STANDING ON MY OWN TWO FEET

This is a series of occasional articles I hope will help anglers like me. I’m not an expert; far from it.


I just like to investigate additional options. I believe in thinking outside the box and although many of the articles I’m about to offer you may be far from original, the aim of the series is to kick-start improving anglers like me to try and test new theories that may lead us beyond the text book.

Maybe I should learn how to follow simple instructions but I’ve got this inquisitive nature that makes me ask hundreds of questions. And if I can’t learn more, then I’ll make it up as I go along until I get it right.

I’m positive that many of my concepts and ideas have been flogged to death and in fact whatever I apply to my fishing has already been proven and tested by other anglers. But the facts remain, I can’t sit on the bank not feeling confident – and whilst I do I’ll be looking for the next edge.

What I hope is that it will be a launch pad for some great discussion on the forum where, between us, we can create and discuss new and exciting theories that even the experts haven’t thought of.

THE SCENT OF US MERE HUMANS!

Glug pot.jpgGlug with baits.jpgOn two separate occasions now I’ve read that it takes up to 30 minutes for the human scent to leave a bait if handled by humans. I suppose my first question has to be, is this true? I’m also aware that fish have an ability to smell things up to 1000 times more easily than us mere mortals. Is this correct too? If it is, then how do we go about handling baits in order to shortcut the alleged 30 minute time zone?

You maybe aware that I fish a fair amount with both Cakey and Big Rik. Whilst putting the world to rights on an overnight session, Cakey relayed to me that he won’t fish within 24 hours of putting petrol in his car, as he believes that the smelling sense of the fish is far beyond just sensitive. The whole subject of smell intrigues me no end, so my automatic response is to focus on how I can tackle this?

Although I have a potential solution and yes, it may have been done before, I would like to offer this up to the forum for debate and see if between us and incurring the help of our online experts, we can improve the theory or blow it out of the water.


Glugging System
Here goes….whilst fishing Hunts Corner at or charity fish-in earlier this year, Rik introduced me to a superb and handy bait glugging aid (pictured here). For me this was the perfect solution in carrying around pre-soaked baits that meant I wouldn’t need to take 500 kilo of bait with me to each session. Once at the bankside I would pull out my tube (oooer sir!), get the baiting needle warmed up, bait my hairs and then chuck out and set the traps. Once the baits were out I would sit there scouring the venue but at the same time fight off this nagging feeling that my baits had been handled and that it may take up to 30 minutes for my scent to escape.

Now if you’re anything like me, the night before a session is like Christmas Eve as a kid. Put simply, I can’t sleep due to being too excited. Which means, although my intentions will be to arrive at first light and set-up, the fact remains, I’m normally there whilst it’s still dark.

One of my recent sessions was no exception, I arrived all too eager and at least one hour before first light. I was fishing a venue where it was a known fact the feeding cycle was between dark and first light so the night before I decided that to help me power out my rods as soon as I got there I would need to shortcut the baiting of my hooks in the dark. A simple solution was to drill my baits, thread them on the hair, apply the boilie stops and put the whole rig including the swivel into my glug pot the night before, so when I arrived I only had to tie my mainline to the swivel.


Pre-glugged baits
I was using stiff ‘D’ rigs with bait bands for both bottom baits and pop-ups, and although as a rule I would stretch out the rigs on a rig board, etc, I was just curling the rig and placing the whole lot into the glug. This solution was perfect for tackling up speedily at the bank side, but by accident, I’d realised that it also overcome my nagging issues of the human scent being on the baits for 30 minutes or so. I had a take within the first ten minutes and have used it ever since with success. Another point it proved to me was that recently I had a great days fishing and landed 9 out of ten takes, which led me to believe that the curling of the line whilst in the glug, hadn’t affected my rigs.

These were my findings and I’m using them to my advantage, but I’d like to ask the forum the following questions:

  1. Do you support the theory, that the human scent may take 30 minutes to disappear in water? And
  2. can you list the potential disadvantages in glugging the bait as well as the rig as I’d really like to debate this and investigate other theories in which to overcome the problem?

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