As I was saying, here we would go down to the creek, that is a body of water that moves just a might faster then a bayou. We would get there before dark so we could cut a bunch of willow limbs for poles, gather firewood for the night's vigil. Those bars of soap would be cut into about half inch cubes, just the right size for our catfish hooks. In those days we used heavy cotton cord with loops made about every six feet apart. Old bearings would do for our weights, to bring those baited hooks down close to the creek bottom. Each length of the cord was tied to a stick, and then the whole thing was baited, and strung alone the creek out about as far as one could reach. The poles allow a little more distance. Then we would string up poles with individual lines and a hook. Baited we sort of cast it out toward the middle of the creek.

With all the hooks baited, all the lines strung out or flung out, we began the chore of lighting a night fire. The fire was an important part of our fishing trip. Built close to the water's edge, it would help draw attention to the area and our baited hooks. It also helped to retrieve our catch or rebait empty hooks. Oh! I almost forgot, it helped to keep the night dangers away from we young and sometime spooky lads. The other ones, of course, he he. Seems our moms always knew when we would be setting off to conquer the great outdoors, for invariably there would be wieners in the iceboxes, not there the day before. Okay, an icebox was where your mom kept things cold using blocks of ice, so they would not spoil. Now you have refrigerators.

About nine o'clock we tested our first poles. Man if we had a tug, we knew we had snagged a broadmouth. In it would be pulled, taken off without getting a sharp spike from one of its fins, new bait put on and back into the water it would go. That first one would always be dressed on the spot for an addition to our wiener supper. Hung between a twig basket weave basket of a sort, we would hold it over the fire for a while on one side, then on the other side. A little salt and we were off to the races, gourmet food if there ever was any. As we got older, we added ache baked potatoes, then we got to the big Dutch oven deep sided black pots and added hush puppies and french fries. But those first nights, we were in hog heaven.

Now to harvest our catch from the trot lines, we just pulled one pole out and tugged until we had the fish hauled to the bank where we could take our hook out of those big mouths. At first it seemed we all came home with sores where the fish would snag us with a spike. As we matured we learned the art of flipping the fish off our hook. Made life better, but we were getting there slowly but assuredly. Time and again during the night we ran our poles and our lines. In between we got a little sleep but in the morning, off to home with our night catch, heros in our mom's eyes for bringing in dinner or supper. We learned by doing. Dad's didn't show us for most had to work hard just to make a living. A new kid would move from another part of the state or another state and have a little different way of doing things, so we learned.

It wasn't long before we begin to build skiffs, fine workmanship worthy of the finest boat wright, NOT. Just plain planks cut to nail on two by fours for a bottom and then a few more for sides. No slope of sides, no contours of the bottoms. True flat bottoms. These we would haul laboriously to our fishing sites. Many a soap box racer was ruined hauling those heavy homemade crafts. We kids did not know about plywood, and even if we had known, we could not afford any. We did know about hot tar, both how it would make our boats leak proof, sort of, and how it would burn the "tar" out of you spilt upon your hand or arms.

Armed with our flotilla, we embarked upon a new sport. Once the trot lines were set, we did away with our poles, we began to shine lights against the water edge and bank. Big bulging eyes often stared back at us, and if we could get close enough, wham went our gigs. On the end of our barbed spears often was a big fat bull frog. These were always kept for our moms, who would clean them and fry those jumping legs as if it were chicken. Sometimes those eyes staring back at us were not frogs. They might belong to a raccoon, a possum, a deer and occasionally a coyote. But sometimes, we did not know what it was, so would begin a legend of a swamp monster, a story to tell those coming up after us, learning slowly as we did. Why on a dark windy night with those wood trees singing in the dark, you could spook the pee out of a youngun. It was so funny and fun, it had also been done to us back when.

Those are great memories of a time probably gone. I never hear of kids going night fishing any more. I still enjoy a night on the water, catching fish, drinking coffee from a thermos, chatting with old friends who lived those early day again. Of course, we all thought we knew every thing there was to know about night fishing, why we might even be considered experts. Then one day we met, well two of us did, a fellow who ask us if we knew how to night fish for bass or crappie. Man you don't night fish for bass or crappie, you night fish for catfish. He invited us to go with him one night and learn.

The fella's name was Mike Cork, nice enough fellow but did he have a thing or two to learn about night fishing. He suggested we bring along our best bait casting rod and reel, and he would supply the bait. We told him we had bait. Nah! Let me provide the bait. Okay it would be his loss when you go tangles up in overhead limbs, roots and grasses or even stumps where he said he was taking us. My friend Sam and I had a good laugh at Mike's expense while driving back home to get our gear. This guy is in for some surprises, we would say and just laugh, like a couple of old fools, which we are.

Back to the docks we spot Mike in what south Louisiana people call a bateau, a jon boat to you uneducated. Man that thing was like a barge, and sturdy in the water. Placing our gear aboard, we go underway. Mike put that motor in forward and down the bayou we went. It was his show so Sam and I did not tell him he was going the wrong way. The night fun was about to begin, he he. In about thirty minutes we arrived at this rather wide spot of the bayou, Mike said we could start here.

He handed us a bait a piece, and told us how to tie it to our line, treating us as beginners. With the light barely left, he suggested one of us cast just short of a stump, the other just by the edge of a fallen and sunken log. So we did. Now I have to remind you, Sam and I have fished most of our lives, and the night fishing was just a start, but we also had learned to cast and fly fish. Plop plop went our two baits, splash splash went two very nice bass, each of us catching a nice keeper. Keeping his troll motor pulling along on that wide spot of the bayou, Mike taught us a few things about fishing at night for bass. He would shine his big light here and say cast, he would spot another place and say cast there. We did not catch on every cast but by far more than we would have during the day. Let me tell you, we had more fun that night with Mike teaching us some tricks than we had had in years.

Arriving back at the docks, we unloaded our catch and gear. We decided to meet at Sally's café to have breakfast. Sally's was a nearby truck stop café and we knew the coffee would be hot and the service with a smile. Sitting there sipping on our first hot cup of coffee, Sam and I began to ask question of Mike one after another. He wouldn't tell us much, but what he did made so much sense. Why he said, Mike said, if ...

