Unfortunately only experience on the bank helps when it comes to these topics which is why you rarely see anything in print about watercraft. Anglers instead look for short cuts in other departments which will hopefully give them an edge, such as rigs and bait.
As I’ve said many times before, I think rigs is mainly down to being confident in what you are using. If you find something that works for you, it will very likely work at lots of other waters. Of course there are advancements in the rig world, but a lot of what we see today is merely reinventing the wheel. Just ask the older anglers out there and they will tell you they’ve seen the latest wonder rigs under different names from years gone by.
The bait world, on the other hand, is completely different. Billions of pounds is spent within the human food industry each year to find new ingredients to promote health and wellbeing. Something you might not know is that a large proportion of these products are then used in fishing baits. The other portions are made up of food stuff from the animal and aquatics industries, again trades that have billions of pounds thrown at them. The same amount of research is not spent on rigs so it’s safe to say that the bait world is advancing at a rapid rate by comparison.
Of course marketing plays a big part in promoting baits. Adverts, articles and catches during the field-testing stages all help to pump the message out to the masses. It always makes me laugh when I see anglers on forums say that field tests on bait are never actually undertaken. I can’t speak for the smaller companies but I know that the bigger companies like Nash, Solar, Mainline, Nutrabaits etc most definitely conduct long term tests before releasing something to the market. I’ve been involved with such tests myself and you can look back at some of the past articles I have written to check this out if you are interested.
Two years ago on the legendary Woldview syndicate I was given a batch of bait known as Key 6 to try out. I ended up getting a telling off from Nash HQ for mentioning the bait in an article as it wasn’t ready for resale. That bait was a variation of The Key which has only just been released to the public. A long time has passed between those dates and lots of variations of it have been trialed before the finished product was decided on. It is a bait which started on the drawing board, then went to the tank tests, then the trials and then to the shops. Many hours and days have been spent perfecting it and trust me when I say it has been worth the wait.
There have been lots of good baits hit the carping market over the last twenty-odd years. There have been quite a few really exceptional ones too. Baits which fall into the latter category include the S Mix from Nash in the early 1990s, The Grange from Mainline in the late 1990s, Trigga from Nutrabaits towards the turn of the millennium, Club Mix from Solar in the early noughties and The Krill from Sticky in more recent times. All of these baits really turned waters over. I’m not just on about one or two venues either; I’m on about hundreds of them. So many in fact, it wasn’t advertising that made people aware of the results, it was the grapevine. Wherever these baits went they caught and they produced hundreds of big fish relatively quickly – the real indication of when a bait is something special.
I accept that a new rig on a water is capable of giving an angler an edge, especially if the venue has been dominated by one specific method. However, I’ve seen very few instances of new rigs turning over waters, especially when compared with baits. It’s normally just hype which creates the talk surrounding rigs and then the probability factor that someone will drop onto the fish and catch a biggie. In the last twenty-odd years I’d say that only the bent hook rig and perhaps the choddy have had a noticeable impact on the sport, but even then I think a lot of the talk has been created by hype and the numbers game more than anything (i.e. a rig becoming fashionable).
Bait is completely different as it draws the carp into picking up a rig. It plays a primary role in attracting the fish and there is a definite edge in being on something new. There is therefore an even bigger edge to being on a really good bait, especially in the early stages of its use on a water. I saw Orchid Lake turned over by the S Mix in 1994, the carp going absolutely crazy within no time of it being introduced. There were reeds bending and fish fizzing all over the place as they rooted it out. It was incredible to see, and that is exactly the same kind of thing which happened with the other great baits I mentioned.
When I was originally asked to compile this feature it was intended that I write about my own catches. The reason I’ve not yet mentioned my recent fishing is that it was important to set the scene. I needed to explain my thoughts on great baits as they don’t come along very often.
This winter has been really kind to me. I’ve not actually done a great deal of fishing since October when I went to France and caught an 83lb common from Echo Pool whilst using The Key. In November I managed a few nights here and there and caught carp to just over 40lb, again while using the same bait. I then didn’t fish until a few days before Christmas. The conditions looked good for a winter carp and I decided on a short trip to Pond Three at Emmotland in East Yorkshire. I have fished this lake quite a lot in the past and in all honesty I have really struggled in the winter on there. Over the years I’ve had hardly any success in cold weather there. It was therefore a great surprise to see me holding two fish in mid-December! One of these turned out to be the biggest mirror in the lake, weighing in at a very impressive 35lb – an absolute monster for the north.
