Fiberglass Fish Verses Traditional Skin Mount Taxidermy

As a world renowned wildlife artist with more then 25 years of passionate commitment to the production of high quality fish mounts (skin mounts), fiberglass fish replicas and habitat recreations, I am convinced that a fish replica produces a far superior fish mount when compared to traditional methods of taxidermy.

There are several reasons why I would choose a replica over the traditional mount. When doing a mounting a fish in the traditional method, the taxidermist takes the trophy fish and creates a silhouette stencil of the fish by tracing the fish. He would then proceed to make a large incision down the backside of the fish in order to remove the carcass from the fish. Once the carcass has been removed from the fish skin, the taxidermist will begin to flesh and remove all excess meat and tissue from the skin. This is done in hopes of reducing the chances of the skin rotting and creating any pockets of oil that would eventually migrate to the surface of the scale causing the final paint to delaminate then flake.

After the fish skin has been cleaned and treated, the silhouette of the stencil is then transferred onto a solid piece of Styrofoam. The taxidermist would then begin to carve a Styrofoam armature as close to the original carcass as possible. This is one of the most challenging parts of fish taxidermy. If the Styrofoam armature is not carved identically to the fish, the fish mount will end up looking quite distorted. In most cases in the taxidermy world, we would have to carve the armature smaller than the original trophy fish to allow the skin to shrink. If this step is not done properly, the incision on the back of the fish mount will become quite visible and will then have to be covered with felt or an epoxy filler to hide it.

I personally have done close to three thousand fish mounts in my career and have become an expert at carving fish bodies. I have come to the realization that the client's fish mount will never have the same body structure and will always be smaller than the original dimensions and weight. Once the fish has been properly taxied onto the armature, all shrunken areas on the mount must be filled; for example, cheeks, caudal peduncle and fin bases. In most cases the throat and gills are also removed due to excessive amounts of trapped oil.

At this stage the fish is left to dry for several months, the longer the better. In oily fish like salmon and trout up to a year is to be expected. During the time the skin mount dries, the taxidermist should clean the fish down with a solvent to remove accumulating surface oil. This should be done throughout the complete drying process. Once the fish mount is no longer bleeding oil, the assembly and painting process begins.

Most taxidermists fill in the remaining shrunken areas on the fish mount with very rigid automobile bondo virtually eliminating the required flexibility of the entire fish mount. Bondo does not shrink and swell during climate changes like the skin will and often results in fine cracks developing where the car bondo is feathered and filled onto the mount. This problem is compounded during the high humidity of the summer months as the filled areas on the fish are unable to react to the excessive levels of moisture present during this season. When this part of the process is complete, the fish mount is now ready to be painted.

The same issues that were created with the bondo are now going to apply with the paint. The natural pores on the fish have a tendency to swell during the summer months, allowing additional oil to bleed up to the surface causing the paint to come away from the fish mount. To avoid these issues two simple words come to mind fiberglass fish.

Why? it is rather simple.

The way we generate our fish replicas is a relatively complex process but extremely effective. To create a replica of a fish using our techniques, a fresh fish is required to start. Posing the fish naturally is one of the keys to a good replica. Once the fish has been posed we begin to take a cast off the throat of the fish by using a liquid molding material the same viscosity as water. This molding material will flow through the complete throat giving the fish replica the exact throat details originally found on the fresh fish. The second step would be to take an rtv silicone rubber in its liquid state and pour this on the complete fish encapsulating the fish entirely. The reason we use a flexible silicone for our molding process is that it allows us to peel the soft rubber mold off the fish reproduction eliminating any chance of detail loss. Once the silicone is cured, we build a fiberglass jacket. This aids in keeping the natural body structure of the fresh fish. Once the fiberglass jacket is cured we then proceed to mold the opposite side.

We now have a silicone mold off of a fresh fish. One of the significant advantages of this process is that it eliminates the incision typically found on a mounted fish, and because the mold was generated off of a fresh fish the silicone will pick up the exact anatomy originally found on that fish. Our fish replicas will have minute details such as each and every scale replicated exactly. In fact, you will be able to count the growth rings on the scales and age the fish. On small scaled fish like lake trout and brook trout, it is even common to see the rib cage through the skin and scale tissue.

After the fish has been cast, a fish of that species, in that slot size is no longer required for a mold. This enables a client to catch a fish and then release it, allowing us to reproduce a replica of the fish that has been returned to its natural environment.

Fish replicas when done properly should have flawless skin alignment as well as scale and throat details. Our oldest units date back over twenty five years and look as though they have just been completed. Using the highest quality automotive paints and clear- coats, gives us the advantage of working with very stable products that have been designed specifically to withstand extreme climate changes. In other words, the fish replica is not only memorable for the client, it will be shared by generations of families for many years to come.

Take a look at some of our beautiful works of art. Go to: http://www.advancedtaxidermy.com - This quality is years ahead of anyone else.

http://www.advancedtaxidermy.com You will be amazed.

Formulating Big Carp Bait Recipes For More Economical Fishing!

A bait edge for many carp anglers means all too often simply buying a new expensive ready made bait. But you do not need to do this when you can easily make your own homemade liquids to adapt and boost them to differentiate them from every other bait your carp have ever experienced - so achieving more bites from warier often older and much bigger fish! So read on and discover how to catch more (cheaper) big carp now!

When you read the magazine articles or advertorials you so often find a high profile angler raving on about what is or will become the next big thing, the must-have additive that will change your life. But why bother with these when everyone else is going to use them when surely the big point of bait is to put fish at ease to get them to make more mistakes on your hook baits, not scare them by using what everyone else has already hooked them on!

You might be all too aware of the high publicised additives such as halibut pellet oil, tiger nut oil, salmon oil, and hemp oil etc. But just consider for a moment how frequently carp come into contact with free baits and hook baits of so many forms that contain these. Most frequently just one individual oil is used in a bait so it is very easily distinguishable to carp and may well put them on there guard far more than a new substance will!

So how do you make a unique substance that works really well? The options are so vast you would be amazed. Oils vary in just how miscible or not they can be with other substances and to the exact degree they will actually mix with water and other substances. Sometimes it depends on temperatures and amount of time applied to the mixing process as well as other factors such as solvents, surfactants or lecithins etc. There is a fraction of oil that does mix with water in special ways even if only tiny and the same goes for oils mixed with very different substances.

I discovered over 30 years ago that when mixing homemade base mixes very wet that I came up with unique liquids and runny pastes that I could apply to almost any bait to make it completely unique. Getting back to oils, all you need to do is literally experiment with mixing ones you might know are popular. But there is far more advantages in using oils and combinations you simply will not find offered by any bait company.

The quick list of the most popular oils include various plant and marine oils plus others. The list includes fish and other marine oils of various origins and grades, herb and spice oils, vegetable oils such as those from seeds and nuts and fruit oils from berries and citrus fruits for example. There are very many others that will really give you a great edge against all those over-used ones!

If you are on a tight budget lazy you might simply add sunflower oil and mixed nut oil or peanut oil together and add a proportion of liquid lecithins to the mixture. The one from Carpfishingpellets and CW Baits is a very potent form and is like a thick viscous treacle and contrasts highly with some from other bait companies which basically look more like glycerine and are clear and far thinner.

In my special bait secrets ebooks series I really go deeply into things like making bioactive natural flavour-induced oils and even include a table of substances that mix together to what degree including things like sugars, terpenes, oleoresins, amino acids, essential oils etc. Just to be a little different you might add salmon oil to halibut pellet oil, or add garlic oil to hemp oil. Note; the tinned tuna oil that some high profile anglers have raved on about is well over 90 percent sunflower oil which happens to be very healthy but is not the same as pure tuna oil which cost a lot more!

Adding vegetable oils to marine oils is a very beneficial thing because you can achieve a balance of nutritional factors. The ratios of omega oils from 3, 6 and 9 all have various impacts on fish and you have probably read on tins of fish like tuna about the benefits to your heart and circulatory system of omega oils. In long-term baits this ratio is very important and impacts on lipids levels within the body of fish when fed regularly with baits.

Of course there are very many oils you might have heard of like the fish feed-inducing oils, Nod Oil, Nutrabaits Complete Food Oil, and Lee Jackson Ming Oil and so on. But very often either the price is extraordinarily comparatively high and you can make your own much cheaper oil mixtures to match these or the fact is they are already in widespread use and fish may well be wary of them! (Please keep oils refrigerated and avoid any oil oxidation which may harm carp - this includes using less than totally fresh pellets too!)

You might decide to use cheap roasted sesame seed oil or wheat germ oil and add a few things to really make these very different. You might go for cod liver oil or krill oil which is a specialist highly potent antioxidant supplement and an extremely powerful oil - one of the most powerful in the world. Coconut oil is a very nice oil too and again it has outstanding well proven antioxidant benefits. I mention antioxidant benefits here and especially in regard to anti-inflammatory properties of oils as very many great carp bait ingredients, liquids and additves have similar impacts when consumed by the fish and apart from being feeding triggers they actually wean fish onto baits so the fish begin to seek them out but for not just for instinctive health benefits!

Mixing oils is easy but so many carp anglers overlook this edge. I always use a liquid lecithin from my good friend Phil at Carpfishingpellets which is a nutritionally-stimulating feeding trigger and potent emulsifier of oils that improves bait performance and digestion and is a great price too!

Oils are addictive but if you happen to not believe me; just consider how addictive oily crisps and chips are; the salt just enhances what attraction is already there because the body is instinctively drawn to the most energy-efficient food sources and oils are at the top the list although I love to use sugars in carp baits for similar related reasons among others! (Note; every single cell in our and carp bodies is truly self-intelligent and DNA is not necessarily a fixed static thing and it is well-proven that consumption of sugars changes DNA.)

I noticed at least one fishing match has been won by a boy using micro-waved chips! Like us humans, carp are extremely sensitive to the energy-efficiency of their food. But then this is no surprise when you realise that we are the long-lost descendants of ancient teleost fish; of which Cyprindae fish are a part. Oils are very definitely one of the greatest sources of energy for carp in carp baits although oil levels in baits should be kept very low at a maximum of around 5 percent only. Amino acids and protein digestibility factors etc have quite some bearing on the balance of the impact of baits in the long and short-terms too (as well as carbohydrates significantly,) but this get out of the range of this article, but carp process amino acids to a massive degree better in many ways than humans, who by contrast derive far more energy from carbohydrate food sources than protein ones. (The thermogenic impacts of protein in carp baits is a very important aspect of bait design that can be exploited.)

