
Good luck and tight lines
What you are asking is pretty much impossible to answer in my opinion. Boilies I would say is the bait of choice but there are so many varieties. Some flavours work a dream on one venue and you could not get a nibble using the same bait on another lake.
I have never had a fish using pop ups but I have never persevered with them, they are particularly good when the lake bed is busy with leaves or anything that you wouldn't want your bait disappearing in to as they are boyent and will 'pop up' from the lake bed so any passing hungry carp will not resist a lovely presented free meal and a trip to your net.
The fun is in working out your venue and seeing what works best. A mate once said to me 'it's called fishing, not catching'.
Good luck and tight lines
B16JUS said:
great thanks spam and dog biscuit sounds like a plan lol
trial and error with the boilies i will get a few different bags to try too
Ive just read about adding chilli powder or rock salt to the bait as the carp love it
Smelly and bold flavours are supposed to be the best. I have found that if I hate the smell of a boilie then the carp love them. All said and done, nothing guarantees catching fish trial and error with the boilies i will get a few different bags to try too
Ive just read about adding chilli powder or rock salt to the bait as the carp love it
You need to define what you are looking at:
If its a big fish water with a medium level of stocking, don't expect to catch on the first trip, just try to learn what works. I wouldn’t start on this type of water if I had just got my rods.
If its a big fish well stocked commercial with bigger fist (10-20lb, then you will be looking at boilies and pellets.
If its a lake well stocked with smaller fish 1-10lb then you should be looking at pellets and maggots.
Fundamentally, carp of all sizes eat everything, what bait you choose should suit the situation. For example, I'm 100% sure there has never been a better carp bait than maggots, but it’s no good for the lake you are fishing is 100 acres and you need to get loose bait 150 yards out.
Personally, I would take to a commercial lake that I had not fished before: Two flavours of boiles (its summer so probably fish meal), several kilo's of pellets in several sizes and use the smallest size I can accurately feed at the range I'm fishing and maggots.
Golden rule with carp fishing No 1
Don't forget the margin is normally the biggest feature! The number of times I have set one rod up and just dropped it in the water two feet out and had a fish before I set the second rod up is incredibly. I also had my two PB's (right not 35lb) from less than 5 feet out.
Golden rule with carp fishing No 2
You can’t catch them if you have scared them off.
If its a big fish water with a medium level of stocking, don't expect to catch on the first trip, just try to learn what works. I wouldn’t start on this type of water if I had just got my rods.
If its a big fish well stocked commercial with bigger fist (10-20lb, then you will be looking at boilies and pellets.
If its a lake well stocked with smaller fish 1-10lb then you should be looking at pellets and maggots.
Fundamentally, carp of all sizes eat everything, what bait you choose should suit the situation. For example, I'm 100% sure there has never been a better carp bait than maggots, but it’s no good for the lake you are fishing is 100 acres and you need to get loose bait 150 yards out.
Personally, I would take to a commercial lake that I had not fished before: Two flavours of boiles (its summer so probably fish meal), several kilo's of pellets in several sizes and use the smallest size I can accurately feed at the range I'm fishing and maggots.
Golden rule with carp fishing No 1
Don't forget the margin is normally the biggest feature! The number of times I have set one rod up and just dropped it in the water two feet out and had a fish before I set the second rod up is incredibly. I also had my two PB's (right not 35lb) from less than 5 feet out.
Golden rule with carp fishing No 2
You can’t catch them if you have scared them off.
Don't make it any more complicated than it needs to be, and don't forget what you learnt fishing with other methods. The perfect rig is a hook on the end of the line and nothing else, and the perfect bite indication is watching the fish take the bait. Everything else that has been added over the last fifty or so years - the buzzers and bobbins and hair rigs and bolt rigs and chod rigs and assorted bits of overpriced branded plastic, the assorted baits, etc - was invented for a reason, to solve a specific problem. Now that carp fishing is mainstream rather than the cult thing it used to be, many people use all this stuff without really understanding it, just following whatever the last advertorial in IYCF sold them. Some people (and I am going to sound like a right old fart here) go straight into highly technical specimen carp fishing without "serving an apprenticeship" learning to fish with a float rod (or a pole) and a pint of maggots. Their loss, really.
So, anyway, don't believe the hype, don't get suckered by the celebrity endorsements and if you don't understand the purpose of a particular rig or bit of 3-quid-for-ten injection moulded plastic, find out or don't use it.
