Fishing Bait | Barbel boilies
Bait expert Dr. Paul Garner talks you through how to create some of the most irresistible boilies to help you land yourself a personal best barbel.
Rolling round boilies can be a pain, but luckily there’s a much easier way to make these baits, which will be a different shape and texture to anything you can buy. Chopped boilies have caught me barbel to 16lb-plus. Bait companies produce dedicated boilie hookbait kits, containing base mix and liquid additives – perfect for boilie chops.
Crack a large egg into a mixing bowl and add the supplied liquid additives.
Add a teaspoonful of salmon oil to the liquids and mix well. This makes the baits less sticky.
Slowly add the powdered base mix, stirring all the time to ensure that the bait is thoroughly mixed.
Stop mixing when the paste is still a bit wet and leave for five minutes until liquid is absorbed.
Sprinkle base mix on a chopping board and flatten paste into a 0.5ins thick disc with a rolling pin.
Boil the flattened disc of paste in a large pan of water for two minutes.
Let the paste stand for around 30 minutes to cool down on a sheet of kitchen towel.
Freeze the bait like this and break it up into bait-sized chunks when you arrive on the bank.
Top Summer Fishing baits
Check out the best fishing baits around that will guarantee you success on the banks! Bait expert Dr Paul Garner talks us through what his top fishing baits to use this summer will be and what thinking outside the box can deliver.
scale down your cubes
Luncheon meat is an incredibly effective bait, and lends itself to being used in many different ways. Over the past couple of years I have been fishing tiny cubes or punched cylinders of meat for all manner of different species, and it seems it’s often hard to beat.
To produce plenty of hookbaits and feed, simply use an MAP meat cutter to chop up a full tin into 4mm baits. These tiny cubes will catch just about every fish that swims.
fish a classic combo
My go-to baits for summer barbel are hemp and caster. This classic combo of very small baits encourages the fish to feed even with the sun on their backs.
I normally use a bait dropper to introduce a 4:1 mix of hemp and caster, three loads every 15 minutes for a minimum of an hour.Then superglue three real casters or two fake casters on to the hair and hold on to your rod
mix tougher paste
There is a real skill in fishing super-soft paste down the edge for carp. With practice you can use a paste that literally melts off the hook, but for us mere mortals this can be a frustrating game.
Fortunately, right through the summer much firmer baits work well. These can be moulded around the hook and swung out without using a pole cup. Fibre pastes work especially well. Its stringy texture adheres to the hook, only falling away when you lift the rig out.
blitz some corn
Messy, maybe, but liquidised sweetcorn gives you a fantastic edge when fishing for big carp, match-sized fish, tench or bream.
Cheap and nutritious, you can use it in spod mixes, to create a cloud when fishing zigs, cupped into the margins, or mixed with groundbait.This salty-sweet, pungent bait will drive the fish wild.
feed while trotting
Running a big Avon float down a pacey glide is just about as good as summer fishing gets, but you go through a lot of bait. Each run through will see a good pinch of bait introduced before the float is released.
To keep the cost down I use hemp and 6mm Halibut pellets as my feed, with a 6mm or 8mm pellet on the hook. Don’t mix the hemp and pellets together as they sink at different speeds – the pellets need to be introduced further upstream than the hemp so that they reach the bottom at the same point down the peg.
beat weed with bags
Presenting baits properly in weed can be a nightmare. I use a small solid PVA bag with the entire rig inside. To ensure that the bag packs down really tightly, fill it with micro pellets or damp groundbait – this will ensure that the bag flies straight on the cast. A small trimmed-down wafter boilie is the ideal hookbait inside a solid bag.
Flavour your meat
A lot of polony and luncheon meat goes into commercials in summer, so try colouring and flavouring your chopped meat to give it a new lease of life. Add a teaspoonful of flavour per tin, shake well and leave overnight.
Don’t be afraid to try some unusual flavour combinations. Scopex meat works just great, especially when you add a dash of super-sweet Betalin to it.
Use your loaf
As a hookbait for surface-feeding carp bread takes some beating, especially on urban venues where the local birdlife waxes fat on the stuff.