Needless to say carp and humans essentially require energy sources simply in order to breathe and stay and maintain our body functions to actually stay alive; oxygen is part of the reaction with food energy that makes metabolism so important. (This is related to temperature of water in carp in contrast to our highly developed bodily temperature regulation in us warm-blooded humans, but this system actually robs us of energy too so is does have disadvantages compared to carp!)

Catfish love halibut pellets because apart from pre-digested fish protein for instance they are high in oils. But these pellet were designed for fish with much higher lipid requirements and most sea fish and salmonids such as salmon and trout need more lipids or oils and energy requirements than carp do. The emphasis of low oil marine proteins and low oil boilies is obvious as more and more carp anglers become aware of the health implications of using baits with too much oil content. I hate it every time I catch a big carp which has been damaged by the excessive use of oils. Many carp anglers still glug their free baits in excessive oils which is completely irresponsible.

Many carp anglers completely overlook the already significant oil content of their base mixes and unfortunately it is most often the oily fish meal type baits that get the oil glugging treatment. Just so you realise this in terms of the future longevity of our big fish stocks, high-oil halibut pellets and high oil salmon pellets and others are a big cause of fatty protruding livers bulging out of the sides of carp!

The same goes for fish like wels catfish whose rate of metabolism rises much more per 5 degree increase in temperature than carp; in the States in air temperatures around 100 degrees various catfish species really feed well but can you imagine the effect of such temperatures on carp?! There are very powerful reasons why mixing oils to gain not just uniqueness of smell and taste and nutritional benefits are great but other factors too. These are varied but include the ways certain components of oils will impact upon the physiology of carp and other fish, even to the extent of altering mood and behaviours significantly.

Just for example peach and strawberry oil, cranberry and citrus oils have very interesting bioactive effects and these can be added to other oils easily to differentiate them. Palatant oil complexes are a useful starting point to mix with various other oils ensuring the range of enhancers, and varied types of feeding triggers are in your mixture and exploit various internal and external carp sensory receptors simultaneously.

Various receptor cells exist all over carp from the fins, barbells nostrils, flanks and lateral line etc, to inside the roof of the mouth, in the lips and throat and deeper still inside the digestive tract and even in parts of the brain; all working together in highly significant biofeedback loops! (Think about it this; just how do you decide which flavours or brand of flavour of crisps turn you on the most and, once you have discovered one you most like because usually one stands out for you, do you ignore the rest and primarily go looking for the one your senses prefer?)

Similarly, a carp can decide for itself if it really needs or wants to consume your bait, long before it has actually physically picked it up. The old saying about a carp having to sample a bait by mouthing it because it does not have hands is simply misleading! Carp and other fish will often actually rub their bodies against baits in order to more safely detect what they have to offer and often you will get single bleep line bites from wary carp doing this and using other tricks such as physically picking baits up and moving them on their fins which have various densities of specialised receptor cells on their surface!

Many times fish will roll for long periods over baits simply filter-feeding on dissolved substances and other less soluble substances leaching from baits. This is a very significant area to exploit in pulling fish into your swim, and chilli oils and paprika extracts etc are not the limit of long-range attractors! Read my biography to find out more!

By Tim Richardson.

Carp Bait Secrets Do Not Exist - But the Unbiased Truth is They Do!

Whatever anyone says to the contrary - you will always keep on catching fish despite your baits not being sorted down the first, second or third limiting amino acid! In fact the proof of this is absolutely everywhere now and down the decades as very few bait companies have ever been sophisticated enough to design their baits this way! There will always be carp bait secrets both in terms of yet to be discovered scientific discoveries, substances that work despite a lack of scientific basis and those things that work more due to the fact that carp are dynamically associative learning individuals each with a unique capacity for adaptation to new opportunities for available energy - and able to avoid threats because their greatest instinct is for survival!

So obviously anyone who is arrogant enough to state that there is nothing new in carp baits today is very severely deluded! Science is only based on what science knows today yet science knows virtually nothing about most things despite what school books might pretend to condition us to believe! If you are feeling some resistance here it just proves you have been very well-conditioned - just in the same way we ideally would condition fish to our baits!! How many of you realise that subtle electrical fields are detected by carp around your rigs and in the water around your leads, hooks, swivels and even your boilies (full of ion exchangers and electrolytes etc!)

On this basis what can you deduce might be going on in the detection of inert rubber or plastic fake baits too - regardless of whether they reflect or give off ultraviolet light in daytime in turbid waters or at night? Carp being predominantly suction filter feeders spend much of their time with their heads buried in suspended particles when actually actively feeding; so is it any surprise that carp are sensitive to both the infrared and ultraviolet ranges of the light spectrum?! Certain proteins in natural aquatic food items fluoresce or give off electrochemical light energy which I have no doubt carp naturally exploit in detecting food; but carp science has yet to catch up on this point (and which is precisely the point of this article!)

And the trouble with pretty much all but one of the carp magazines (Carp Fisher) is that they are very much blatant advertising vehicles - so how can you possibly spot the real unbiased truth about baits from these today?! It could be argued that most articles about carp baits 25 plus years or more ago were much more aligned with integrity and truth with very little bias in the commercial sense than is seen universally today in carp fishing magazines! It is no wonder someone will write over-hyped magazine articles on bait saying there are absolutely no secrets in carp fishing baits, while offering his own biased opinions on bait-making and trying to give the impression no other bait than a limited amino acid-sorted nutritional bait is up to the job and by the way his bait company sells such baits.) Such rubbish is all a fallacy because it aims to brainwash you into one very narrow approach and way of thinking. Anything that narrows or constricts your thinking is in effect brainwashing and is simply geared to get you to buy his bait!

Science (or pseudo-science) is not the ultimate answer nor limiting factor to potential carp baits because it is always out of date! For instance, until this month - scientists thought we need both sides of our brain (present and intact,) to enable us to have full left and right fields of vision in our left and right eyes. But no, in July 2009 science was proven wrong - yet again! In this instance a girl has recently been specifically scientifically tested because she was born with only her left brain hemisphere - and yet she lives a normal life! Even more incredibly, her optic nerves connecting hers eyes to her brain have connected to the single hemisphere she has, her brain adapted and miraculously she has normal left and right fields of vision!

Now before this case scientists stated this was all impossible - but they are so arrogant trapped in their entrenched ego-locked career-driven microcosms they cannot let go and see the truth of just how little they really know. Todays science has come a long way in the last 100 years especially but for everything we know it just shows us more that we don't yet have a clue about! More is known about space than our brains, minds and consciousness. In fact we know more about space that the deep oceans; yet no-one can tell us exactly where eels mate! Until literally months ago even the mythical existence of giant squid was denied by science - until a real giant estimated by experts at the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute to be at least 60 to 90 feet long was photographed. This was done by using a tiny camera on the back of a live 5 foot long squid that was sent down as natural bait for the monsters below! On average 37 new species are found in the deep seas every - week some over 6 feet long!

There are many life-saving new potential drug substances being lost by the mass clearance of rainforests for planting of soya bean, coffee, coco and castor oil plants and other bio fuel crops etc. The plants themselves will not even have been identified as new species and substances they offer will never be identified by science - because they will already be extinct! I think it makes great sense here to state bluntly that we need to stop using fish meals in carp baits if we have any realisation of just how fast fish are disappearing from our seas and oceans - many areas are completely barren today. In fact the reason that the commonly used fishmeal LT94 from Norway is in such short supply is due to the Norwegians and other nations fishing the North sea, having their yearly catch quotas cut because the fish stocks are simply not able to replenish themselves fast enough to recover without danger of being completely wiped out.

Like any other creatures, you need a minimum gene pool in existence, below which a species is extremely vulnerable to extinction. It is no justification saying that LT94 is made from fishing bye-catch as the existence of all species in an ecosystem are all related and that means to us humans too! In fact the reason that enzyme-treated fish proteins became so incredibly important and became added to carp bait armoury was because South America need an efficient protein source for poorer populations. I hate to say it but the record porbeagle sharks that roamed off the Isle of Wight are few today - when apex predators like that are over-fished it pretty much indicates whole ecosystems are in danger. It is like the krill populations being massively over-fished yet the earths biggest creatures the blue whale depend upon them to survive.

Ethically it is better to use alternative protein sources like maize protein products and grain produced poultry meals for sustainable protein than fish proteins, LT94 or krill meals and extracts - does the pleasure of helping wipe out whole species taint the pleasure of landing one more big carp?! The availability of basic commodities of earth has just recently past a tipping point where the earth cannot sustain human demand by replenishing itself; this should definitely be taken into account when choosing bait ingredients!

All the global warming and excessive carbon footprint stuff is part of the problem of course but the big problem is that constant consumerism is the lifeblood of capitalism and it needs you to keep on buying stuff. The earth simply cannot keep providing without it changing big-time and making our lives a hell of lack of vital resources and deadly weather extremes in return! Much of the crazy record weather patterns of recent years are related to de-forestation and carbon emissions from jet planes trails which magnify the suns radiation in our atmosphere, plus the exhaust from 4 by 4 vehicles etc, magnify effects much closer to the earths surface. (The holes in the ozone layer and radioactivity in our atmosphere from nuclear arms tests have far more deadly and profound consequences than most people have been led to believe.) It is bad enough that we are already bombarded by radioactive radon which naturally is formed from the decay of uranium found in abundance in areas of the UK and northern Europe - but which is kept quiet of course!

Everything is connected and happening at once today yet science can only measure what has happened in the past not truly in real time because results take time to compile and evaluate accurately and thus are consistently and reliably out of date! I can state such things as I have 2 relations who are science professors; one is a quantum physicist and the other is Professor Catherine Rice Evens head of the antioxidant research group at Kings College London, University of London - check her out! She is a world name in antioxidant research into things like flavonoids and free radical research. Such research and conversations with her have led me into investigating applications and uses of potent bioactive substances, both the familiar and unfamiliar ones for use in baits because it is very clear carp are very attracted to potent antioxidant substances. Examples range from betaine, Carophyll forms, cantaxanthin, lecithins, omega oils and an incredible variety of other substances from yeasts, plants, animals, fish and marine life, algae and bacteria and other things too!

