Mystery Fish Caught on Different Baits?

[peterjg]

I love trying out odd baits and odd bait additives, I suppose it's in the forlorn hope of finding a bait which is irresistible to roach - I know it's impossible but it is good fun trying. A couple of times earlier this summer my wife and I fished a club lake which is full of carp and is reputed to contain some very big roach? On these two occasions we used sections of king prawns and both times we caught some very decent rudd which we didn't know were in there! I've tried king prawns on a few visits since with absolutely no more success with the rudd, why, where did they disappear to?
I read once of someone having great catches of specimen roach on mussel where previously none of any size were caught on conventional baits. So do some specimen fish exist totally undiscovered just waiting for someone daft enough to use a different bait?
Your thoughts?

 

[Ray Roberts]

I fished a club lake using sections of king prawn for perch this summer. I caught some decent rudd, a couple of tench too but no perch. I had fished this water a few times previously with more usual baits and never had a rudd. I was surprised at how large a piece they would take to be honest.

 

[mikench]

A few years ago i used prawns on a local lake for crucians and caught a dozen to 2lb. This was a tactic recommended by an older club member who only used prawns for bait. Subsequently i tried it again and caught nothing.

 

[Alan Whitty]

Sadly baits are like tackle, they go with fashion, most often it's the bait that's thrown in most that equates to success, look at cheese, in my early days fishing I used to catch loads of quality roach, bream and barbel on it, now it's basically a chub bait, stewed wheat, I can remember bumper catches of roach on it when I wasn't fishing well enough as a lad, thirty, perhaps forty pounds of fish to a pound at a time I struggled to catch ten little roach, today, yes you catch on it, but nothing like we used to...

 

[Philip]

I think if people used more unusual baits we would see more previously uncaught fish being caught. Some fish will never be captured on certain baits but may slip up for something else.

For example uncaught Carp that are often seen but never caught on classic baits like boiles but perhaps may fall to a natural if people used them more.

 

[@Clive]

I used to stalk carp in the marginal weed on the River Vienne using garden snails set a few inches under a wine cork. I walked the flood bank and if I saw the weed being disturbed I quietly slid down the bank and dropped the snail in under the rod end. It was good sport. In recent years the weed has been too wide and the depth too low.

 

[John Aston]

What a stunning looking fish . I'm normally allergic to carp pictures but that is special .

 

[john r stockburn]

What a stunning looking fish . I'm normally allergic to carp pictures but that is special .

That is how carp should look, not like Vietnamese pot bellied mud pigs

 

[@Clive]

Here is another one, this time from a lake. I used to go to an remote corner of a big lake in summer. It meant crossing three fences and braving Limousin cattle. Now it is out of bounds. I had this fish twice in three years. Once on prawn and the second time on popped up grilled maize.

 

[peterjg]

Re Philip's reply. I think he is right, if we used unusual baits then maybe we'd catch fish that just won't touch our usual offerings. Taking this a bit further, for instance prebaiting definitely can and does work: we can attract fish and teach them to accept our baits - then we start to catch them and train them that our baits are dangerous! The repeated use of boilies immediately spring to mind, the difference in flavour and colour is secondary to their eventual fear of little round balls. However; the problem with unusual baits is will the fish recognise our bait as a source of food?

 

[@Clive]

That is a good question. Before I came to France I spent most of my fishing time on unfished waters. In France virtually all my fishing is done in unfished or lightly fished areas. I have found that most cyprinids will take maize and sweetcorn even if they haven't seen it before. I had one large chub spook at it, but that could be down to it spotting me. They readily take luncheon meat, pellets and boilies too. I colour luncheon meat using paprika, but I have caught carp, bream and barbel from unfished waters on the pink stuff.

However, I have had some strange results with bread. More often than not they ignore it. I fed pieces of bread to a shoal of chub and every one of them fled. This went on for 10 minutes. But when I rolled up some blue cheese and threw small pellets of it in they fought over it. I made my own bread using yeast, not chemical raising agent and it was no better received. Mullet in freshwater can be caught on bread if you wait long enough.