Nah! I won't tell you. Mike Cork now has a book out “Night Fishing Secrets Revealed”. You go buy it. It is full of all the secrets he shared that night with two old codgers, and so much more. You will learn things you would never have dreamed of, not likely. The address to get his book is below, get a copy and beat your buddies at night fishing. Build some great memories, I did. http://www.nightfishingedge.com

Fishing this river has lead me to some of the better outdoor experiences I have had in my short life.  Here are some of the things I have learned and seen while wetting my line along the banks of this beautiful flow.

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Far and away the most abundant fish for the frying pan, and one of the tastiest in  the Little Sioux is the Channel Catfish.  These lightly spectacled gray fish are quite abundant throughout much of the river's course, especially in the middle stretch where an abundant water supply keeps them in good feed.  It should also be noted that unlike the lower stretch of the river the middle section has not been channelized by man so the river is free to meander as it has for thousands of years and the current is not as strong.  At least that is what I have found. 

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Many good holes where the fish rest waiting for a meal to come floating by can be found.  These are the places I concentrate on most heavily.  If a small stream happens to be running into the river I will also fish near this because the cats seem to congregate in these places waiting for debris to float down so that they may feed.  

During times of high water the streams are also excellent places to fish themselves.  The current is pretty strong when the river is full and the fish swim up the small tributaries to rest.  In fact if you sit and watch the current in the streams during high-water you will oftentimes notice the current going back and forth, either upstream or downstream, constantly fluctuating.  In fact I caught my largest catfish in a stream during high-water. 

How I Get My Stringer Full  

I usually just dig up some earthworms.  The catfish love these and as long as a medium sized hook is used and covered up completely you will have success even on the slowest days, as long as you know where to put the line.  I fish with medium lead weights that allow me to cast with precision and will also let me bounce along the bottom if I know the area I am fishing is free of snags.  If I want to fish next to submerged timber or on a rocky bottom where I know a line will be lost if I'm on the bottom, I'll rig up a medium sized bobber to keep it off these obstacles as best I can.  This practice is not a fail-safe though.  I have lost dozens of bobbers to the river but it really is the best way to go about things.  I can't imagine the hundreds of hooks I would have lost without my bobbers.

It is also important to experiment.  Different baits don't seem to seem to produce any better.  I seem to get catfish quite consistently with nightcrawlers no matter what season it is, however, the depth at which I present the bait does seem to make a considerable difference on some days.  

For instance, fishing on the bottom might produce good results one day (or even for an hour or two) but the next day or even the next hour the fish will taper off.  Bobbers are usually needed at this point.  Bringing the bait up off of the river-bottom can oftentimes bring surprisingly different results.  Personally I like to fish off the bottom right away since the river's current often will play havoc with the line, and also because catfish are naturally bottom feeders, but if the fish aren't biting hard that way I try to find a calm, deeper section of the river to float my bobber into.  Sometimes as far as 100 yards downstream.

What You'll Catch

Common Carp

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Like I said before the most abundant sport-fish in the river are Channel Catfish but a wide array of other species will test your line also.  Fish I have caught on my nightcrawlers include Yellow Bullheads, Smallmouth Bass, Bluegill, Grass Carp, Chinese Carp, White Bass, Chubs, small Flathead Catfish, Mooneye, and the occasional Walleye taken in the spring or the fall of the year.

Bullhead

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Pretty soon you'll be able to tell what sort of fish is on the line.  A hesitant bite with a slow set is usually a Bullhead.  Good eating if you're desperate for a fish-fry.  A very hard strike will usually be either White Bass or Carp of some sort.  For this reason needle nose pliers are a good thing to bring along since the White bass are quite abundant in the river and usually swallow the hook.  Supposedly these species taste good after being smoked or pickled, but I usually just throw em up on the bank. And your Channel Catfish and Walleye just give you a good fight if the weather is warm, if it is a little cold the largest fish seem rather sluggish and are readily landed. 

I think it is also worth mentioning that people also regularly catch Muskie and Northern Pike out of the river, especially around the dam at Linn Grove.  I however have not been fortunate to do so.  Some eating size Shovel-nose Sturgeon are supposed to be in the river also but I haven't heard much about the species other than a line or two on the internet.

Time of year and temperature also dictate what you'll catch.  The earliest I've ever had success on the river was in early May.  But these are just catfish I'm taljking about.  If you're after the more elusive Little Sioux Walleye, Pike, or Muskie, you might want to get out there as early as late April.  Early June seems to be the best time to catch a whole mess of catfish every time you go out.  The water is the right temperature and food is abundant.  July and August are somewhat temperamental months.  If the river is low, and the temperatures are high, I find that I have a hard time landing anything worthwhile after nine A.M. or before five P.M.  Normal rules like these don't apply during high-water though.  

When the river is bursting at the seams I hit the smaller tributaries, especially where there are trees to shade the water and find that fish can be landed any time of the day from these refuges.  September is almost as good as June as far as catfish go, but towards the end of the month Walleye start to bite again.  The second week of October is usually when I hang my rod up for the season.  It is just too cold most of the time and the fish  don't seem hungry.  

But...if you're looking for something to do later on in the year, I understand that the carp will bite all year round even through holes in the ice during the dead of winter.  So if you like these sort of fish for the smoker or the pickle jar it might be worth your while to try it out.  As for me, I don't have any desire to do this and haven't tried it.

On a Different Note...

Even if the river isn't being productive (which isn't often) I find the simple act of sitting alone on the riverbank without anybody else an almost spiritual experience.  As the sun starts to go down you will start to hear the slap of a beaver tail on the water, you'll hear the Muskrats prowling along the bank looking for grass, and then the coyotes will seem to explode in a chorus of sorrowful cacophony.

Sometimes when the wind is right and it is a little later season and somewhat cool out a chill will run down my spine.  I'm then reminded that occasionally cougar and bobcats are seen in the vicinity and I feel a tingle going throughout my body.  Its a feeling as if I'm seeing something special, forbidden.  A place the modern world has left behind, even if the the highway bridge is only a mile upstream.