Even amino acids have antioxidant properties but why should this be a surprise?! The most potent antioxidant vegetable is garlic but its potency has nothing to do with any garlic smell in water but with its internal impacts. In the early Nineties bait master Rod Hutchinson creator of Scopex, Monster Crab and many other legendary baits and flavours whom most everyone copied to some degree told me something very interesting. He said his favourite flavour was his own blueberry flavour - this was regardless of all the other great flavours including Mulberry Florentine, Megaspice and so on.

Above even goji berry and acai berry the most potently bioactive fruit is blueberry. Think too about other carp greats - cranberry, mulberry, blackcurrant etc; bioflavonoids are just a part of their power - but there is far more than fruits. What about spices - is there any coincidence that you find probably the most potently bioactive spice substances such as the phenylpropanoids class of chemical compounds including the polyphenol called eugenol is found in many of the best carp bait flavours?

From clove, nutmeg and cinnamon, to basil essential oil, and even according to my sources in the thymol (from thyme oil) used in certain top Tutti Fruitti flavours. Everyone and their dog must have heard about the bioactive impacts of black pepper oil and chilli oils components (e.g. capsicum oleoresins, piperines etc.) But there are many potent groups of compounds and combinations besides just the ones being utilised in carp baits today! (But there is nothing new in carp baits?!) Just combining vanillin (vanilla oleoresin) with geranium terpenes and clove terpenes for example and you have something new - its easy!

It seems that certain aggressively shaven-headed magazine article writers do not factor in such things - perhaps because they think flavours do not work or more likely are actually ignorant of such substances mechanisms of effect in carp (not that they would ever admit it publically God forbid!) The same ignorance may be argued of the effect mechanisms of addictive sweeteners and palatants among a good number of other examples. Aging is caused primarily by DNA damage by free radicals and oxidisation (the use of oxygen in the burning and releasing energy in the body,) plus other reasons, which can be stopped or massively reduced by the intake of very potent antioxidant substances - which carp happen to be drawn to instinctively although some writers seem to completely ignore such aspects of bait! (Just one example is that cantaxanthin becomes progressively more addictive the more it is consumed by carp.)

I myself studied plant sciences, soil science, plant genetics and commercial horticulture for 5 years at Writtle and my aunt has a PhD in soil science. My other (good) half Debs is a PhD biochemist who has edited the un-published proofs and manuscripts of leading books and science papers around the world for decades - many of which I have read myself. 3 other relatives of mine went to Oxford or Cambridge Universities and I have had their inputs in forming my bigger picture of the reality of things beyond conventional media too.

Carp fishing involves the appliance of science yet much of how baits actually work is based on guesswork. Any simpleton can state that you do not need to know any secrets about carp nor carp bait to catch carp, but then that will reflect what little he catches because the use of normally hidden knowledge is true power! It pays to know really powerful facts such as using certain semi-essential and non-essential amino acids in baits even in low doses can certainly out-fish baits designed to provide all 10 essential amino acids using biologically available ingredients and additives and liquids, crystals etc!

In other words your bait does not absolutely have to be a standard HNV bait based on milk proteins such as whey protein and casein. Neither does an HNV bait have to based on something like LT94 fishmeal or substitutes such as United Fish Industries Irish Organic 68 percent fish meal (or UFI 68 for short.) you do not always have to boost your baits with something such as a soluble fish protein concentrate like Sopropeche CPSP 90. (CPSP is the brand name, as in Concentré de Protéines Solubles de poisson and has a protein digestibility of 90 percent - similar to LT94.)

One of the high profile God-almighty bait gurus of the moment in fancy magazines cannot even explain precisely how flavours work any more than explain how amino acids actually work at first contact with carp! They might know parts of the mystery of what happens to amino acids once inside a carp but such paragons always choose to omit all those other things they do not know, do not understand, or have never even thought of until someone else has enlightened them!

For instance, can one of these HNV bait Gods explain how it is that carp olfactory membrane involved in the sense of smell still indicates extremely significant transduction when all specialised receptors on the cillia have been removed?! The surface of the carp nose (just like ours) is permeated with dense concentrations of hair-like projections called cillia, covered in millions of specially-adapted receptor cells sensitive to substances carp need to survive (like amino acids and trace elements minerals etc) and which are able to cross adapt in order to exploit new substances or to detect new threats. Transduction is the bio-chemical electrical nervous responses involving special proteins in specialised receptor cells in the nose (or nasal openings) of carp for instance.)

I contacted many of the biggest UK bait company bosses and not one of them could answer me precisely how flavours really work in terms of how they are detected except Rod Hutchinson who indicated as much. But you would think they would actually know how the most basic thing as exactly how their products work! This is because they definitely give you that impression by using all those flashy techno names like B-this, G-this, K-this and T- that!

You see my big problem relates to this kind of example: Water is the worlds most efficient ioniser meaning that our bait substances dissolve into it extremely well and these substances can then be detected as they wash around the sensory cells on the microscopic cell-covered hairs right? After all these guys insist that the carp detection of substances, from flavours to quaternary ammonium bases, to amino acids and organic acids like butyric acid must have something to do with the exchange of ions at the receptor cells. Betaine and salts are great examples of ion exchangers of course. Carp do not even detect all the same stimulatory amino acids in their smell organs as they do using their internal or external taste (gustatory) organs and senses. When tested, the set of amino acids that most stimulates smell causing feeding differs from the set which most stimulates feeding via the gustatory senses...

This should really make you think what the heck is going on when a carp senses your bait using all its senses at once. It is my feeling they can see the ultraviolet given off by certain aquatic-born proteins too - time will tell but we still know very little about carp senses because lets face it we know barely anything about the human brain yet so how can we possibly know about the in-sentient carp brain?! For all those carp anglers who think they know that carp smell their protein food using the water-borne ion exchange that occurs in the nose at the cillia in the olfactory membrane, so resulting in nerve transduction - I will let you into a little secret. Carp cannot possibly depend on this to smell their most essential amino acids that keep them alive!

They must have some other unknown sensory mechanism occurring; the evidence is clear! (Refer to the Oxford chemistry journal volume 14, number 2 and the abstract from the twenty-second symposium on taste and smell entitled: Odor discrimination and transduction mechanisms in olfaction by Makoto Kashiwayanagi.)

In this leading Japanese experiment on olfactory transduction via cillia all the carp olfactory cillia were removed, yet a highly significant transduction response to amino acids occurred during testing. How can this be - all the carp anglers are claiming that ion induced transduction is how flavours and amino acids etc are detected?! Not only this, but in related experiments in the bull frog and stink turtle, the olfactory membrane was stimulated using substances containing no ions at all! (But remember -There is nothing new in carp baits is there?!)

None of these bait guru guys will tell you much of this stuff simply because of one fact - they do not know it all; and they hate to admit being ignorant and that their baits are ultimately only designed on conjecture and guesswork! And as one biochemist once said to me; there are few scientific absolutes in carp baits!

Sure you might think no because you are attached to carp needing those vital 10 amino acids for instance, but there is more to fish than being stationary robots - they are actively evolving dynamic beings responding and adapting to every single threat and opportunity for new energy sources in their environment. They are obviously far more sensitive than science has yet proven! I think carp bait gurus egos are simply too sensitive unfortunately to admit the truth. Is the statement there is absolutely nothing new in carp bait, true - what do you think?!

You can fool carp into thinking they are going to get more from a bait than they really get yet they can be fooled time and time again with baits that are far from complete limiting amino acid-sorted HNV baits. The major palatability factor in fish meals (and in fact related to the immensely nutritionally-rich sea weeds and spirulina) is the amino acid called glutamine.

Palatability is extremely important in carp baits because it dictates the willingness of carp to actually consume and swallow baits - repeatedly; so giving you the maximum potential for the highest number of times your hook baits get picked up and actually taken back into the mouth and hooking carp. Sure you can cheat and add MSG or monosodium glutamate to your baits just like they do in Chinese takeaways but this leaves a bad after-taste and digestive problems too, like eating hydrogenated vegetable oil or the oxidised oils like those in less that really fresh high oil marine pellets.

For instance, in just once test packed my homemade baits with a really special abalone extract extremely high in glutamine and the response in all my baits including my fish meal, milk protein and much cheaper chick pea and maize flour type baits for instance have all improved. (Pretty much all maize products have very high palatability because one of the most powerful stimulators of the carp palatial sensory cells is betaine - and this is in abundance in maize and incidentally in all the related sweetcorn strains etc too.) But then 2 baits we all know that are addictive to carp - hemp seed and peanuts have chemicals that hit the basic carp brain and hit the more evolved human brain with that just one more effect so more can be leveraged than mere amino acids or betaine.

A koi feed formulation expert from Holland with 22 years experience agreed with me that a mere 1 gram of betaine in a kilogram of boilie base mix is enough to make all the difference in bait palatability towards achieving repeated swallowing of feed or baits (while enhancing the taste other substances including flavours of liquid and dry ingredients and liquid amino acids complexes etc.)

Lactose is milk sugar many anglers swear by and in fact our adult human systems find it an irritant even in some extent to fatal over-sensitisation over years of being exposed to it. You may have noticed it in all kinds of foods wandering why it was included; because it is addictive. In fact sugars of many kinds not only provide an instant energy boost but are proven to alter DNA. This is to the extent that if you did not have a sweet tooth, but developed one perhaps by getting into the habit of having a high sugar Snickers bar or sugary drink like Coke or Fanta very frequently your grand children will be born with a sweet tooth due to the DNA alterations your habit brought on.

Everyone knows food producers pack sugars and salts into foods as much as possible. Taste receptors adapt and change to become even more sensitive to many substances including these. The result is your body ends up craving foods with these in preference to those foods without these, such as wheat or gluten free natural heath bars without sugar, salts and packed with coconut and sesame seeds etc.

All is not quite what it seems in carp baits and their workings and impacts on carp and it is very easy to make your conjectures and assumptions fit whatever mental picture of how things fit together using the knowledge you know right now. Unfortunately this is where so much science gets lost in translation; as in quantum physics, it's a bit like the act of observation that can actually skew results. The criteria you use to analyse data, teamed with any particular pre-conceptions even at the unconscious level will easily mangle objective scientific conclusions of scientific tests or even real life fishing catch results feedback!