On the river, too, bread can be an excellent way of targeting chub, both on the surface and trundled downstream under a heavy chubber float. And if big rudd are your chosen target a loaf of fresh bread should be an essential in your bait bag.
Spice up barbel baits
Once the river season is a few weeks old I will soak pellet and meat hookbaits in a spicy concoction that appeals to barbel.
To a bottle of hemp oil add a teaspoonful of chilli powder and the same of garlic powder. Shake well and you have enough bait soak to last all season. The three ingredients combine in a manner barbel find hard to resist.
switch to pellets for big roach
Summer hemp and tare fishing will catch roach even when the water is gin-clear. The only problem is that bites can be lightning-fast and easy to miss. I think this is because roach don’t particularly like the hard texture of hemp and tare hookbaits.
Instead of using seeds on the hook, try a 4mm hooker pellet instead. The softer the pellet, the more bites you will hit.
get bream feeding on the method
The flat Method feeder has revolutionised carp fishing since its inception, and the same is rapidly happening to bream fishing too.
Loaded with mini-halibut pellets or a fishmeal-rich groundbait, the flat Method is the ideal way of delivering a mouthful of bait right where you want it – next to the hookbait. Try using a 10mm boilie or a similar sized pellet on the hair and ring the changes to bring more bites.
Go stalking with slugs
When the rivers are ‘on their bones’ in summer go stalking for chub with minimal gear. Chub have great eyesight and can be very wary of many baits, but a big lobworm or slug cast upstream of them is often gobbled up in an instant. If you’re squeamish, try a big lump of luncheon meat, although don’t expect the reaction to be quite so explosive.
try Wafters on the Wag
A pellet waggler gives carp more time to intercept the bait on the fall, while it is imitating the free offerings being fired in regularly.
A slow-sinking mini-boilie wafter is the ideal hookbait. I like to carry a range of different colours, as this can be an important element to success on some days.
Use a ‘sighter’
A simple way of increasing the number of bites you get is to use a bait that stands out from the free offerings.
This could be a combination of red and white maggots on the hook while feeding just red, or a brightly coloured pop-up fished over a bed of dark boilies. Often I will use a grain of plastic corn in a contrasting colour (pink and white are best) on top of a dark boilie or pellet, to make the hookbait stand out from the crowd.
Wrap up your lead
Here’s a simple, but very effective tip – dampen a few handfuls of pellets until they become sticky, and every time you cast out, squeeze a palmful around your lead.
The pellets will fall away in a matter of minutes, leaving a lovely pile of super-attractive feed, ideal for carp and bream.
How to make perfect carp floaters
Making floater cake is no different to baking a cake, so most of us will have all the necessary equipment to do this in the kitchen. A food mixer is handy, but you can just as easily make the sticky mix using a fork.
Add 2oz of wheat gluten to Victoria sponge mix. This ingredient gives the finished bait a tougher, denser consistency.
Now add 100g of butter to your mixing bowl.
Add two large eggs and 150ml of milk to the mixing bowl.
A teaspoonful of concentrated liquid flavouring can now be added to boost the flavour. I tend to use sweet or fruit flavours.
Slowly add powdered ingredients to the liquid ones and mix for at least two minutes until a sloppy, lump-free consistency is attained.
Pour the mix into two tinfoil baking trays lined with greaseproof paper and sprinkled with hemp oil to stop the cake sticking.
Bake the mix for 25-30 minutes at 160˚C. Make sure the cake is cooked right through and not still soft in the middle.
Leave the floater cake to cool, then remove it from the tray. The block of bait can be cut to size on the bank or frozen until required.
Top 4 roach baits
If you are after a river roach this weekend then you may want to try some of these when you are out on the bank. We have put together a list of the best baits to use when on the search for a monster river roach!
No roach angler would ever go fishing without a pint of maggots. They work on almost every venue and can be fished shallow or on the deck, with groundbait or simply loosefed. Bronze maggots are the most popular colour on rivers.
The bait that has taken some massive roach on rivers right through the winter, it works well in summer too, especially for a specimen fish. Trot a big piece of soft breadflake down the swim to give you every chance of a specimen.