Bait - carp will eat almost anything edible - worms, maggots, bread, prawns, cockles, mussels, sweetcorn, boiled potatoes, dead fish, hemp, beans, nuts, luncheon meat, spam, salami, you name it. Once they've been caught on something, they learn to be wary of it, so anglers started creating new, exotically flavoured pastes in order to offer something the carp would not associate with danger. There was a theory that carp were attracted to food of higher nutritional value, so people added high protein ingredients like powdered milk protein and egg to their pastes. They found that if you rolled the pastes into balls and dropped them into boiling water, you could put a tough skin on them, which made them less likely to be eaten by unwanted smaller species. Hence, boilies.
So, again, use your head. If you can catch the carp on simple, cheap baits like bread, corn, worms, maggots, dog biscuits, use them. If they have become wary of those baits, or if small fish are too much of a nuisance, the solution is more modern baits. It goes full circle, though, if everyone else is fishing boilies, you may clean up with an old fashioned bunch of maggots or sweetcorn. If a particular type of boilie has "blown", try a different flavour, or colour, or size. What I'm saying is that there is no best bait, you use whatever you need to make it work.
PVA is great stuff for putting your hook bait in a little pile of loose feed. Don't throw it in, hook it on so that when the PVA has dissolved the feed will be right where your bait is. I like the tubes of PVA stocking mesh for this.
So, anyway, don't believe the hype, don't get suckered by the celebrity endorsements and if you don't understand the purpose of a particular rig or bit of 3-quid-for-ten injection moulded plastic, find out or don't use it.
Bait - carp will eat almost anything edible - worms, maggots, bread, prawns, cockles, mussels, sweetcorn, boiled potatoes, dead fish, hemp, beans, nuts, luncheon meat, spam, salami, you name it. Once they've been caught on something, they learn to be wary of it, so anglers started creating new, exotically flavoured pastes in order to offer something the carp would not associate with danger. There was a theory that carp were attracted to food of higher nutritional value, so people added high protein ingredients like powdered milk protein and egg to their pastes. They found that if you rolled the pastes into balls and dropped them into boiling water, you could put a tough skin on them, which made them less likely to be eaten by unwanted smaller species. Hence, boilies.
So, again, use your head. If you can catch the carp on simple, cheap baits like bread, corn, worms, maggots, dog biscuits, use them. If they have become wary of those baits, or if small fish are too much of a nuisance, the solution is more modern baits. It goes full circle, though, if everyone else is fishing boilies, you may clean up with an old fashioned bunch of maggots or sweetcorn. If a particular type of boilie has "blown", try a different flavour, or colour, or size. What I'm saying is that there is no best bait, you use whatever you need to make it work.
PVA is great stuff for putting your hook bait in a little pile of loose feed. Don't throw it in, hook it on so that when the PVA has dissolved the feed will be right where your bait is. I like the tubes of PVA stocking mesh for this.
otolith said:
Shhh... I don't want the rivers looking like my local carp lake, where you can't get a swim on a bank holiday!
Come on, no one fishes rivers anymore! I just moved to a town where not only can I leave my car keys in the car door parked on the road (as I did last night) and still have a car in the morning, but also has miles of river with barbel within walking distance of my house. I go and throw food at them most days lol.
Uhura fighter said:
If only.....
I am seeing more people on the canals, maybe it has been the good weather?
#I am seeing more people on the canals, maybe it has been the good weather?
Really, when I used to fish the Windrush, I never saw anyone! In the 4 years I used to fish it regularly I think I saw two other anglers.
I mean, I was fishing right next to a large town and all you ever saw were dog walkers or that one time I came across (pun intended) the teenagers having sex on the path back to my car (I'll just give you 5 mins shall I?). So its not out of the way, but I had miles of it to myself, full of uncaught barbel of around 5lb with the odd double further down stream. Added to that wild brown trout almost big enough to be too large to eat by myself (I took no more than 3-4 a season, and there were plenty of fingerlings).
Paradise, but sadly gone!
Uhura fighter said:
Around here several farmers have built carp pools, private lakes. Maybe it has brought people to the area that are now fishing the local rivers and canals too?
Chap in my local bait shop was saying he had been busy.
It may be local. Theres so much water round here (Oxford) that you couldnt fill it. I can get as weir pool to myself most evenings, yet a friend in Harlow has to book a slot in a weir if he wants to fish.Chap in my local bait shop was saying he had been busy.
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