Not only this, but not all parameters of tests cannot be completely and utterly removed in every case - especially in the case of live adaptable creatures so tests can easily provide misleading results. Think about it; you see a classic case of a breakthrough experiment in your school books and take that as scientific absolutes, as the truth, yet such results can easily be flawed! The periodic table is certainly far from complete and the odd new atom has had to be added along the way...

You can fool carp into responding to what would in the past be termed crap baits by the specific choice of particular additive or ingredients that will make all the difference. (This includes at least 2 substances in the quaternary ammonium bases group which most leading bait designers should by now be very well aware of!)

I could mention there are more stimulatory types of chlorophyll than that green stuff you see so obviously in green algae like spirulina or in seaweeds like kelp for instance. On this point the umami taste of the Japanese is something else to ponder as is the use of innovative ways to use seaweeds such as my idea of using Suchi Nori seaweed sheet around rigs etc. The limit is also not the Chlorophyll Red that some claim is in the legendary additive Robin Red. (I have read a statement from the originators stating this is not and never has been a part of the formula!)

The antioxidant pigment called cantaxanthin is a great stimulant that grows in effect the more carp consume it; it is that red pigment you see in krill, prawns and shrimps, lobsters and other surprising places too. But this is just one form and other synthetic ones also exist and are yet to be exploited! Much talk of energy-efficiency in terms of biological values are expressed but frankly it all comes down to metabolism and so many known and obscure substances boost metabolism and have very significant thermogenic effects in many ways every bit as impactful internally in carp as amino acids for instance. (Poultry protein, tiger nuts and salmon meal among many others for instance, all have significant thermogenic effects besides all those high protein ingredients that might immediately spring to mind!) Nutritionally dense foods are thermogenic.

The fact is carp live for the moment and although they have memories they still eat when their hormones, nutrition and energy levels and gustatory senses biofeedback etc tell them to feed. Even if the bait in front of them has only 12 percent digestible percent protein and severely lacking in lysine or tryptophan or methionine or cysteine for instance, but is pounding their carp senses with biofeedback loops resulting from all kinds of various potent bioactive substances; they will succumb!

The legendary Richworth flavour called Tutti Fruitti is probably the most well-known example of a complex thermogenic booster most effective in winter because it boosts carp metabolism, (perhaps this is besides the Rod Hutchinson legendary flavour -Scopex, which is also a winter great!) Yet one of substances within the Tutti Fruitti formula used over a certain level would be toxic, but then that can be said of almost any potent drug - even alcohol of course!

Anyone who has ever caught a carp on anything less than a complex high nutritional value bait (sorted for first and second even third limiting amino acids so it contains optimums of essential amino acids for carp,) will know carp are trained by anglers baits, tackle and by angler presence at a water; resulting in both positive and negative carp behavioural effects! All these keep changing, but survival is the major instinct for carp first and foremost. It is inevitable that certain bait formats once sussed by carp can often never be taken by certain more wary carp ever again even if they offer great energy-efficient nutrition! This is one reason I hate using very popular readymade baits - you never know when any individual carp might have already been messed-up by already being hooked on that very same bait! Why reduce your chances straight away by being lazy about bait; being unique pays you back with 100 percent personal confidence - and homemade baits cannot be beaten in this respect!

In contrast to stimulant-packed boilies and pellets etc, the wariest of all carp can fall to a bait with no food signals or hormones of any kind. Carp are acutely sensitive to changes in their environment and actively investigate anything new, whether it be food or not. (And items stimulating curiosity feeding certainly do not need to glow in the dark to be detected either!) It sometimes seems like some carp bait makers think carp are just a load of nutrients stuck together by electrical fields and not the supremely adapted dynamically learning and actively evolving individually unique diversifying DNA-carrying beings they really are!

Carp are extremely efficient at getting their needs met through the digestion of amino acids - after all, they cannot hop onto land and chomp on a primarily carbohydrate - based diet unlike humans. It has been noted that very many bigger carp are hooked during certain key moon phases. Although this is connected to subtle energies that affect all life on earth to varying degrees, one of the direct manifestations of these is the way that aquatic invertebrates hatch from the larvae or nymph stage for example into adults. When this occurs en-masse those energy-efficient carp get munching big-time as such natural food items are extremely essential amino acid-rich and easily digested by carp. In fact cultures and tribes around the world still depend upon soil-borne grubs and larvae and even adult insects and spiders for protein; from worms and caterpillars, to locusts, from traditional Australian Aborigines to South American rainforest tribes and those closer to home.

Both carp natural food items and carp are affected by the moon phases just like we humans are because we are predominantly composed of water, (consider what happens every month with tides.) Just think of the female monthly ovulation cycle when normal, corresponding to moon phases. Big carp are well known to feed rather more enthusiastically during certain moon phases - I personally have no doubt about it. Electromagnetic fields. the light spectrum, ambient light etc are not the only mysteries to exploit to catch more big carp however. (For more information see my website and biography!)

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: "BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!" "BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!" And "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" For much more now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com Home of world-wide proven readymade and homemade bait success secrets bibles - and free big carp and catfish bait articles!

Let's Start Fishing!

It's the end of a long day of hiking. You're sitting by a lake on a rock, your fishing rod in your hands. It's beautiful enough just enjoying the scenery and the quiet sounds of wildlife. Then it happens. A slight tug on the line. Then another. What do you do? Is it time to pull in the line? Or do you wait for another bite?

Tip

• If you happen to be visiting a national park, you can usually buy a license that permits you to fish throughout the park. In some cases, nonresidents have to pay more for their fishing licenses than do residents. People caught fishing without a license may find themselves stopped by the local warden and slapped with hefty fines!

• One of the easiest ways to find live bait is to buy worms or minnows at the local tackle shop. What if you forget or you're in the backcountry without bait? To find earthworms, uncover large rocks or logs and gently probe the earth underneath with a stick. Use a flashlight and look for them at night sliding through the grass.
First, you must be able to distinguish between a nibble and a bite. This is not always easy to do at first; it comes with time and practice. Imagine your line with your bait or lure at the end. If the fish just toys with it, without putting the whole thing in its mouth, that's a nibble. If you're using a bobber, it will dance up and down a bit, but it won't be pulled under the water. It usually takes one or two nibbles before the fish really tries to eat the bait or lure. Now, that's a bite-which feels like a more serious tug on the line. Usually, a bite pulls the bobber on your line all the way under the water. This is the time to pull the rod back and set the barb of the hook (the jagged part) into the fish's mouth. And timing is everything. If you don't set the hook at this time, it may fall out and the fish will get away. If you try to set the hook when the fish is merely nibbling, you'll just pull away the bait or lure, and possibly scare off the fish.

Just because you've got ultralight gear doesn't mean you have to catch ultralight fish. You can reel in lots of respectable-size fish if you know the secret: setting your drag on the reel. The drag is like a brake that controls the tautness of the line. If you set the drag for maximum tension, no matter how hard the line is pulled, it will not slip off the line spool. If you set the drag for minimum tension, it will slip a little. This is especially important when you're using ultralight gear with line that is only two- or three-pound test. If you set your drag to maximum tension, you risk breaking the line if a fish pulls hard on it. If you set it on minimum, the line will slip a little when the fish pulls, lowering its chance of actually breaking. Set the drag on your line before you begin fishing. When you buy your reel, ask a knowledgeable person at the store how to set the drag on your reel. Learn the joys of giving up a little line- and in return, getting back a fish!

Tip: Fish tend to be more plentiful just prior to rain because the low-pressure system in the atmosphere dislodges food from the bottoms of streams and lakes, letting it rise to the surface. Before it rains, the fish will come.

Even after you've set your drag, it's still not a great idea to reel in the fish right after you've set the hook. If the fish makes a mad dash for it and tries to escape, you still risk breaking your line. The best thing to do is to cut the fish a little slack. Reel in some line, let the line go, and then let it run a little, and then reel it in again. It may take a little longer to land it this way, but your patience will pay off. Learning this technique will permit you to catch fair-size game fish using just your ultralight gear.

Imagine that you are an airline pilot trying to land a plane. You have to land it properly in order for it to be a success. It's the same in fishing. Sadly, no matter how big or beautiful the fish is, unless you pull it to shore, it's still the "one that got away." Here are some helpful hints that should help you get that fish to its dinner engagement (though they'll work whether you choose to fry it or release it).

• Reel in the fish as close as possible to the shore, but be sure to keep it in the water.

• Fish are coated with a protective slime. If you intend to throw the fish back, be sure you don't scrape the slime off; otherwise handling the fish-especially if your hands are dry-can kill it by causing infection.

• Using your left thumb and forefinger, grab the fish by its lower jaw. This will temporarily immobilize the fish and stop it from flopping around. Don't worry about teeth; most of the small game fish you'll be catching don't have them.

• Nets can be useful, but are too bulky for backpackers.

• Remove the hook from the fish by pushing on the shank-the base of the hook near the eye-with small pliers or your hand. Be careful not to cut your fingers on the hook or the sharp edges of the fish's gills. If a fish hook gets stuck in your finger and doesn't come out easily, seek medical attention.

• Never try to land the fish by reeling it up to the top of your rod. You could break the line and may hurt the fish.

• If you decide to keep the fish, put it on your stringer and keep it in the water until you go back to camp. The typical stringer is a piece of cord with a metal tip and a loop at the end that you push carefully under a fish's gills; another model employs a chain with big snaps.

• Be sure you attach your stringer to something solid, or you risk losing your catch.

Freeing Fishy

Sometimes you will land a fish and realize that it's just a baby-only a few ounces-and too tiny to cook. Or perhaps it's a species that is not in season. Or perhaps you just lost your appetite for the big kill. Whatever the reason, you may want to throw it back. Here are some useful tips:

• Try not to wear out the fish by playing with it too much before you land it.

• Leave your fish in the water and never touch it with dry hands.

• Gently remove the hook; squeezing the fish will crush its internal organs.

• If the hook is too hard to remove or the fish has swallowed it, cut the line.

• Release the fish in quiet water. Never actually throw it back, this may hurt it or kill it. If the fish needs help recovering from the shock of being caught, hold it lengthwise and gently move it back and forth in the water to move its gills and help it breathe.