Seasoned anglers swear by casters for bonus big roach in match and pleasure sessions. Casters fall slowly through the water and are great for shallow swims or for picking out the better stamp of roach in a shoal.
Seen primarily as a hookbait, deactivated hempseed is sold for feeding pigeons – but when cooked so the seeds just split, it makes a brilliant feed for roach too! Hemp is fiddly to hook and doesn’t always work, but on days when it does the size of roach you catch will be markedly bigger than the norm.
Dr Paul Garner's 10- minute make | The maggot bait rig
When weed makes feeder fishing difficult I reach for the PVA bags and switch to an inline-lead system, which is much less likely to snag. A fine-mesh PVA stick filled with maggots and a pinch of groundbait is just as effective as a feeder and melts away in a couple of minutes, leaving just a pile of bait on the bottom.
I recommend tying up a short braided hooklink of about 6ins in length. I always use soft 15lb braid to a size 12 forged hook when I’m tenching.
These nifty Bag Clips from Avid Carp enable a PVA stick to be added instantly to the rig, which is much more effective and tangle-proof than hooking it on.
Put a piece of dissolving foam into the narrow PVA mesh. Ensure that the PVA is a fine weave that maggots cannot escape from.
Now fill the PVA mesh with a palm-sized helping of maggots mixed with a small amount of damp groundbait.
Compact the maggot/groundbait mix as much as possible before tying off the bag, as this will help it fly straight on the cast.
Now nick the hook in the base of the bag, so that the point is covered by the dissolving
foam.
Top 5 barbel baits
Are struggling to find the right bait for your barbel fishing? Well we may have the answers for you here are the top five baits that you can use on the rivers to help you land your best-ever barbel.
Meat, normally in tinned form such as Spam, is as popular today as it has ever been. The beauty of meat is that you can form whatever size hookbait you like with it. A big chunk fished on the hair can be a killer hookbait for big fish, while a tin cut into into small cubes is great for using as feed when floatfishing.
Both carp pellets and halibuts, their more oily cousins, make fantastic barbel baits. The small 4mm-8mm versions are great for feeding via a bag, in a feeder or by hand. The bigger varieties from 10mm and upwards are great for fishing on the hair or in a bait band.
One of the most under-rated barbel baits, lobbies can make a great change offering, particularly when bites on more conventional baits are not forthcoming. Fish two or three on a hair on a bomb rig in both coloured and clear water.
Some of the biggest barbel in the land have been caught on boilie hookbaits. Fish-based boilies with krill, crab or crayfish flavouring are great for barbel. Fish one or two on a hair rig and break a few up as feed offerings in a PVA bag.
Paste can be moulded it into whatever shape or size you like. It breaks down fairly easily, giving off particles that attract barbel upstream. Squeeze some around your lead weight or wrap some around a boilie hookbait for an extra attractant.
Top four chub baits
Are struggling to find the right bait for your chub fishing? Well we may have the answers for you here are the top five chub baits that you can use on the rivers this season that will potentially land you your best chub.
More big bags of chub are caught in summer on casters and hemp than any other bait. Hemp sinks quickly, while casters sink at different speeds, depending on how light or dark they are. Feed is therefore spread over a long length of the swim. Casters tipped with a maggot stay on the hook better than casters alone, and such hookbaits are very robust – important when you’re running the float down the swim up to 40 yards away. To store casters, you need a fridge and an airtight container with a layer of polythene between the tin and lid. Give them a little air every day to stop them suffocating. This is a much better way than keeping them in plastic bags.
If small fish aren’t a problem, a bucket of maggots can be just as deadly as casters and hemp for chub on certain summer days. To get the best from maggots, find a good tackle shop that has a reliable supply of quality bait on a regular basis.
If you can’t find anywhere locally there is an option to buy maggots (and casters) online now. There are at least a couple of mail order companies who can supply you with what you need. However you buy the maggots, always ensure you look after it properly when you’ve got it.
This means that you need an old fridge to keep the maggots chilled right down to just above freezing point in order to stop them from turning and shrinking. Always use a cold bag with ice packs to transport the bait to your chosen river swim and, once you’re there, keep them cool and out of direct sunlight.
