You are probably expecting to find some kind of bait recommendations and tips you have read elsewhere but this is different! Terry Hearn in a recent Carp World magazine piece wrote about winter baits and carp digestion in such hilariously simplistic terms that this needs answering! So read on and discover vital things about bait that Terry Hearn obviously has yet to learn!
You might think that Terry Hearn is a bait design genius, but his magazine articles demonstrate this is not exactly the case. As a respected angler it is really bait application and time that I consider in his case is harnessed to greater effect than the average angler that gets him his results!
Quoting the words of someone who knows him very well, it is his threshold for boredom that makes him stand out. Terry is also is a more or less a full time angler and this fact helps a massive amount too in catching elusive big fish that evade ordinary working week anglers. Part time anglers who are not in the fishing trade very often struggle in terms of applied time, bait and other valuable resources yet are constantly led to believe they can achieve the same results as full time anglers with all their competitive advantages!
Additionally like many other names you could mention who monopolise carp magazine pages every month, being a sponsored angler for pretty much everything you could possibly think of is another competitive edge among many others that Terry, and others like him enjoy!
There are keenly cultivated corporate fronts of fishing bait companies, and then in many cases there is a hidden alternative truth! I seek the truth because any less than that is meaningless and an insult to everyone passionate about maximizing their invaluable time spent fishing!
I wonder who actually designed the bait called The source as it was not designed by Terry Hear; appearances can be deceptive. I ponder the fact that the woman who caught Herman the giant common carp of Warmwell which at the time was the heaviest in the country actually caught it on a lobworm under a float, and not on a Nash readymade boilie despite their claims!
It might seem very peculiar, but despite being a bait company consultant, with free access to many products and boilies of many companies I am not a fan of any readymade boilies and this is with good reason! Well thought out homemade baits can be made far more potent than any profitable popular readymade bait available today!
This is why I carry on publicly telling this truth year after year. Indeed over the past 5 years there has been a very significant resurgence in big fish catches caught on unique homemade baits as a result!
It really is a huge shame that thousands more magazine advertorial-conditioned anglers have not discovered this truth yet!
Terry Hearn wrote recently in Carp World magazine about fish eating less food in winter time. He wrote that using less bait is best otherwise you will ruin your chances. He used an example of how his parents down his road appear to have fed their fish too much feed in winter and as a result of this have digestive and other problems.
The impression that he gives is that you should barely use any bait in winter at all otherwise fish will get clogged up as it were. In winter fishing this is obviously a situation which is not ideal when keeping fish feeding is your primary goal to maximise your chances!
However, you can use as much bait in winter as in summer at various times in winter and spring! But what bait and the substances it contains and how you apply it is critical, along with modes of action of your bait! How many eggs can you eat I wander? I ask this just to show you that the vast majority of readymade baits are primarily bound using eggs and just this one factor alone can be enough to satiate fish and dramatically reduce your catches.
Using eggs or egg albumin are totally the opposites of being ideal bait substances for maximum low water temperature feeding and catch optimization! (Just so you realise this point a little more, egg also contain digestion inhibitive factors!) If you happen to like eggs because they are a convenience then carry on enjoying wasting hours and hours in cold water conditions!
Now for some details about all this to clarify a few things about the simplistic Terry Hearn piece on winter carp bait digestion. First there is no really specific mention of what food is being given to the fish in the situation he refers to with his parents’ fish. The fact is that if a summer feed usually higher in oil are fed in winter this is not an ideal situation at all for carp.
Typically these simply do not contain thermogenic factors that will raise metabolism and maximise energy release in fish and maximise gut flora growth and gut villi growth to promote maximum absorbent area of the gut and maximise also gut flora enzyme activity essential in low water temperatures.
Terry also stated that the reason bird food baits are digested more easily in winter is because they are more soluble. But very contrary to this solubility does not necessarily equate to superior digestibility at all. The truth is that baits packed with easily absorbable 2 and 3 peptide chain rich substances can pass straight through the carp gut wall and be assimilated with the absolute minimum of energy used!
In winter the primary internal role of carp is to conserve energy! This means that baits which have long protein structures take the most energy of all foods to digest and assimilate.