How to Clean the Fish

Here are a few simple steps to cleaning fish to prepare it for cooking:

• First kill the fish by whacking it on the head with a heavy knife or a rock.

• Wrap a piece of linen or paper around the tail of the fish to ensure a good grip.

• If the fish has scales, scratch the inverse side of the scales with a knife to remove them (stroke the blade of a knife from tail to head). After scaling the fish, rinse it with water to remove extraneous scales.

• Take a very sharp knife (the best ones are narrow with a small point at the end) and, starting at the throat, slit the underside of the fish lengthwise; cut all the way along the belly.

• Remove all the internal organs.

• Fillet the fish, or pan-fry it whole.

• Dig a small hole in the ground and bury the fish entrails.

Fish for Dinner

It's easy to cook your fish. Put a little butter or oil in a frying pan. Fry it for just a few minutes on each side. Don't overcook, or your dinner may be ruined. Add salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste. You might also try adding some garlic. Another way to cook fish is by wrapping it in thick aluminum foil and putting in the campfire for a few minutes with some spices. You can also use the foil as a plate.

Be sure you clean up properly after dinner to avoid attracting animals to your camp.

No matter how good your fishing skills are, it's not a good idea to count your fish before they're caught. Don't plan on catching dinner on a backpacking trip. Instead, plan your meals before you leave-and always bring along enough food with you, including food for one extra day (just in case you get stranded). If you happen to catch a yellow perch, consider it a treat. You can always bring back the pouch of dehydrated goulash and use it on your next trip. If there is an emergency and you do get stranded in the backcountry, a fishing rod is valuable to have.

http://sites.google.com/site/carpfishingguide is a free informational website about carp fishing including choosing your carp fishing tackle, tips on carp care, carp fishing tactics and many more

Great Fishing Close to Home and No Skunks!

Some of the greatest fishing in the world, is available within a mile or two away any where in the US! Many anglers miss out because their gear is too big and not sensitive enough to show them bites. Fish feed in a delicate fashion 90% of the time. In order to catch them, you need to change your ways. If you do, you can be rewarded with 500 fish in 4 hours- my record is 512.

To get in on this action, you will need a few items and, you will need to get rid of a
few old items you may be used to. It might help the reader to know that until the
Spring of 2000, I was a big game fisherman with a box full of lures and plenty of
spinning gear as my main tools for catching fish. Everything changed about the way
I fish, especially the fact that I actually caught fish, every time out. I still have not
been "skunked" since changing my ways. By the way, it's a good thing we don't
smell like a skunk when we don't catch anything as a group of anglers, otherwise
our families would know for sure how miserable a fishing day we had. Getting
"skunked" (catching no fish) stinks!

There is no need to be skunked, if you follow a couple of fishing basics and
transform your gear for local waters (instead of our tackle being based on Florida
bass or Kentucky crappie or Wisconsin Muskie. Even the "ultra light" spinning gear
we are accustomed to using as a standard for local fishing is cutting down on our
catches! Most anglers in the US have never truly fished "ultra" light. Years ago I
changed my gear and I caught sacks full of fish all summer and for the first time in
my fishing career, caught fish into very late fall! I never knew that fish would feed in
late November and early December on open water!

I will give you two examples of having a blast catching fish vs. casting at them.

At a 4th of July picnic on a small pond in suburban Chicago, I was fishing with my
30 foot pole while a pack of kids nearby were busy throwing a bass jig connected
to a 2.5 inch bobber (way too big) at a weed bed extending 4 ft. out into the lake
from the edge. Their problem was simple. They couldn't cast well with the short
"kids" rod and closed face reels. Their giant bobber was not giving them any
indication of bites and the bass jig was too big to fit in any of the nearby fish's
mouths. Their 10 lb. line was like a cable being seen by even the aggressive fish in
the area approaching this rig (read- avoiding). When the rig was actually wet,
because these kids could not get the thing into the water near the fish because of
tangles and weeds on the jig head, it was not catching fish. Their "casts" couldn't
get the lure/giant bobber combo past the 6-foot wide weedy edge.

I fixed that problem by putting down my pole and setting up my shortest 7 ft.
graphite telescopic "pole" with a delicate float (the size of an pencil eraser) with 1.5
lb. line leader attached to a siz #14 hook and baited it with a tiny grub. I handed the
pole to the first kid and she caught a chubby blue gill within 5 seconds. With this
non-mechanized fishing pole there was nothing to getting the bait just 6 feet out,
past the weed bed. The kids could easily put the bait in front of the fish. As for the
fish, they could easily pull under the tiny natural bait with the small hook and the
float, which was about 1/30th the size of the bobber. The sensitive rig picked up on
the fish sucking in the tiny bait immediately so the kids could react.

Sure, I had to stop fishing for a while, but I had a blast with this pack of 6 kids. My
newly adopted friends were out-fishing the guys with spinning gear working around
the pond 40:1 !

The reason most kids don't catch is those short little "kid's" rods. Kids rods come
with the Mouse on the box, wrapped in plastic as one unit and are way too short.
The closed face reels are not bad, but the short rods require a giant 55-gallon drum
bobber which are often sold with these kits. Every angler in America should own and
use a cane pole to fish with! A pole with no reel!

On another day that summer, with nothing more than the cane pole, I won the 1st
day of the U.S. Open with a top weight of 19.75 lb. of blue gill caught in 4 hours.
The answer to this victory was the simplicity of my rig and the size of my line using
a tiny hook. By using this cane pole (really composed of graphite) I was able to fish
quickly for blue gill that were in front of me. The conditions that day had them
feeding in past the first break of the shoreline and were only 8 inches of water. My
rig allowed me to get the bait out to the fish easily, accurately and quickly. Most of
the other anglers in the match were fishing much farther out. My neighbor had a 60
foot pole!!! He was 58 feet past the fish with his expensive gear and I crushed his
weight by 83% using little more than what Huck Finn used -- a cane pole. Some
competitors were even casting far out into the lake some 70 yards away. On this
day, AS MOST DAYS IN OUR LOCAL LAKES, the plentiful smaller fish caught in great
number, will offer you success as an angler.

I would brag even more about that U.S. Open, but my teacher Hall of Fame Angler-
Mick Thill, came from behind and crushed me in day 2 to win the tournament
overall, I finished 2nd.

Here are details on setting up to fish for most every fish in your local ponds. Follow
these (8) steps and you will have a pan fish blast of your own.

1. Consult local bait store owner.

They will give you great information on local ponds and you should be able to buy
some floats, and the rest of your gear below. While not every store owner is great
for information, most can get you to good fishing spots. To start,find waters with
panfish. Panfish are abundant and for the most part active. This will provide you
with a chance to catch fish.

2. Throw out your bobbers and purchase a couple small floats.

Bobbers are no good. Red and white are the worst. Throw them out or save them as
museum pieces. America is about to find out what the rest of the world has known
for 2,000 years. Floats catch fish. Even if you must cast larger float, a properly
balanced float will crush a round bobber every day. Slip bobbers are not as good as
floats either. This is because the line comes out the top in a slip float and catches
wind, current messing up the presentation.

3. Get some good fishing line

6 lb. test is overkill for pond fishing. Use 4 lb. with an even lighter 4 - 6" leader line
to the hook. If a fish feels the line, they are gone. If the fish sees the line, they are
gone. Your leader should be 2 lb.!
Fish feed by sucking their feed in with water. If the line is heavy, it gets sucked in
slower. Most of the time, heavy line is just spit back out. Fish can spit a poor
presentation out faster than you can see your float move up on the surface! With
heavy line, you can miss hundreds of fish bites each time out!! In the World
Championships- I fished with line that is 1/8th the thickness of U.S. 2 lb. line!

4. Get some small, SMALL hooks

Size #12 should be one of the biggest hooks you ever use! If the majority of you
checked your tackle box, I am sure that some 90% of you don't own a hook this
small! A big hook will kill your fishing! Kill it. Take a look at the nail on your pinky
finger. That is about as long as your hook should be or smaller. (Ask your bait store
owner or check out mickthill.com for these hooks) MOST MAJOR CHAINS DO NOT
CARRY THESE HOOKS. Some aren't interested in you catching fish, just buying stuff.
They are quite happy selling a bunch of giant bass hooks, because that is what you
have been buying!!! As we ask for proper equipment, the stores will change and
offer us great selection. You may find these hooks in fly fishing sections of big
stores but you can ask your local dealer to special order them. Size #14 or #16
hooks are perfect. If you are wondering, I have landed a 9 lb. walleye on a size #14
hook with small leech.

5. Get some small bait

Again, the thumbnail on your pinky finger is probably the biggest bait you should
use. There are times the fish only want 1 maggot (spikes) on a tiny #16 hook. Even
the big gills will not take 2 or 3 spikes as readily as they would 1 tiny piece of bait,
this is especially true in early Spring, late Fall and after cold rains. Same would go
for worms. Sometimes using a tiny cut piece will give you success. Only the fish will
tell you. Lastly- big fish eat small bait! I have caught 15 lb. fish on a piece of crawler
the size of my small fingernail.

6. Get a cane pole or telescopic pole

I have landed a 3.5 lb. fish so far on the cane pole with 2 lb. line. We call them
"whips" and some call them crappie poles. I plan on landing bigger fish than that,
but the greatest number of fish are best caught in our local ponds using a whip and
tiny delicate floats with small baits. The whip will deliver the bait out to the exact
spot you need to lower your bait. This could be a drop-off, rock edge, gravel edge
or weed edge. You can hit the exact spot every time! No missed casts. No birds
nests. Once you find the fish, you can put the bait back in with the whip in the spot
where the fish are. Whips vary in length from 6 ft. to 25 feet (longer if you find pro
versions).

7. Balance Your Setup

Good shot is essential to this setup. The bite indicator (float you use) should be the
smallest you can find. Take your line, rig this float up and then using a bucket of
water to add split shot below the rig until your float is nearly sunk. It should be 95%
below the water if you have the right amount of shot on it. 75% of that shot goes
right under the float. Take a few small shot and this will go close to the hook. The
best shot is Anchor brand split shot! This is premium splitshot that will stay on the
line better and not slide around on you. It also tangles much less than the brand
with the wings on it- round shot is best.
Correctly balance your tiny float on thin line with a small hook and you will have
created a very efficient fish-catching machine! When your bait is on the hook, float
in the water- the bait should sink the float a little. When the rig is properly balanced
with bait on it- the slightest movement will show above water for you to see. If you
have too much float tip sticking up- you will not see the bites!