Bread is a fantastic bait to use with groundbait containing casters and hemp. It’s also good on its own early weeks in the season.
Use a big hook, anything from a size 10 up to a size 6, and wrap small pieces of sliced white bread around the shank. Use a top and bottom attached float with plenty of weight about 1ft above the hook and, in the early stages of a session, every time you run the rig down, strike the bread off at different points in the swim.
This will eventually result in plenty of tempting bits of bread bouncing through the swim, which will soon attract a shoal of hungry chub.
Few things are more annoying than small dace and bleak intercepting maggot and caster feed and hookbaits. The answer lies in bags of 6mm and 8mm fishmeal carp pellets – the light coloured Bait-Tech brand is a good one. Try these and your fishing should improve dramatically.
Pellets are a really easy bait to use – you just feed mostly 6mm offerings with a few 8mm samples, then use a banded or lassoed 8mm pellet as hookbait. It can often pay to scale this approach down on small rivers and feed 4mm pellets while using a 6mm sample on the hook.
The beauty of carp pellets as a chub bait is that they are quite cheap for the volume you get and you don’t need loads to catch a big weight.
Dr Paul Garner's 10- minute make | Pellet mash
Pellet mash is best prepared the night before fishing, and it takes only a few minutes’ work before it is left to soak until morning. Alternatively, speed up the process if you are in a hurry. A couple of kilos of bait will be plenty for a day session.
Soak 6mm halibut pellets in cold water for 10 minutes. You can speed up the process by using warm water.
Pour off the water and add a teaspoonful of hemp oil to the pellet mix. Shake well to distribute the oil evenly.
Once the water is absorbed, mix them up. Those at the bottom turn to mush, those at the top are soft, but still intact.
Two handfuls of dry Method Mix groundbait will soak up any excess moisture and help bind the pellets together.
Dr Paul Garner's 10 - minute make | Make your own particle mix
Using just one particle bait can lead to the fish becoming preoccupied and ignoring other baits. This is especially a problem if you are feeding small baits, such as hemp or groats, as these are generally too small to use on the hook. Feeding a mix of particles can be a much better tactic, and is very easy to achieve.
Baits of a similar size can often be prepared together. For my base mix I use a pint of hemp, along with a handful of dari seeds and a similar quantity of tares.
In a second tub soak a handful of maize, maple peas, chick peas and black eye beans. If you can’t get hold of all these baits, adjust the mix to suit what you have.
In a third tub soak a pint of groats and some flaked maize. These particles only need soaking, so they must be prepared separately.
After 24 hours drain off the liquid and leave the tubs of bait to for a further 24 hours to allow the seed elements to start to germinate.
Boil up the hemp and small particles for about 10 minutes, and then repeat the process with the larger baits.
When all the baits have cooled, mix them together and add two tablespoonfuls of rock salt and the same of sugar.
Dr Paul Garner's 10- minute make | Super spod mix
Dissolve a few handfuls of Nash Bait Key Cray pellets in lake water. Use just enough water to cover the pellets.
Add a teaspoonful of salmon oil to each two pints of mix. The oil will create a strong slick rising up through the water column.
Add a handful of soaked flaked maize to the mix. This is an inexpensive ingredient that contributes to the cloud effect.
Once the pellets have dissolved, add just enough fishmeal groundbait to produce a sloppy porridge-like consistency.
Over-wet a handful of 8mm expander pellets, and once they have fully expanded, add them to the mix.
Use a spod with Gorilla Tape covering the holes, or a Spomb, to accurately bait up with your cloudy mix.
The finished mix which, when spodded out, will feed and cloud all layers of the water and draw carp to where your zig awaits them.
How to pimp out your pellets
Find out how to make your pellets irresistible with Steve Gregory'svery simple but effective recipe that will not only help you catch more but also keep those F1s in your swim for longer.
This is all done by soaking the pellets and then adding a bit of extra spice in the form of dry paste powder, which will help them bind into a ball and adds attraction.
Feeding should be regulated to bites. On a good day, he’ll easily get through eight pints of bait. When the fish are being funny, this will be cut back to a ball every four or five fish.