Honestly there are few places I'd rather be in the world than right there when the understated beauty of the Little Sioux reaches its prime.

Happy fishing.  See you at the river.

 

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To me a 48 pound fish is traditionally an old-looking warrior with a legacy of captures spanning decades and a history reflecting the unfolding development of the water and surrounding environment in which it inhabits. The age of trees immediately beside the waters edge are especially evocative to me of this. But I have caught fish of this size which are only the age of fish which are most usually only double figures in weight and this does seem strange; a fish without the normal years to match its bulk!

When I was younger, I used to believe that all smaller fish perhaps up to late double figures in weight were relatively easy to catch, but I have discovered this is far from the case... In some carp waters, there are fish that have remained stubbornly at 17 or 18 pounds which are over 40 or 50 years of age. Such experienced fish are not necessarily the easiest fish to catch.

It is a fact that older fish have essential dietary and nutritional requirements which can alter with age and impact upon which baits and ingredients might be more effective. For example, much older fish use their food and nutrition far more for bodily maintenance than for skeletal growth for instance. Their bodies essential demand for many minerals, vitamins and amino acids and other key nutrients may be reduced very much compared to young actively growing fish which having a higher metabolic rate etc.

Older fish can certainly have different natural feeding habits compared to younger fish in a wild setting. However, it is sometimes harder to find fish which truly feed totally naturally all the time where anglers and anglers' baits have had an impact on particular fish for decades.

Now back to getting an edge over those much sought-after bigger fish. There are many pressure in angling and in the aquatic environment which can potentially impact upon the way fish behave and feed in any water and what a fish needs to consume or is willing to risk investigating. All this might seem a little meaningless in the face of rubber and plastic artificial baits catching big carp and the use of concentrated flavours of high or low pH as in attractor or instant baits for instance.

I recall testing different hook patterns on crucian carp decades ago and getting the shock result that 9 out of 10 patterns simply either could not hook the fish despite being taken into the mouth, or allowed the fish to immediately spit the hook even when hooked. Only one pattern provided positively well hooked fish and from my vantage point over-looking the margin where the test hook-baits were placed it was clear that a hook with a longer point which was exceptionally sharp stood any chance of hooking those wily old shy-biting crucian carp.

It is true that it is the bait that hooks a fish by getting the hook physically in the vicinity of the mouth and giving the chance of a hook-up. Some mad carp will take a bare hook with no bait on at all, but I've yet to met a successful carp angler who fishes a bait less hook all the time! The fact is you have to experiment on a water until you have positive feedback that fish are willing to at least sample whatever baits you offer them. Sometimes this is easy to discover and instant takes occur. Other times you need to change your options a few times before success comes.

Having found a small fish water containing single figure fish, I though I'd test some standard big carp rigs on them to see how experienced and tricky these small fish were. I was looking to test myself and look again at solving very basic and common challenges that any carp can present to you. It was obvious from the wary treatment of floating baits and the failure to positively hook fish on a variety of simple baits (excluding boilies and pellets,) that these particular fish were no walk-over and required a bit more thought to trick quickly.

In fact there were just 10 fish total in this farm pond and it was clear there would be a challenge if I fished conventional big carp style as I found out that tiny size 18 hooks and 3 pound line with match fishing tactics, maggots, and refined pole fishing tactics had been the main way to catch them until recently. I could have simply fished a bunch of maggots but that was cheating to me.

I tried worms but after a couple of aborted takes on small worms on a size 4 hook it was clear the carp were sucking on the ends of the worms and could easily detect the big hook and heavy line used on the ledger rig and this occurred on heavy and light leads, using running, fixed and semi-fixed styles. (These fish were clued-up and rig-shy for sure.) I could have tried any of a number of approaches and rigs to get an edge with worms, but this seemed too easy. I wanted really to catch these experienced fish on cruder tackle and much bigger baits you might want to use for far bigger carp.

The thought occurred to me that I could exploit the fact they had obviously been trained to take free ground baits on the drop as this would offer an often much safer way to feed without getting hooked. There I simply made up a size 4 hook direct to 18 pound monofilament line (snags abounded in this pond) and upon this placed 2 half centimetre square cubes of luncheon meat so the hook point was proud. Slightly above the eye of the hook I added a 2 centimetre piece of bread flake moulded down the eye so it was bread paste just above the eye and the soft flake covered the luncheon meat and obscured the point of the hook.

The next stage was simply to feed small pieces of flake into open water not the snaggy spots and then after half an hour of doing this to gently flick the hook bait out. Of course the immediate result was that a fish was hooked within 5 seconds of the bait starting to slowly sink, it being taken confidently and with a great rush, on the drop.

This fish turned out to be the biggest in the pond and was an absolutely beautiful purple-bronze coloured common of about 6 pounds.

Fishing conventional rigs on the bottom and surface would have taken a lot of perseverance and many missed bites in order to catch this fish, but just the simple change of bait and approach, even on very heavy tackle caught this fish immediately. I guess the point of this capture was that it is often we anglers that make fish conditioned to avoid rigs and accept various baits in whatever forms and states in the water, and in our own habitual actions and conventional approaches lie the answers to many of the obstacles we may have to catching small and big fish...

So next time you automatically reach for that rig, or set of baits you might usually use as you have so frequently before, just imagine the potential impact of using a different approach and bait format which is based on exploiting the conditioning your rig and baits have induced! In so many ways doing things differently is the real point that catches those harder-to-catch big fish dreams are made of, just in the same way that in life, it is not what happens to you that determines success but how you respond to it.

However, there are many options other than the obvious and once you begin to break away from whatever the herd mentality for your water happens to be existing at any time then you will reap the rewards often in surprisingly large ways...

It is very easy to achieve significant edges by bait manipulation while using very simple rigs indeed. There are so many ways to do this that the starting point really has to be to notice what baits and rigs are most commonly employed on your water. Consider how these might be potentially educating your carp into what to avoid or how to deal with such threats when presented to them day in day out in their search for safe food and you might well start thinking more like a carp.