You could rightly state that bird based food baits are more effective in terms of digestion simply because they are lower in protein and therefore take far less energy (and time too,) for fish to digest than conventional recipe higher protein baits! Just remember that in cold water temperatures fish will take far longer to digest a conventional design boilie which is higher in protein content compared to low protein bait.
The quicker a bait passes through fish particularly in low water temperatures, the most chances you will have to maximise your catches! I have carefully placed a few tips in my monthly Carp Food column piece in Crafty Carper magazine on low protein baits and aspects of semolina so look out for those!
In winter every single substance that comprises any particular bait which increases metabolism, speeds up digestion, and actually most maximises efficient release of cellular energy, will catch you potentially more fish than baits not optimised in multiple ways like this on multiple levels!
Winter bait success is not simply down to solubility and to state that solubility is the main factor is really misguided at best!
It still shocks and amazes me how many anglers still use their conventional warm water baits all year round without a second thought! Think about this for a moment! Why use baits not optimised and maximised for cold water conditions when carp enzyme activity and over all metabolism is at its lowest meaning you are wasting the majority of your time!
I might add that every single boilie on the planet is a flawed bait format when it comes to cold water and I aim this in particular at every single egg sealed readymade bait! There are far more effective bait formats which are better than egg sealed heated baits. In fact there are far superior baits that can be designed that will beat maggots and other live baits.
Maggots initially eject ammonia with other body fluids into cold water when initially introduced. But within a very short time this easily detected attraction is dissipated. Then all you are left with is minimal excretions and you are totally dependent upon how long maggots keep on moving before they stop.
Carp detect subtle vibrations in water and this is just one way they detect blood worm and zooplankton in their densest most energy efficient concentrations to eat!
Think about the fact that given the choice a carp will not bother wasting energy on a low concentration but will go straight for the high concentration especially if that happens to be as close as possible to them! What the message here is that if you use conventional egg sealed heated readymade boilies or maggots you are missing out and wasting a massive amount of time in winter not catching! This is compared to results you could be having using uniquely designed baits very specifically designed to react with water most and trigger feeding and metabolism at maximum levels.
Of course commercial bait makers do not want you to know that their boilies are not actually in fact truly optimised and maximised for maximum catch results in winter. No heated bait is actually truly optimised for maximum catches in low water temperatures! To state that any heated or cooked or steamed coagulated protein sealed bait is optimised for winter and is the optimal bait for cold water is a downright lie!
There are various more intriguing approaches to bait design and formulation that the homemade bait maker can exploit!
There is among others a very significant reason why carp readily filtration feed upon algae in winter and not on readymade boilies or pellets the majority of the time. Algae contain factors which thin the blood, and which lower harmful energy efficiency robbing cholesterol and speed up metabolism and cellular energy release on many diverse levels.
Algae offer far more than this but the point is this; carp evolved directly in response to the food most easily available within their environment. Carp are certainly not yet evolved to energy efficiently digest egg sealed heated readymade boilies!
As a little tiny tip I might add that in terms of protein digestion gut flora balancing and optimum activity are supremely important in so many ways and the food that gut flora comes into contact with will either be detrimental to it or will be beneficial to it. Now we are getting into ways to guarantee that carp actually do have improved capacity to feed repetitively on unique baits but certainly not as well on boiled or steamed readymade baits.
Gut flora break down proteins in the gut by enzymic activities. One product of protein breakdown by gut flora is butyric acid. Well here is news; butyric acid is a predominant food of gut flora in carp and in us humans. Wow, so butyric acid is not merely a flavour component or flavour, but actually feeds gut flora beneficially! So why is this tip so very significant you may well ask?
My point here is that cold water baits designed correctly to optimise feeding responses and achieve optimal digestion and most effective fish metabolisms in low water temperatures that result in getting most bites by definition include the stimulation and exploitation of gut flora. How many times have you read this in carp magazines I wonder? Sure many mentions of wheat germ for cold water baits get passed around second third and a hundred hand but the real significance of this is lost that is for sure!
In my experience fishing with maggots is not that much better either and especially when so many carp have been hooked previously on maggots!
You can rightly state that maggots as a method are definitely no better than egg sealed boilies as soon as the method is not totally new any longer and the moment the initial ammonia release and vibrational movements of maggots are gone! So what is superior you might well ask! Such secrets are not given for free! 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.