 

[peterjg]

Clive, I use bread more than other bait but there is one lake that I fish where it is useless, cheese for me has always been very hit and miss. Another favourite bait that I use is flavoured macaroni, it works instantly even where I am sure it is not used by other anglers, also it works both summer and winter. Yet another bait used a lot is wheat but this is not nearly so effective in the winter months, it's rarely used by others but still needs no prebaiting either. So three baits made from wheat which work instantly, what's the attraction when they are so different?
I'm sure that there are fish in our waters that we are totally unaware of. A totally different bait required maybe?

 

[John Aston]

The ironic thing is that, in often using lobworm for barbel, I suspect I am in a very small minority of barbel anglers . Nearly everyone I see feeds heavily with pellet and fishes with pellet or boilie , often delivered with huge feeders . in the 90s I remember telling a lad on a carp lake I was fishing bread - and catching when nobody else was- and he looked at me as if I were a Venusian when I mentioned I freelined it . I'm sure that on some waters baits like maggot ,worm, bread or cheesepaste are the new exotics.

 

[@Clive]

My opinion is that if you examine the contents of these 'old fashioned' baits you will discover that they are rich in the important B vitamins. Bread, wheat, cheese, pulses, luncheon meat, etc. all contain B1, B2 & B3. I'm convinced that fish are attracted to those vitamins.

 

[Alan Whitty]

I believe we treat fish like they have a masters degree in dietary content, they do not and like all wild creatures they eat the most readily available food source at any one time, one that uses as little energy to gather, the only thing against that is being caught, if you eat ten baits before you get hooked it's obvious the fish are going to be less keen than if eating ten thousand grains of hemp and never getting hooked, there are so many variables it I'd impossible to quantify...

 

[@Clive]

Fish like other animals have the capability to recognise nutrients and their value to the animal's well being.

Frontiers | Nutrient Sensing Systems in Fish: Impact on Food Intake Regulation and Energy Homeostasis

Evidence obtained in recent years in a few species, especially rainbow trout, supports the presence in fish of nutrient sensing mechanisms. Glucosensing capa...

www.frontiersin.org

TLDR

Since sensing and responding to fluctuations in environmental nutrient levels is a requisite for life, is not surprising that different organisms are able to detect extracellular and intracellular levels of sugars, amino acids, and lipids. The sensing of a specific nutrient may occur directly through binding of the sensed molecule to the sensor, or indirectly through detection of a related molecule that reflect nutrient abundance (Ogunnowo-Bada et al., 2014; Efeyan et al., 2015). We provide in the next sections a summary of the findings obtained in fish about glucose and fatty acid sensors.

Research carried out in recent years provided information for the presence and functioning of putative nutrient sensing systems either in peripheral or central areas of the few fish species assessed to date regarding this issue, mainly rainbow trout, as summarized.......

 

[Alan Whitty]

We've been here before Clive, carp pellets don't hold half the nutritional value of a halibut pellet, but they still catch fish, in matches guys catch big bags of carp feeding nothing using sweetcorn as bait(very low nutritional value), where people feeding 'quality' baits don't get a sniff, so I believe they are like us where a strategically placed Mars bar or packet of crisps gets a 'bite' on a regular basis....lol.

 

[Peter Jacobs]

The strangest I ever encountered was in Norway when fishing the Glomma river for Vederbuk (Ide) back in the days when we had to buy maggots in tiny quantities from a sports shop.
(this in the days before we started to import maggots ourselves in much larger quantities)

We ran out of bait after a couple of hours but were catching specimen fish every cast.
My then fishing buddy Peter (nobber) Knight* tried the silver paper from his fag packet which really did the business. My packs of Dunhill were soon pressed into a service that I’m sure Alfred never envisioned.

* Pete’ is well know to Alan.

 

[Philip]

Thats interesting...was it the silver paper or the tabbaco smell that made them have it i wonder ?

 

[Peter Jacobs]

Thats interesting...was it the silver paper or the tabbaco smell that made them have it i wonder ?

It worked equally well with the gold Dunhill paper as well as the silver paper from Pete’s packet.

I hadn’t thought about the tobacco aroma to be honest.

In those days we were paying over £8 (equivalent) for about 30 maggots in packs designed for ice fishing, but soon started our import of large quantities from a bait supplier close to Heathrow.