8. Catch (and release) bags full of fish

You will need a keep net for the water if you want to have some fun. Seeing how
many you can catch is all the fun. There is nothing like pulling a bag with 100 fish
out to show people what fishing is all about. If you want to fish in a local club
competition, the net is also required to keep the fish you catch for weight of your
total catch. Keeping some medium sized fish and returning the largest fish is the
way to improve your lake. If you take all the big fish, they won't be in there next
time you go fishing. If you take the medium sized fish, the bigger fish will get even
bigger! It is essential that you release large fish to keep the bloodlines breeding and
ensure future fishing on your lake!

9. Teach a kid to fish and take them fishing

With a cane pole and the basics, kids can have a blast! If we don't take our kids
fishing, and above all, show them a good time, our sport will fade. Improving our
sport brings better fishing programs, cleaner local waters and education on
preserving our environment for kids. We need kids to care about their local world
and taking them fishing for bluegills is the absolute best way to show them a good
time. Incidentally, there is nothing wrong with catfish, golden roach shiners,
bullheads, carp or bass as any fish gives the kids just as much fun. Any fish they
catch will be a blast on a whip.

Who knows, you might even get hooked on pole fishing. I did.

As an angler, is our time best spent casting all day, or catching fish? Certain
situations will require spinning gear, a very long rod and casting, but for the
greatest number of situations in our local ponds and lakes the reel-less pole will
outperform casting gear sometimes by more than 200% and up. I mean, take a look
across the pond at spin casters sitting fishless and you destroying them with a pole-
that is the goal! Or should I say whipping them!

Angler Magazine Writer- John Wilkins
www.MidwestAngler.com
john@midwestangler.com

John Wilkins has fished on the US Fishing Team competing at the highest levels of fishing in Europe, Canada, China & the United States. He has fished in 2 World Championships and has educated anglers on the basics of fishing urban waters. His teacher is angling legend and Hall of Famer Mick Thill. John's top catch is 512 fish in a 4-hour competition and top finish is second in the US Open Championships in 2000.

Visit http://www.midwestangler.com for more tips & info. as well as a complete listing of US Fishing Clubs- the best place to learn is in a club.

Carp Fishing in the United States

Carp fishing has long been looked down upon in the U.S. but this is a trend that's rapidly changing. This fish, often scorned at by bass anglers as "trash fish," are gaining popularity among many anglers for their large weight and the quality of fight that these large fresh water fish put up.

Carp are slowly gaining a positive reputation in as one of the fiercest freshwater fighters, which can offer a challenge to the best of anglers. Though they were once considered bottom feeders, it is now known that carp each much of the same diet as trout and bass. In more states than ever carping is becoming a more accepted form of fishing, much as it has been in Europe.

In many places in the United States, carp is a catch and release fish. There are a couple of major reasons for this. Carp tend to have a very long life span, which is part of the reason they grow to such large sizes. As a negative, these fish are also prone to soaking up any toxins in the water in which they grow, meaning they can be found in really polluted water - but carp from polluted waters shouldn't be eaten. Many large carp are found in areas of the United States where water might be polluted, which is part of the reason they have taken a longer period of time to catch on.

While carp fishing doesn't enjoy anything close to the popularity of bass fishing. The official bass fishing organizations in the United States enjoy nearly one million members, while the carp fishing organizations only have a couple thousand. However, that's a couple thousand more than even a decade ago.

Publications and new pro-carp angling groups have helped to raise the profile of the carp among many American anglers who previously would never have considered them a sport fish. In fact, the push to recognize carp as a legitimate sports fish has resulted in some major gains in perception even to the point where the world carp championship will be held in the St. Lawrence River area. This is almost surely going to gain a lot of positive press for carp fishing in the United States, and encourage more anglers to come out and give it a fair shake.

While there is still a long way to go, carp fishing has definitely gained ground in the United States. Whether or not they will ever gain the respect of bass has yet to be seen, but at least in the short time carp fishing looks like it will continue to grow in popularity.

If you would like to learn more about carp fishing gear, please feel free to visit this page on all types of gear, including carp fishing tackle.

Thanks for Reading.

Shane Dayton

There is Absolutely Nothing New in Carp Bait!

This is a laughably arrogant headline-grabbing title found on the front page of a prominent UK monthly carp fishing magazine. Does this person have a point? He has already stated flavours do not work - so just how correct is this entity who seems to think he is the leading fish scientist ever on this planet?

Firstly anyone who has ever caught a carp on anything less than a complex high nutritional value bait (sorted for first and second limiting amino acids so it contains optimums of essential amino acids for carp,) will know carp are trained by anglers for both positive and negative behavioural effects. (And the wariest carp can fall to a bait with zero food signal or hormones of any kind; carp are acutely sensitive to changes in their environment and will actively investigate anything new whether food or not and they do not need it to glow in the dark to detect it either!)

It is sometimes seems like some carp bait makers think carp are just a bunch of nutrients hung together by electrical fields and not the supremely adapted dynamically learning and actively evolving creatures they really are.

Sure anyone can mass bait pretty much any bait and get a hit of fish for a limited time, but after being hooked enough times any HNV bait will not have the edge this super bait is supposed to have. Anyway, if HNV baits were really so great anglers using them would all be catching 10 times the amount of carp anglers using instant attractor and fake baits often do. In fact much of the time the design of nutritional baits incorporates aspects of instant baits at the same time; are not NHV baits also instant baits if they catch on the first cast too?

There seems to be a section of anglers usually those running a bait company, who seem to want to make bait making sound like rocket science to the degree that if a baits design it does not sound like rocket science they basically claim it won't catch carp in the face of competing baits based on rocket science type design!

The fact is things have changed so much in the last 30 years in carp fishing, that most of the nutritional factors that carp essentially need throughout the year are getting largely met by the large proportion of anglers baits. This means most angler's baits have much less edges over competing baits than in previous decades. Note that it is frequently the case that in most carp waters, a range of nutritional carp baits are being eaten by carp simultaneously all the time in conjunction with natural food items which are often elevated in abundance due to the regular introduction of anglers free baits.

So you now have the modern carp fishing situation where the aim of bait is not just to get hooks in carp mouths but to out-compete the effects and impacts of competing baits any ethical edge can make all the difference. Designing baits just to cover nutritional vital needs of carp will not ensure it out-competes the effects and impacts of competing baits far from it.

Now when some commercial bait maker claims flavours do not work, and proclaims that there is absolutely nothing new in carp bait you just know that old saying is applicable; pride come before a fall (usually a big one!) I bet this amino acid di-peptide hypnotised narrow-mined genius will research the cumulatively addictive effects of sugars upon DNA; now it has been stated here. (Although I have a feeling his fear of being wrong and unbridled ego will prevent this.)

No-one seriously thinks hemp would be the super carp bait it is based purely on its amino acid profile and lipid qualities. There is far more going on including live enzymes and very potent bioactive substances. When things work together not just with themselves but within a natural organism things can get very potent indeed despite on the surface not being special at all; many flavours do not impact on carp response systems, but some of their key components when inside the fish and ingested repeatedly can induce powerful effects and even biological changes such as chemical hormone mood and behaviour changes and even DNA alterations over enough exposure time.

Humans are just the same as carp because we both are programmed to survive by taking the easy routes to our energy. If it comes in predigested fish protein bait ingredients, or whey protein energy bar form, or peanuts snacks, crisps or chocolate bar form it does not matter; we both adapt to seek the most energy efficient food items most readily available in our environments. The human obesity epidemic today is as much related to the affordable availability and time to eat carbohydrate foods mainly rich in sugars and wheat flour and to a lesser degree in saturated and other fat forms. The protruding livers of many carp today plus the huge numbers with unnaturally large fat distorted bellies, echo such behaviours and negative impacts.

The fact is where food is abundant instant energy forms of food that spike blood sugar levels get to be addictive. The thought of eating food items, that provide nutrients we need to keep us healthy such as key minerals and trace elements and essential amino acids are far less instinctively important compared to getting that instant energy hit.

Yes it may be true that when fat and other stored energy reserves are low such as when someone is lost in a jungle for 2 weeks, and then possibly dreams of amino acid rich burgers will dominate thoughts! Yes it is a fact that without the essential amino acids, processes such as cellular respiration and even digestion itself by acid or alkali digestive enzymes, will start to fail.

Natural systems often involve a cascade effect when they begin to fail because they are inter-connected and in essence operate as one whole; just as unsustainable and unbalanced human commercial and domestic activities impact so drastically on sea temperatures and weather systems of this planet. This is also why using especially potent drugs help humans re-balance diseases; and so enable the body to cure itself.

This is also why the use of any of a multitude of new potently bioactive substances in carp baits will be so effective. Sure bioactives such as tomato carotenoids like lycopene, chilli pepper capsaicinoids, black pepper piperines and garlic allicin are used by commercial and homemade bait makers everywhere. Many other antioxidants and metabolism stimulants, probiotics, prebiotics and many other forms and effects of these and other substances that promote improved carp energy efficiency and digestion, better organ functioning, better performance of high density lipoproteins and fat metabolism for energy, more balanced health, and better carp growth, are already very well proven in carp baits.

But who knows what commercial secrets and as yet unknown to science, substances exist?! The fact is there are natural cures to diseases being lost every day because plants are going extinct which have not even been discovered yet. But who am I to argue that there really is always something potentially new to be found for very effective use in carp baits? After all, should I not bow down to someone else's opinion because he runs a bait company?

I have relatives who are professors in various areas including quantum physics and cancer research including international research into antioxidant potencies and applications. I have other relatives who went to Oxford and Cambridge Universities and have even been banqueted by royalty during their careers. I know first-hand as a result of this contact with them just how so-called educated people can be afraid of being ignorant or even wrong and it happens all the time.

