Carp fishing is big business and new fishermen are more and more rapidly swelling the heaving ranks of existing ones making it more and more competitive and crowded.
We become a victim of our own success by the over-use of successively popular and successful tackle, baits and methods and carp soon "wise up" to anglers' familiar baits and tackle on many pressured big fish waters. "Food" balanced nutrition baits will still be constantly eaten as they are often the "naturalised" food supplementation supporting stocks of big fish. But fish are certainly aware of our fishing activities and tend to respond by changing their behaviours.
Anyone who disbelieves this obviously does not fish the busy "circus" type waters in the UK (Or is that circuit waters?') Carp anglers have historically had to heroically constantly overcome innumerable new challenges in their quest and this is one aspect of carp fishing that keeps us all going. however, the difference between the world of efficient modern carp angling and pressure on waters today compared to forty years ago have little in common.
Today a complete beginner can buy everything instantly from baits, rigs, instructional books, DVDs, and so on; in fact everything but experience. He can buy "confidence in a bag" by depending on ready made bait even though he has no idea how it works. The same goes for tackle. Every item has been produced to solve a problem.
Indeed, long range rods and reels, heavier leads, casting tutorial DVDs and even lessons are, to a great degree, the result of our own angling activities forcing fish to seek refuge further and further from the bank. Such distances anglers 40 years ago would be more than shocked at. I've hooked fish from 300 metres away and even though they were dream fish in every way I personally prefer a range where I can throw bait out myself! Fish do love to follow contours and edges with its variety of de-stressing bankside cover and natural diversity of food items.
But it is noticeable that just because an inexperienced angler has never fished before but has a powerful rod and a big reel with lots of line, he will often cast as far as possible. Usually this is to the most obvious island, reed bed, gravel bar or water lilies or lacking a "target" casting to the horizon. There is so much information now about watercraft skills, "correct technique," the latest "in" methods and baits. The thing is, often the marketing although a great help, can provide certain disadvantages. For instance, in the days when casting 100 metres was not just unusual, but an angling "feat" for most fishermen, the fish were far more often at marginal to 30 metres range.
Free baits introduced would more than likely be actually counted! In fact those who remember the advent of the ready made bait boom will recall certain manufacturers actually stating how many baits were in a packet; 300 for example. Bait base mixes were more often in pound mixes. These days it's kilograms. I used to fish with 30 milk protein baits a day and that was very successful for me. I've know guys to catch fish over a bed of 100 kilograms of bait or much more, even treble that on some big fish waters.
I remember the shock when I discovered at one water, that while I was free baiting with 6 pounds of homemade boilies and really felt I was controlling a lake with quality bait, I discovered somebody was unloading 40 kilograms of pellets from a boat regularly for which he had "special privileges" to do being a bailiff. Such "gamesmanship" and the completely disproportionate advantages those exploiting "power games" have, definitely are far more prevalent today. Having to out-wit aggressively competitive anglers is one aspect of carp fishing I've not been impressed about.
The plain fact is that you can catch as many fish as a novice with endless bait and time on his hands as an experienced angler with limited resources who fishes a night or a day a week. Having said that, I used to fish a water where over 70 percent of new visiting anglers "blanked" and these were the novices and the experienced alike. Their new "wonder baits" were powerless to produce fish for them as the key to this water was knowledge of the fish behaviours formed in response to constant angling pressure, baits and tackle.
Standard round boilies of 24 to 21 millimetres became very hard to get takes on as were large "Marine halibut pellets." This was despite being very successful previously. The fact that the fish fed mainly on free baits that had been in the water 2, 3 or 4 days or more really showed how tricky they became. Any angler who just fished a day, night or even 2 days and 2 nights were very unlikely to catch fish. On occasions, it would be an entire 5 days from baiting a swim to fish feeding on the bait, but such was their "angler danger" conditioned preferences. Intriguingly, this applied to the big catfish as well as the big carp.