Thinking like a carp instead of like an angler is a very good edge which is very much over-looked by the majority of carp anglers. An instant example of turning the impact of usual angling practices into results is by using unusual line angles from your rods to your baits. This can simply fool the fish that there are no dangerous lines present in the swim so their suspicion level towards your hook baits is reduced compared to normal which can obviously raise your chances of a take.

Everyone knows about the advantages of fishing slack lines and small leads as opposed to tight lines with heavy fixed or semi-fixed leads where fish have wised-up and use the heavy lead as a fulcrum to spit hooks with ease; often giving you no indication of what just happened. But you could well try using safe back-stops or utilising flying back leads strategically to alter the usual tensions on your line; not giving enough pressure for a fulcrum effect, but enough to initially hook fish a little deeper, or at least show some line indication of a bite occurring for instance.

It is easy to use the modern bite indicators which swing on the line in a virtually un-weighted mode in order to find fish patrol routes and feeding times etc, by using line bites far more purposely as extremely valuable time-saving feedback information. Using more advanced lines which do not reflect light can induce far more line bites than the most commonly used monofilament and braided lines fish are used to detecting.

Just to illustrate a point, in the second world war it was said that it took a spitfire pilot at least 10 sorties to get his eye in just to spot the enemy planes closing in before he got much too close to respond instead of simply react. All these pilots would see is a black dot that might only look like a speck of dust on his glass canopy. But when this speck became a full size enemy fighter pouring bullets at your plane within seconds, the majority of pilots who survived their first missions adapted their vision pretty quickly!

Now carp have pretty good eyesight especially in the near distance from the side at least and I suspect they learn by association all too well how to spot anglers lines in water (and even above it too!) It's just the same for all the rig materials which appear on the market and to my current knowledge there is only one specially coated carp hook make presently which does not reflect light back into the eyes of Mr carp. (There may be more - please let me know!)

Carp can often see pretty much all our rig materials if water particles density, daytime weather angle of the sun in the sky and depth of light penetration allow. Carp vision of our tackle is obviously a great deciding factor in getting bites or not and yet this issue is not as clear as it seems. It may be that carp detect plastic coated leads more easily than if lead with an uncoated dull grey lead colour in water, maybe due to less reflected light and its connotations, or perhaps by less emissions of small electrical charges made by the various hooks, leads, swivels, rings etc which are commonly used, and which fish can detect.

Even the materials that rig tubing are composed of which pin down lines supposedly to make it less obvious, may be dispersing small amounts of substances which carp can detect them and associate them with a potential threat. Carp may detect such substances at minute concentrations; down to 1 part in a million concentration or even at much less concentration than this. It well in your interests to consider that just because plenty of carp are caught using conventional rigs does not mean that you are missing out on far better results by specifically avoiding them...

Sometimes it is easier to catch carp on a single or half a bait, but there are also those times when a combination of baits on the rig is more productive. It is one of those things that even sea anglers notice. One day the fish will bite at a big bunch of 3 black lugworms and are very easily caught. But the very next day only using single lugworms on the hook produces bites. Fish adapt and change constantly to changing external conditions and also to something far less obvious to us anglers, to their changing internal conditions.

These all might impact upon each other in fish or just individually to impact upon fish behaviors and the challenges you are faced with and not even one day or night is ever the same as the previous one due to many variable factors which make fishing so fascinating and also frustratingly puzzling and complex at times!

Changes include responses to water changes in temperature and activity of carp digestive enzymes and ability of receptor cells to detect bait substances, effect of electromagnetism (as in moon phases,) fluctuating air pressures, light intensity impacting on carp eye structures and their performance, feeding behaviour alterations and so on...

Many anglers have got onto the current bandwagons of the most recently advertised baits and rig materials, but you can bet that when Mr carp has seen or experienced them enough their effectiveness will drop dramatically and very quickly for the average angler forming the majority. (And with many wary fish, only once is enough!)

But for those willing to make and use baits differently to the currently fashionable, and even combine them on a rig with black foam or cotton wool soaked in feeding stimulants. Even humble flavoured bread flake with flavour sprayed corn or maize or worms for example provides differences that can easily produce big rewards. How many big carp anglers use a soft pellet in a soft paste wrap surrounded by washed-out boilies as free feed?

It can be said that the majority of fish are caught by the most used baits and rigs, justifiably because this is the law of cause and effect in action because the majority are using them. But then it is certain you will discover that a larger proportion of the bigger fish are caught by the minority of anglers! I hope this article makes you see the bigger picture and new possibilities!

Many anglers get confused about bait because they assume it's all about how a bait might smell or taste, and even refer to their bait in terms of a flavour such as strawberry or some other familiar label for the smell we perceive as humans. It is pretty difficult to find any bait ingredient with such low levels of smell and taste that carp cannot detect them and even inert plastics or rubber fake corn or pellet baits contain significant substances contributing to their effect.

Even if a bait is formed with smells and taste factors in the levels of just 1 part per billion some might well be detected by carp. But they will certainly notice something in their environment which has virtually no stimulatory signals as this is not exactly a common occurrence in their natural environment and might make such a bait stand out precisely due to this. Despite all that is known about bait flavours it is noticeable that carp readily eat washed-out and leached baits and this is where the stimulatory components inherent in the ingredients used in a bait really play significant parts.

For instance, all you need to do is see the inherent flavour profile of casein, whey powder, or soya flour to know that these alone will attract carp attention. On more heavily fishing-pressured big carp waters, fishing a single fresh bait over a bed of baits already immersed and leached out after 12 or 24 hours or more in the water is a well proven tactic. Here we are talking more about the impact of true fish feeding stimulators as opposed to simple attractors which may grab the fish's attention by their high concentration in the water such as the impact of highly soluble solvent based flavours.

Fish feeding behaviours stretch far beyond just the act of consuming bait and going in reverse from there cover all kinds of related actions fish might do in advance of even mouthing a bait including stationary or mobile filter feeding and gulping on the scent trails in the water column issuing from baits.