Scientists are always having to adjust their theories and so many scientific absolutes; and science being the new religion is the reference point we now use that provides any rational meaning to our reality. Unfortunately our present technology simply has not evolved sufficiently to measure things to truly absolute levels and probably will not for a very long time to come (if at all!) Of course science is about proving possible events and outcomes by repetition of results and this practice has flaws too; in the act of doing something you become part of the process also and present another variable. In fact there are so many pertinent experiments that cannot be carried out due to scientific limitations it makes you wonder at times if science has anything right at all.

Many carp anglers and bait makers make grand claims about their tank tests results when testing ther baits. It is quite hilarious how they put various substances into a tank inevitably with what are really adolescent carp and not the mature older specimens we are really aiming to catch anyway (and with different nutritional requirements.) A lot of what you might read about carp anglers conclusions about bait and carp is based on tank tests from Israel, Japan or the States where one or more variables are not accounted for nor even stated in the abstract or journal article!

For example, this might be what the pH or temperature of tested water was, or the actual locations and activities of scientists around the tanks and fish themselves and how this might well impact on fish behaviours, feeding and stress levels etc. Real fishing waters with carp are very often full of background chemical clutter like ammonia and many dissolved minerals and acids of many forms and these must all be taken into account too. I have noticed it is very easy for one scientist to have a totally different interpretation of scientific data results from another scientist.

Much comes down to quality of personal mind-mapping, previous experience and knowledge of the situation which will obviously bias the way results are interpreted; just like doctors not conferring over the same symptoms; so giving different diagnoses. But very often, results are presented in language or formats that make it possible for them to interpreted in various ways and even misinterpreted or skewed for various effects. My partner who happens to be a PhD biochemist and law graduate and court transcriber has noticed the degree to which evidence can be presented to particular effect for various purposes. Much can be added or lost in translation!

When someone who has letters behind their name (or not in the case of our non-scientist absolutely nothing new friend,) tells you something is a scientific absolute I tend to take it all with a pinch of salt. For anyone who doubt me, look up the laws of gravity and then find the phenomenon known as the Hutchison Effect where milk can float up into the air (leaving its container behind...) Everyone knows Einstein was wrong in very many things the world took as scientific absolute; he even admitted it later in life!

Science does not know what it does not know and everything is not necessarily logical Jim... I am as sceptical as anyone else when it comes to upsetting paradigms of what the world is and how it works because doing that is rather unsettling to your safe interpretation of reality! But I prefer if possible to draw my conclusions from first hand experience.

I never expected to end up accurately drawing and describing in detail a dead (and buried) ghost cat, (which stroked my face,) and somehow showed me images of where it was buried and used to sleep; while I was just an observer at a class for psychical studies. The ex-owner of this cat was so relieved with my shocking revelation; she had tried every available and prominent medium at Stanstead College; to gain contact with her dead cat; and I'm no psychic medium. I mean you would expect a dead granny or something but a cat is impossible right?! But of course extra sensory perception (ESP,) is just a myth; proposed only by frauds and con-men and existing only as a carp brand name!

As a trained horticultural grower, to see a Radish seed sprouting rapidly on someones palm right in front of my own eyes as Uri Geller looked on was not logical; germinating seeds require certain fixed absolute conditions surely. Maybe such scientific anomalies have similarities to such things as the genetically manipulated multiplication of grass chlorophyll levels in a meadow in France during the Eighties. Is chlorophyll effective in carp baits; what do you think and what can you think of that is especially rich in it?!

Strange unknown forces caused unbelievable impossible rates of growth of totally fresh green grass (over just a couple of hours,) in a winter meadow of otherwise frost-damaged yellow and dead grass. But even more notable was that this meadow was where a UFO had recently apparently been observed on the ground. Now I used to think all this stuff was completely the realm of science fiction, but take a look at an Arthur C. Clarke novel and you will be surprised at so much accurate prophesy found therein.

This famous author was in contact with leading astronauts and Nobel peace prize-winning scientists but his books went so much further than present reality as it has been known. A Space Odyssey is just one example. Odyssey is the name of the top carp bait from Ccmoore and it very much conjures up the journey of discovery in carp bait making as opposed to the absolute limitation of a commercial bait named like a racing car or impotent first generation carp!

I once called the world famous psychic healer Mathew Manning and received an answer phone message. But the date this message was left was 2 days before I even called him and before I even had the idea to call him; mmm... When the unexplainable happens it obviously means we cannot know everything yet! New explainable science is always treated as magic by the ignorant and brings up emotions of shock and even of fear!

I was very fortunate to be able to speak to a Harvard-trained and sponsored scientist in the States who is now banished from the mainstream scientific world. He was one of the most the most gifted and promising scientists ever in the realms of genetic research. So what got him excluded from continuing his study and research programmes? He actually did what the major companies did not want; he invented and proved a formula for actually stopping DNA degeneration of skin cells. (This is what causes skin aging and solar radiation is just one obvious cause, but unhealthy sugar-rich omega poor diets are also prime causes!)

But then who says big companies offer true value and quality for money. Is not the purpose of many a company to make money by providing products which simply prolong or even increase the need for those products? Hospitals and doctors have been buying effective generic drugs for years to avoid the rip-off prices of the branded products - whose claims of over-pricing to cover research costs equals those of the petroleum industry for stupendous greed!

Of course you will very likely never have heard of this let alone dreamt it was possible and the pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies will never let the secret out! Why; because it will bankrupt them and make their skin products completely obsolete! They have been selling a lie for over 15 years with claims of buyers getting younger skin with all their creams. All the while there exists the real thing snuffed-out by death threats and personal and employment blacklisting no less! No-one dare fund this scientist now. But who would if your family is going to be threatened by doing it?

It makes you wonder what else is being hidden. After all what about the original Nicola Tesla inventions such as the electric motor and alternating current. These transformed the world forever but look how Tesla has been written out of the history books in favour non-immigrant Thomas Edison. This iconic famous inventor, who discovered a thousand way how not to invent the (now obsolete) incandescent light bulb, was an inferior competitor to Tesla; who actually claimed Teslas patents were his own! This grand deception was confirmed by the American Supreme Court after Teslas death Edison was finally proven for the jealous and desperate fraud he really was.

As for me I'm off to catch some carp on mulberries and goose droppings, or maybe seaweed with that fifth umami flavour, (oh but of course I forgot; flavours do not work do they - glutamic acid being one I suppose? Or maybe I'll just be using something new when making my carp bait; it is not impossible as I have a friend who formulated the first commercially available paste form koi food who really did come up with working results with professors at Exeter University. But just remember it is not the bait that catches fish - it is you! Read on for details of some very unique bait secrets ebooks that will make you think much more about successful carp fishing...

By Tim Richardson.

Ice Fishing Basics

First and foremost an ice fisherman needs the location of good lakes for ice fishing. Usually a lake that produces lots of fish in the summer fishing season will also produce numerous fish in the winter.

Many factors in a lake in winter affect fish life, changing their reactions, their feeding habits, and even their survival rate. For instance a heavy layer of snow over the ice will cut down on the amount of light that filters into the water, reducing weed growth and oxygen production. This will result in the fish becoming lethargic, interested in only conserving their energy to survive rather than wasting energy to feed and move around.

Lakes that are weed choked in the summer is usually is shallow and contains very few deep pools or spots that contain oxygen rich pockets for fish to congregate, and may not be able to sustain a large fish population in the winter months. Lakes that produce great numbers of fish in summer are likely to congregate in these pools and use up the oxygen and they will not all survive.

Fish die off in the winter does not mean that severe oxygen depletion has occurred throughout the whole lake; certain areas will still produce good fishing results. Consider all factors when choosing a lake for ice fishing.

ICE FISHING SPOTS

For new folks fishing the best spot to start is to go where the crowds or people are before you start to experiment. The ice fish crowd loves to socialise while fishing as it ads to the enjoyment. The willingness to share good fishing spots with others is and advantage to the newcomer to ice fishing. No one minds if a few more holes are cut and some more fish taken. Most other anglers will be more than willing to discuss their success and the bait or lures that have been most successful.

Most successful fishermen do not mind sharing their secrets and many oldtimers derive great satisfaction helping a newcomer to ice fishing the advantages of his years of experience. You will some exceptions to this but do not be afraid to ask and let someone know you are new to winter fishing.

LOCATING FISH

Finding the location of fish is frustrating at times. Remember fish in the winter act different than in the summer months. The only requirement for a fish in winter is to eat enough to survive. They generally feed only part of the day to not waste a lot of their energy. The competition for food seems to be the key to fish feeding habits while fishing. Many ice fishermen do not consider all the noise of cutting holes setting up huts will affect the fish. After you settle down to fishing and stop all noisey movement the fish will come back and be more active.

ICE FISHING EQUIPMENT

It is not all that expensive to get started fishing during the winter( but you can get expensive if you wish). When you decide how much of your time will be spent fishing then go from there.

For the weekend ice fishing angler I would suggest a standard ice fishing rod, which can be purchased at any sorting goods store. The rod is seldom more than a fiberglass rod about two feet long with two line guides and a small take up reel. The line can be from 2 to 6 pound test monofilament. Bobbers are a handy thing for ice fishing so keep a couple in your pack. You will also need a variety of lures, hooks, sinkers, swivels and other basic fishing tackle. Also a chisel, ice spud or ice auger for your ice fishing holes. Hit your local bait store before you leave to pick any live bait needed for the species and lake you intend to fish.

Don't overdo it on your first ice fishing trip out onto the lake. Go out early in the morning and fish till noon, and call it a day. If the fish are biting you should have caught your share by then. If the fish don't bite worry not you will have learnt to use the new equipment. The next trip out you will be even more equipped and ready for all the fish you will catch.

DRESSING FOR ICE FISHING

Dressing comfortably for winter fishing presents some problems that do not confront other outdoor winter activities. The chief concern is to stay warm at all times, but fishing by nature involves extremes of activity that will cause you to perspire if you are dressed to warmly, and then freeze when you sit too long. You may work up a sweat just getting there and setting up to start fishing. Then sitting for a long time once fishing then you are cold. The secret is to dress warmly for travel and have more to put on for the periods of inactivity. A good snowmobile outfit covers all the needs of most ice fishermen. Remember layers under the parka, you can always take it off if you are too warm. Get out ther and enjoy, catch some fish and you will become and addict of fishing in all seasons.