Many of cheaper solvent based flavours have an instant impact on fish sensory receptors contributing to the success of fishing highly flavoured single bait methods etc. But the impact of substances inducing true feeding behaviour is often very markedly different. Sometimes instant or highly flavoured readymade baits might produce snatches or fast grabs or tentative lip pressing of baits a bit like tasting vinegar or citrus skin for the first time in effect for us humans.

But baits packed with true feeding triggers can induce frenzied and extremely competitive feeding behaviours indeed. Many proprietary bait ingredients, additives, oils, flavours and so on are based on the attraction or palatability side of things because if the combined taste and smell of bait is acceptable then chances are improved that it will be swallowed and not just mouthed. This obviously increases chances of hooking fish. But other aspects of such ingredients include natural substance carp have evolved to associate with feeding and indicate presence or approximation of their essential natural food items. If you look at the nutritional analysis of algae, (spirulina for example) or water fleas, or shrimps or mussels you will begin to see nutritional components which are essential to carp including amino acids, oils, vitamins, minerals, salts and so on. These are nutritional items fish need and eat daily just to survive. For example, minerals are involved in about 95 percent of essential biochemical body processes to some degree and human or fish life without nitrogen and amino acids in the diet would not occur. If your fish are deficient in such essentials chances are they will eat your bait if it contains them due to instinctive needs and associating with your bait among other things. (However many nutritionally designed baits may first need a short period of free bait introduction for best effect.)

The nutritional aspect of bait is very certainly well proven and the links between fish essential nutrition and what they eat in their environment is totally interrelated. Even blood has the same salinity as sea water and this is a tiny indication of just how linked to our environments fish and animals and humans are. When you fish are head-butting the bottom of you swim after every bait has been eaten, you can be sure they like it, and this is often the difference between the impact of a true fish feeding trigger and a simple attractor!

Some flavours have no actual feeding stimulatory effect on carp and it is obvious there is far more going on than just the smell and taste commonly associated with fishing baits; bioactivity and physiological, even psychological functions and impacts can all be present among others.

In the competitive world of big carp angling it is often the exact format and introduction details of your bait that catches the fish before any rig considerations and it is not correct to state any bait will catch any fish. Luckily we can exploit fish food detection systems and manipulate habitual fish feeding and movement behaviours. We can positively condition our target fish into regularly consuming our unique homemade baits or crafty specially adapted readymade baits, making our fish far more easily hooked than on all those already hammered popular readymade baits....

By Tim Richardson.

Particulate feeding: Many fish naturally filter feed. Carp are an excellent example that use this method and are even termed slow suction feeders, adjusting their gill rakers to most efficiently sieve the most abundant and nutritious natural food items like blood worms and water fleas etc. In the case of smaller hook baits and ground baits which consist of smaller items of ingredients such as crushed dried shrimps and fly larvae, small seeds and crushed nuts etc, fish can be easier to catch using these. The use of micro sized pellets or mixed sizes of pellets or crushed boilies mimic in many ways natural food carp feed on most efficiently for much of the time.

Bait alkalinity or acidity: A bait can be manipulated so that when mixed with water to form a solution the solution it creates is more acid or alkaline. There are very many questions regarding exactly how acidity of a flavour for instance genuinely impacts upon the fish receptor cells. This involves numerous forms of chemical and bioelectrical receptors, proteins and specialised channels and nerves connecting and leading to the brain.

Flavours work; if they did not we would not be able to detect roast beef or Tutti Fruitti ice cream and feel hungry as biofeedback kick in, and fish in water are the same! Flavours have various levels of impacts and very few substances have no inherent flavour at all; even plastic and rubber baits contain substances that fish can detect down to 1 part in many millions if not over a billion...

Bait component reactivity: This might sound a bit complicated but it basically means that putting one ingredient or substance with another in your bait will lead to a reaction which will benefit your baits performance. Very well proven examples are enzymes used to break down protein ingredients in baits converting them to fish stimulating peptides and amino acids for instance, and various carbonate substances, some of which are used to create activity within the bait and even producing bubbles which disperse the baits attraction further quicker and more efficiently than a standard bait. This is a very interesting and stimulating subject and can be applied to both hook baits ground baits very powerfully!

Bait bioactivity: If you find out enough about bait ingredients in relation to fish themselves you will see that very many of the most successful ingredients affect the fish in potent ways that the fish cannot fail to notice in association with your bait. Many have potent antioxidant properties; in fact it gets to the stage where finding a very successful ingredient which does not have antioxidant properties is comparatively rare. From natural concentrated cranberry, blueberry and strawberry flavours for example, milk extracts, marine and vegetable oils, herbs like mint and spices like black pepper; the list goes on and on...

Bait nutritional biological availability versus flavour attractors: Many anglers see baits that work in terms of how much protein it contains or if it incorporates flavours to make it work. The funny thing is that when Richworth first introduced readymade frozen boilies to the carp fishing anglers, they used flavours such as Tutti Fruitti, Honey Yucatan, and Salmon Supreme. These labels became associated with the bait to the point that the main question was what flavour are you on.

In the case of Richworth at least, many of these flavours are very far from mere labels and do indeed have bioactive properties. However, flavours do not constitute nutritional significance in baits but the bulk ingredients certainly do! Suffice to say, you can eat something but it does not mean you can digest it and actually use it as food! Best nutritional bait design is about bait with as near 100 percent digestibility within the fish, basically to get the maximum impact upon fish internally for repeated successful consumption of bait which leads to higher chances of takes on such a bait.

Thermogenic ingredients and substances: You might have heard about these in regards to dieting or body-building. These are foods which require as much (if not more) energy to digest as the energy they actually provide as food. In effect these ingredients will affect the inner systems of the fish so that when it eats your bait it is stimulated into eating more and there are many ingredients which supplement this effect including taste enhancing feed stimulants and growth stimulants etc.

This whole subject is very significant and exploiting it can lead to really great bait edges indeed in terms of ground baits and hook baits of many forms. Spices are a perfect example of very potent but very economical ingredients for homemade baits and ground baits etc.

Bait component olfactory potential impacts on fish and chemoreception: Having mentioned a bit about what baits do to effect fish to make them want to eat your bait or mouth it at least this might be of use. One of the greatest advantages you can have is to glean which substances naturally trigger fish feeding in your chosen fish and to find out exactly how to use them in a bait. If you can team this up with other senses stimulation such as sound, sight or leverage of subtle fish electrical detection and orientation in water you will be far better equipped to exploit and even repeatedly create many more intensive feeding situations than other anglers!

Fish feeding triggers compared to fish attractors: This is linked to the above regarding exploiting fish olfaction and chemoreception, it is the use of fish feeding trigger which have very much more likelihood of stimulating true fish feeding than artificial attractors like many flavours for instance.

Essential nutritional bait ingredient tastes and smells versus artificial flavour tastes and smells: There is no reason why you need to use flavours in some situations, especially if you know a bit more about the inherent flavours produced by you bait ingredients and additives themselves. You might be surprised to find that many of the chemicals producing a characteristic odor in water in bread or milk for example, can also be found in many artificial flavours...

Stimulation of all interrelated fish senses to leverage maximum response to bait: This is about looking at all the senses a fish has and incorporating the means to exploit them together in your bait and rig. It makes logical sense that one great way to induce the most takes for an average skilled angler is to exploit the natural senses of the fish sought.

All the senses are naturally used together and the stimuli is processed in the brain to make instinctive and learnt decisions to consume your bait or flee from it! This is just a sample of how you can obtain more control over your baits performance and your resulting fish catching success, and although some areas appear complex it is easy for anyone to use these things with just a little more know-how!

 

Solution

Fish are evolved to detect your bait components especially well when they are wet. This means that elements of your bait are able to become fully or at least semi-mixed or hydrated with water. Hydration of your bait is also very important because in order for many species fish to efficiently digest your free bait it needs to be hydrated. Most baits will finally fully absorb water over time depending on many factors regarding the bait and its ingredients and so on.

Hygroscopicity

This is an extremely productive property of your baits additives, liquids and ingredients to attract and absorb water. Think about it; these can ensure that your bait absorbs water even if it has been sealed pretty effectively by using proteinous eggs or similar binders in the mix to help bind it together as in boilies. Many types of pellets are heated as part of the shaping and extrusion process and depending upon the ingredients used, this can very much impact upon the bait performance in attracting and stimulating fish into feeding. Simple examples of hygroscopic substances are salt, yeast extract and glycerine as used in flavours.

Permeability

As with pellets, boilies are often made to make money as opposed to function as optimum fish stimulators. In fact it is obvious that some of the most effective baits are able to freely disperse their stimulators and attractors without limitation into the water column. However, such baits do not fit the criteria of many anglers who might prefer to have the same bait in a position in a swim for 48 hours or more for instance, before it becomes too soft to be practical as a hook bait. This does not stop permeability being a great fish-catching factor in both hook baits and ground baits of all kinds!

Density

Baits can differ in their productivity in part due to how much their ingredients have been compressed and this can seriously impact upon the rates of release of attractors, flavours, tastes etc into the water. Many machine-produced boilies and pellets actually have standard amounts of compression and density which I'm sure fish recognise in baits over time. I've certainly noticed that making free baits with extremely open texture and not using rolling in the bait making process results can be very much improved. Conversely, I do like to use hook baits that are bullet hard as I get the feeling that these are more difficult for fish to deal with for a range of reasons, not least because proportionately very few anglers fish with such hard baits these days.

Porosity:

This is a bait property which is again related to how effectively your bait ingredients and additives etc can escape from your bait in order to become part of the water so fish can detect them and follow the leaking trail back to its source. Also porosity is linked to many other important areas in bait. One for instance is the ability of your bait to hold liquids such as liquid amino acid mixtures or liquid fish protein or a concentrated flavour. Many bait ingredients can be used to make you bait hold more liquid and egg biscuit and even bread crumbs or ground-up pellets of many kinds can be exploited.

Solubility: This is related to the above and is one of the keys to a great fishing bait, but it is probably one of the least mentioned bait factors while the hot topics may be flavours or protein in baits. The fact is that although nitrogen and amino acids are essential to fish, as found in whole protein foods, it is the water soluble fraction of this protein that does the work of catching fish. If this was not so, then the top fish attractors would probably have zero solubility. Having looked into the solubilities of a huge range of bait ingredients and liquids and how they mix or do not mix together, it is still obvious that even those ingredients termed insoluble as with those stimulating fish oils or hemp oil for instance, these still do not have zero insolubility... The use of fish feed triggering liquid lecithins in baits helps with the semi-solubility of many substances and is especially effective in winter and low water temperatures.

Texture

Bait texture again can have a great bearing upon desired bait function in many ways. Many anglers get the impression that if a bait has some kind of crunch factor then it will be more acceptable than one without. While it is true that many baits have coarse ingredients within them naturally such as in many fish meals and bird foods, crunch factors has much more to it. These materials can aid in food gut transit and growth of fish intestinal villi which means more of your bait will get digested over time thus making it a more energy efficient and preferable food source. Fish are stimulated by sound and sound is very obvious in water! The coarse ingredients you use can obviously improve bait nutritional value too and use of hempseeds, and crushed cockle shell are both proven.

Buoyancy

Bait buoyancy can be the most important final deciding factor in catching any particular fish and is directly related to exactly how your fish feeding behaviour (in the presence of bait) deals specifically with your bait and rig. Even when baits with excellent nutritional stimulation in an innovative form having been pre-baited in a water for months, these may not produce the biggest possibly wisest fish in a water. It may be a surprise to find that after months of trying, using a critically balanced bait instead of a normal sinking bait, or even over-weighted or pop-up bait is the only change necessary to catch the wisest fish...

By Tim Richardson.

But what makes a fish bite at a bait and get near enough you hook to get caught anyway? There are very many reasons a fish will investigate and sample a bait or common object. Fish are very highly attuned to their aquatic environment having lots of specialised cells inside and outside the body to detect things like electric fields, sounds and pressure waves, light, movement, smells and tastes of things in the water giving-off myriad signals for the fish to detect.