Robert has been an avid Canadian angler for over 20 years. Reel Fishing Fun provides solid advice for walleye, pike, muskie, a variety of trout, arctic char bass and more. Ideas on when and where to go on your next trip to Canada. Ice fishing tips Great fishing videos also!

Cheap Homemade Carp Fishing Baits For Big Fish!

In these days of recession saving every penny helps and the great bonus with making your own fishing baits is they really can catch you as many if not more big carp - for far less money spent. The vast majority of anglers really have no idea how their baits work in relation to the exploitation of vital carp senses and much of the discussion about baits in the past has often focused on recipes and flavors, and more recently the first 3 limiting amino acids. But if you think you know it all; no-one does, so why not read on!

The best thing about making homemade baits is the control and incredible satisfaction they provide in terms of control over your costs and catches and actual ingredients and so on you might choose to exploit to best effect! Most anglers discuss baits in terms of their favorite flavors or brands with very little focus upon exactly how such baits really impact upon fish senses which is a great shame (this aspect is a massive advantage lost on the majority of average anglers!) So if you want to know more about the truth about the real power of homemade baits and need help in designing and making them fast it really pays you back to find out as much as you can!

Today with the current economic climate plus ever rising costs, there is no better time to exploit making your own unique fishing baits to take full control and increase your budget-savings, choose your exact ingredients and levels you want to exploit, and to experience the amazing satisfaction of catching new personal best fish (on your very own budget-price, secret homemade baits!).

There is far more to exploit than just bait flavors however and the majority of carp anglers when discussing their favorite flavors and ready made bait brands never truly get to appreciate and exploit the proven potential of much less well known carp feeding triggers, ingredients, additives, instants, enhancers and so on, and continue to accept average catches and miss a gigantic advantage available to everyone with open eyes and ears! If you really want (or need) to save a fortune in bait in the coming years and wish to improve your fishing results and be able to leverage homemade bait-making to maximum effect there are many key principles and basics in regard to fish senses and nutrition to absorb for a start (and to understand how to seriously exploit) before you even pick up an ingredient or sniff a flavor!

These days more and more carp anglers are getting into making their own baits and this is no surprise! The average carp bait sold for a price of around 6 pounds here in the UK is very easily out-fished by cheaper better-designed and far more potently stimulatory homemade baits and all formats of ground baits, stick, slop, method and other baits including particles and pellets (besides boilies.) Very frequently I've personally out-fished much more expensive popular brands using my own homemade baits. As I and many others have proven over the last 30 plus years, anyone with the desire to find out more about bait-making, can take back control from all the bait companies and fish their own unique baits exceptionally successfully (and with this knowledge, experience and skill, can out-fish leading brands.)

The growing numbers of homemade bait-making anglers in the UK and all around the world reflect a movement towards the desire of anglers to take back control over every aspect of their fishing and the desire to understand more complete details about bait and actually how it works in relation to carp diet and senses etc that in the past has been largely ignored by the majority who have been dependent upon ready made baits!

When I began carp fishing in the nineteen-seventies everyone made their own baits out of necessity and it really was a challenge to find appropriate and accurate information about what exactly made carp feed and what fulfilled their essential nutritional requirements that you could actually get hold of and use in homemade baits, but all this experience and knowledge has meant our homemade baits can hold their own and even out-fish popular brand ready made boilies.

Homemade baits have always if so desired been a tremendously effective economical and unique edge in carp fishing, (being different is vital to constant success of course,) it is very easy to forget that the relatively few truly knowledgeable bait designers with the big bait companies all started out at home in their own kitchens or garden sheds!

Although I have only caught forty pound plus carp from 3 waters in the UK and my tally for fish of this weight is currently twenty, the fact is that if your goal is to catch big carp you must be fishing waters containing them. This is often limited by your location, time, personal connections and disposable finances. It is very easy to rack up high numbers of big fish if you happen to be a full-time angler, an angler local to most of the big fish waters in the country such as the Colne Valley, or have the funds and time to basically fish when and where you want on the many big-fish commercial waters and seriously establish baits on them.

Perceptions have changed in carp fishing to an unbelievable degree in recent years; my own twenty fish caught in the UK over forty pounds would be very average on some crazily-priced impossible to get into scarp syndicates today, but the fact is that if your goal is big fish, you must fish waters containing them or never achieve your goals at least until the fish you have present access to grow to that size if they ever do at all that is! (You cannot catch a forty from a water not containing them no matter what bait recipes you employ although your recipe might well grow certain fish into forties given enough bait and time!)

Many limiting factors are involved in both bait details and fishing itself; commonly it is lack of time and good waters, (or restricted access to them,) exorbitant membership or day ticket prices or bait costs involved in truly being able to establish a bait on a water for an average angler that limits catch results very severely that results in average or lower than average yearly catches for average anglers. Obviously if you are a sponsored angler, in the tackle and bait trades, are a full-time angler, or have the time and resources, or personal support and contacts available etc (which can all come into the equation of success) then your chances of carp fishing success can be far higher than the average.

Like most carp anglers, I do not have the luxury of any of these advantages and I have to fish against bait and tackle-sponsored anglers wherever I fish just the same. But one thing I have is desire, focus and willingness to constantly learn and refine my thinking which is so vital in fishing. Being able to make an effective homemade carp bait is a very well proven leveler to those advantages just previously mentioned.

Although beginning in carp bait making is like starting junior school again - when you are really competing against bait companies (and individuals) who are exploiting professionals with PhD's in food science, fish nutrition, electrochemistry and so on, you can be certain your efforts will pay-off, big-time! Although certain anglers will rave-on about balanced nutritional value baits being as fully digestible as possible and sorted down the third limiting amino acid level, you may noticed that well over 90 percent of all carp caught in the world are not caught on such baits! This is because only a handful of well-connected bait designers can actually produce baits to this effect!

But whether you are an instant high-attract bait proponent or not (I favor both nutritional and components of the high-attract approach together) the nutritional, metabolic and health impacts of a fast and efficiently digested bait cannot be under-estimated! It figures that the more energy a fish has available after eating your baits and the more your bait offers in potential rewards (that carp are most sensitive to in them,) the more chances you have of fish actually mouthing baits and consuming them repeatedly.

This of course results in far more chances of your hook baits being picked up by stimulated fish and more captures of fish and bigger fish over all, than very many competing baits can produce that so often have much less to offer carp!

The average carp angler has been conditioned by appearances to associate carp baits with flavors; many are still on the basic level of asking other anglers what flavor they are using which is really missing the point! The real key to long-term success for average-skilled anglers is the use of nutritionally stimulating baits, intrinsically and additionally containing optimum levels of both dry and liquid form nutritional substances carp essentially need in order to survive.

Ready made baits are being offered by countless companies, but a large proportion of the materials used within these baits in the large majority of these baits are in effect wasted by the fish. This is due to these baits being indigestible to varying degrees. Make no mistake, these baits still catch carp, but why use baits that are going to give you average results. Worse still cheap baits will allow you to blank totally unnecessarily!

When you can make the effort and use baits that are as near to being fully digestible and rewarding to the fish as is possible these can easily enable any average angler to compete against better anglers possessing more time and experience who use cheap or free ready made baits with less to offer fish in terms of nutritional rewards?

Flavors and the leverage of high levels of concentrated flavors for instance in hook baits is another approach to the nutritionally-based one. The more talented and better-skilled carp anglers catch loads of big carp using these if only on a single-hook bait fishing approach, but they do not always produce the consistent results average anglers hope for especially when on rich waters and when used against more experienced carp anglers on hard waters who will predominantly use really well designed balanced value or highly nutritional value baits.

The most famous flavors used in instant attractor baits need no mention here, but suffice to say, you can easily over-dose almost any bait using these flavors for adequate results (at least in the very short-term) on a variety of waters depending on certain competing factors of course! Flavors vary enormously in their level of bioactive potency and the degree to which they stimulate the combined and individual senses of carp. Certain chili extracts for instance will initiate biochemical and physiological reactions within carp that actually involve pleasure - from a pain response (this is one reason we like hot curries!).

In my opinion the best starting point in making homemade baits, is to get to really become familiar with many of the natural feeding triggers carp are most sensitive to (as in getting to know your enemy better than yourself as they say!) Once you start to see why carp are naturally so sensitive and stimulated by betaine for example things start making a lot more sense when it comes to designing and making homemade baits.

There are not so many truly potent carp feeding triggers as so-called attractors or incitants and these really need to be studied. From monophosphates, amino acids, (and other amines) similes and analogues of natural substances (and other genuine natural substances and synthetic copies and combinations of these and so on, the list of things you can exploit is very exciting!

Many great more well-known carp bait substances result from natural bacterial and yeast processes acting on proteins etc; such as butyric acid for instance. In the aquatic ecosystems abounding a carp existence, many forms of bacteria that are found in different balances and producing different effects and impacts in the water are a good idea to study as are both specific and beneficial carp gut flora and their implications in bait-making and bait digestion!

You might then seek out the very highest quality products available that contain the most stimulatory (and most limiting) and most potent substances in regards carp growth, health, metabolism, immunity-boosting impacts, impacts upon the liver, heart, circulation and fat and sugar processing and storage etc, for bait use, all at a reasonable price.

On the absolute basic level, it is very possible for the beginner to boost a simple homemade 50:50 soya and semolina boilie base mix by the addition of high levels of a additives or ingredients that will supply many potent feeding triggers; such as fermented shrimp powder, de-fatted green-lipped mussel extract, enzyme-treated liver powder, enzyme-treated yeast powder, corn steep liquor powder, Ccmoore Feedstim XP powder etc; these and others will make all the difference!

Please beware there are many hidden factors in sourcing bait ingredients; such as taste enhancers or squid extracts that have been cut with cheaper products and constant experimentation is the key to outstanding results; but this is the learning curve that literally everyone that makes new baits is on. (If you look up ingredients from Phil at CW Baits for instance as well as big companies like the highly regarded Ccmoore you will not go wrong!)

So do yourself a very big favor to improve your results (and bank balance,) and discover more about making truly effective economical homemade baits. My unique carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks (at Baitbigfish on Google etc) are very stimulating reading!

By Tim Richardson.
Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: "BIG CARP FLAVORS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!" "BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!" And "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" For these and much more now visit: http://www.baitbigfish.com Home of world-wide proven ready made and homemade bait success secrets bibles!