It is any wonder that we get bites at all with all the aquatic clutter of distracting signals that fish experience all the time. But fish do respond to many things in very tiny levels. Many fish can detect the movements of tiny food items like water fleas swimming around them, and detect their size and density in order to decide whether they are worth the energy expenditure of feeding on. Many omnivorous fish are also opportunistic predators and many is the time carp have been caught on spinners and plugs.

Worms are a very successful bait for many species like catfish and tench, not least because of the movements they make in the water, and any angler who has ever used live bait will agree it works better when it is still actually moving and active! (Dead maggots on the hook do not match-up to fresh live ones for example.) In the case of worms and maggots it is obvious that many species will reliably instantly chomp on them with no need whatsoever of introducing any free baits into your swim beforehand and this might pose a good question.

Apart from movement there are other things going on. Many fish species have good eyesight up close to things even if they do have an area directly in front of them that might be blind. As long as there is sufficient light then various colours and shades of bait can improve your catch rate and at night luminous glowing baits can make a difference.

Many fish depend on movement instead of sight at night but other signals are used such as reception of minute electrical fields issuing from live creatures for example. Carp depend predominantly upon chemical stimuli along with detection of tiny electrical fields and pressure waves for instance, which all enable these fish to orientate themselves in the water and to locate food. Fish can orient their preferred location by sensing the level of dissolved carbon dioxide (carbonic acid) present in the water, and they are very sensitive to water pH changes. (Fishing bait substances that can elicit pH changes when realised into the water column certainly impact upon fish nearby.)

In the case of bass for instance, they utilise whatever ambient light there is the atmosphere by sitting in dark shady position in the water and waiting for prey fish to silhouette themselves so giving themselves away to the predatory bass. Some fish have more highly developed radar which is similar to the side-scan radar of a submarine. Although dolphins are mammals, you might wonder how they detect sand eels hidden underneath the sand!

Hormones are secreted by fish to identify themselves, to find a mate, to enable tight shoaling behaviour essential for survival, as in young big mouth bass for instance.

But 2 of the most significant aspects of how fish experience their world which we can use to exploit in order to catch, are the olfaction and chemoreception systems. They sound complicated, but basically olfaction is the smell sense and chemoreception is the taste sense and although there is far more to this simplistic description, when combined together, the taste and smell of your bait can truly determine if you will catch or not.

Fish have special receptor cells both externally and internally which electrochemically interact with water-born chemical stimuli. It may not come as a surprise that you can sniff and taste a beef burger and love it one minute, then when you've had 10, a biofeedback mechanism from your stomach to your brain tells you no more please.

Fish have many biofeedback mechanisms and rhythms related to feeding habits and efficient food digestion. Like humans, they regulate how fish get turned on by food, in this case our bits.

What if you could get inside their heads and influence their behaviour from there, that would be cool right!? Well we can easily make baits impact upon fish senses and on their brain chemical and hormones to incite a favourable feeding behaviour response to our baits and hugely improve our chances of catching fish. Just consider this; when you drink plain water why do you prefer a sweet fruit juice or can of Cola. That is the principle I'm talking about.

In carp fishing, there is an over-used phrase that supposedly describes what baits fish prefer: “Sometimes they want ice-cream instead of roast beef.” But why is this an interesting phrase? Well fish can be stimulated into feeding by at least 6 obvious types of stimuli, from sound and movement to hormones and electrical fields, to sight, and others too, but more specifically these.

Fish feeding is stimulated by substances which approximate or mimic substances found naturally in their environment and also those that are not. So teamed with the substances they naturally respond as in their natural diet for instance, there is a gigantic range of substances you can use in your baits.

The trick in many respects in making fishing bait more exciting to fish is to match the stimulating substances found within their specific natural foods and use these perhaps in more refined and much more concentrated form. For example, when fish are processed one stage produces the water soluble fraction which is often high in quality easily digestible fish protein and fish oils. These 2 substances when used together in a dough or paste, pellet or boilie fishing bait work wonders as they are such naturally potent fish feeding triggers. Other aspects of fishmeal can be analysed to see what turns your fish on. Betaine is used very frequently in carp and catfish fishing baits for the same reason.

But do not forget that flavours substances impact upon and enhance the mass of flavours already inherent in a bait. These flavours and their individual components can be detected by the fish in various concentrations and depending on the fish species. One of the most important substances both flavours and betaine interact with and enhance are the amino acids.

If you add gravy or black pepper or salt to a steak it helps you enjoy it just as much as real ice-cream with that rich Tutti Frutti favour that makes you want more and more. The funny thing is that there is far more vitally essential nutrition in the steak and if you were lost in a jungle you would choose to eat a steak rather than eat an ice-cream as soon as you got out. Why you prefer the steak over the ice-cream is because a steak has nutrition you essentially need to stay alive and without the amino acids and trace minerals needed you body would start to rapidly deteriorate.

The fact that over the decades countless big fish from carp and catfish, to bass, trout, pike and even sharks, have fallen to protein based baits rich in fish essential nutrients means that this is a proven basis for big-fish baits. Add to this the benefits of flavours from natural to synthetic, nature-identical to mixtures of many forms, fishing baits can be made to be constantly unique to keep ahead of the fish and keep you catching!

 

Carp live in an aquatic world where most of the food they eat is based on proteins which can also contain important essential oils which also provide extremely efficient energy and do not predominantly eat carbohydrates as with so many races of humans. Carp have evolved to extract the most energy as possible from the foods available; and this means from proteins especially. Making fishing baits which contain protein ingredients is so important and is in line with carp natural dietary (and naturally stimulatory bait requirements.)

Proteins are composed of amino acids which carp can easily detect and find stimulating; and there are around 10 plus essential ones which carp cannot synthesise in there own body and must consume in their food to survive. The carp essential amino acids list includes: Histidine, leucine, isoleucine, valine, tryptophan, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine and arginine and carp will eat foods and baits containing any of these as they are essential to them. Exploiting protein ingredients in your baits is obviously a good thing as you are offering something fish need to survive.

Our bodies and carp bodies have evolved and adapted to extract energy in the most efficient ways from food found in our natural environments. With carp we can simulate or even boost the natural attraction and stimulation of substances found in their natural foods in our baits. The range of ingredients, extracts, liquid attractors, flavors etc we can use to exploit carp natural food detection senses is phenomenal and ensures we can always make unique homemade baits!

Amino acid needs of carp are important because we can exploit them even in very simple baits to induce better feeding on baits and more bites. But these essential are not absolutely necessary to catch fish on homemade baits; far from it in fact and you can very often catch fish on competitive pressured fisheries on simple carbohydrate wheat and soya type baits which are extremely economical to make! To keep ahead of the fish you might simply just change certain aspects of the bait like attractors such as flavours or even treacles, honey, molasses, cordial syrups, or liqueurs etc.

In the UK many fishermen have the attitude that carp baits not made from very expensive protein ingredients are crap baits and catch few big fish, but the truth is that you can catch as many fish on carbohydrate based baits if you know what you are doing and have enough experience of other ingredients and how to fish such baits well and save yourself a fortune, which is what I have done successfully for decades. You just keep adjusting levels and types of stimulatory and attractive substances to create new baits regularly, so keeping ahead of the fish; and many big fish often fall to new unfamiliar baits with good reason...

These days there is an abundance of over-stocked carp fisheries to choose from and your bait, whatever it may be is generally regarded as natural food by these hungry fish. This is one big reason why homemade simple baits will catch anywhere, but then any bait fished correctly will catch the biggest, wariest fish on the richest of waters. When you know a bit more about bait and how to really make it work for you efficiently are far reduced costs, the rewards will shock you; I have made homemade baits for decades and saved myself a fortune and caught enough big fish on readymade dominated fisheries to say that 80 percent of all my homemade baits over the years have caught big fish whatever they have been based on!

Many carp fishermen get confused between the nutritional aspects of bait as opposed to the stimulatory aspect and assume that a bait absolutely needs to be totally nutritionally attractive and stimulating as a complete food in order to do the job, but this is just not true. Many perceived simple ingredients may have very surprising nutritional attraction in any key aspect whether it be vitamins, or minerals, oils or some other aspect like simulating something which carp naturally eat confidently (many flavours do this but have zero nutritional value.) It is a fact however, that amino acids rank among the most highly feeding stimulatory substances for carp and so exploiting this aspect in your baits is advantageous, but then you have endless other possibilities and combinations to choose from, to save you money and hook you those dream fish; all you need is to know a bit more about bait!

The fact is that any bait which the fish have little reason to fear and having many biophysical and even psychoactive reasons to consume for instance, will be sampled, at least once. After all, you only need one take from a fish to hook it even if it never even attempts to sample that bait ever again! But what in truth can actually make your bait stand out from the rest when fish can quite possibly eat and experience many different baits over the course of a day or a year?

Well this is one are where the much popularised theory of the high nutritional value (HNV) bait can seem a bit over-sold. How can a carp decide to eat one bait in preference to many other baits if they all contain very well balanced stimulating and essential nutrition within the ingredients and additives and so on? Do carp even have an instinctive food preference system at all?

It is clear that if carp or humans did not have such a mechanism we would have died out long ago. In fact humans would not have evolved because we are very long-lost descendants of teleost fish; we share many similarities in our essential amino acid requirements. These are the building blocks of our body's proteins and are essential in most of our bodies processes too including respiration and fish and human metabolism...

Without the absolutely essential amino acids from proteinn in the diet we would simply become unhealthy, diseased, weakened and die. Imagine what would happen to us as ancient humans if all we ate all day was peanuts; which are limited in the amino acid profile they offer and lacking in some of these extremely vital nutrients. When unfavourable conditions come along, like cold temperatures in winter with the biological stresses upon the immune system this causes, do you think our cave man ancestors bodies would have been resilient and healthy enough to cope?

In fish and in humans there very obviously a highly evolved survival system which instinctively tells us by biofeedback and other means which food in the environment will enable us to survive. Discernment may be for example via taste, smell and many other senses (plus ones yet to be fully revealed I'm sure.) It is obvious that organisms lacking this system have not survived; everything must fulfil its essential needs.

Now back to our carp fishing baits and what makes a bait truly stand out. Let's say that based upon all the data that marine scientists and fish nutritionists etc have to offer, we have a range of highly nutritional carp fishing baits which all catch fish on a range of different waters. These waters may differ in size, fishing pressure placed upon them, the strains of carp stocked, pH (alkalinity etc) and richness of natural food and its availability throughout the year etc.

You would expect that fished side by side all these baits would continue to produce fish year in year out equally well. The fact is that they do not, and this is just one of the key reasons why there is such a wide variety of bait recipes, ingredients, flavours formulas and so on (ignoring bait company product strategy etc.) Apart from all the variables concerned with the actual fishing pressures; which fish have been previously caught on which baits, natural food availability and other impacts upon results, there is one effect which appears mostly ignored.

This factor is the impact upon fish biologically in terms of essential nutritional needs satisfied by the baits themselves; which can in fact actually produce an effect which prevents fish eating more bait, even without being hooked on it. It stands to reason that when a carp has satisfied its essential nutritional requirements it no longer needs to eat bait, especially in a situation boosted by natural foods made even more abundant due to fish eating bait instead!

You may think that fish will eat the same bait indefinitely, but where the above effect occurs teamed with the anxiety and behavioural impacts caused by previous hooking on a bait then results can certainly diminish over time. So it means that a bait needs an extra edge other than just biological nutrition value, purely receptor stimulation, metabolism stimulation, pure digestibility and assimilation or conversion into body mass efficiency, or even superior basic energy efficiency. This edge could well mean a psychological or psychoactive edge.

These are the kind of effects that can truly sort out the baits which stand out as continually consistently successful against other proven nutritional baits. This is an area the true bait masters expertly exploit, (even using poorer nutrition carbohydrate based baits,) but which you will hear very little about!