Follow the step-by-step guide below to try it yourself!
Add paste powder
Pop the pellets into a bowl and pour on some paste powder.
Coat your pellets
Add enough to give them just a light coating when mixed in.
Add your water
Now pour in water so that every pellet is covered – just.
Soak the pellets
This is what they look like when soaked but they can’t be used yet!
The finished pellets
Left to stand for half an hour, the pellets have swollen.
Land the biggest F1s with this amazing paste
If you thought paste was a bait reserved for catching big carp then you’d be missing a big trick – that’s the verdict of match ace Steve Gregory who is famed for his antics with the stuff across a wide variety of commercial fisheries across the UK.
Paste still catches ‘lumps’, but as F1s become more common in our waters, Steve has adapted his approach to catch the lion’s share of a finicky species more associated with smaller hookbaits.
He’s perfected paste fishing for F1s so much that he can keep pace with anglers playing the numbers game fishing pellets and maggots. It’s all to do with the stamp of fish that paste produces on waters holding fish ranging from ounces to 2lb.
“Fish pellets and you’ll catch, but I’ve found the size can vary greatly,” Middy-backed Steve explained.
“My paste sorts out the bigger F1s and it’s rare to get one under 1lb. There are lots of myths surrounding fishing paste and I think that can put anglers off using it. They shouldn’t be worried because once you master a few simple basics it’s a very easy method to fish.”
To demonstrate, the former British match record-holder invited us to Falcon Lake at Westwood Lakes near Boston, home to thousands of F1s of all sizes to show paste’s power.
Paste consistency
“Groundbait pastes are a waste of time because they dissolve,” Steve said bluntly. “That defeats the point because I want my hookbait to stay on for as long as it takes to get a bite. People think that I have a magic paste mix, but it’s just my original Miracle Paste that I’ve been using for years. However, I mix it a few days in advance because this gives me the consistency that I want.”
“It has to be soft enough to strike through, but stringy enough to stay on when fish are knocking into the line or mouthing the bait. I’ll prepare plenty of paste because, on places like Falcon Lake, you could be getting hundreds of bites and so getting through a fair bit. Two bags makes enough for a hectic session.”
Hookbait size
“It’s important to match your hookbait to the size of fish. Because F1s are the target, there’s no place for massive lumps the size of your thumb!” Steve said.
“I don’t use little pea-sized bits either. Typically, the bait is around the size of a £1 coin. That’s large enough to catch bigger F1s.”
Fishing short
“I’ll fish a top kit if I can to save time on waters where every second counts,” Steve said.
“Having to unship a section of pole each time can lose you 15 minutes of fishing time. That can work out at over 20 fish you miss out on catching on days when the fishing it good. Fishing short puts you on top of the near shelf on a flat bottom, which is a must for paste fishing.”
Spotting a bite
“Don’t be tempted into striking when the float goes under – it’ll do all sorts of things as fish knock into the line or mouth the bait,” he advised.
“You’re looking for a specific indication on the float. This will be a sharp, positive ‘dig’ on the float as a fish gets hold of the paste properly. Even then you will foul-hook a lot of fish because of the number in the swim. By fishing relatively light hollow elastic, I can get these foul-hookers in. If you aren’t connecting with bites, hold the float tight to the line and you’ll see it fly under!”
Big hooks still rule
“Fishing paste on a size 14 hook is a waste of time because you won’t convert bites into hooked fish. You still need to fish a big ‘anchor’ and for me that’s a size 12 Middy 83-13 pattern. That’s plenty big enough to hold the paste in place and still strike through and get a good hook hold,” he explained.
“Lines are 0.14mm Hi-Viz fished straight through with that light elastic being Middy’s 8-10 hollow grade.
“Finally we should talk about floats and I go big on this front too with a 0.7g handmade model that’s got a relatively slim body. I’ve seen blokes fishing paste with no shot on the rig, instead relying on the paste to cock the float. That’s nonsense and all it does is see any tow or wind on the lake put pressure on the hook and ultimately rip the paste off. I also leave the whole bristle showing to read bites better.”
Dr Paul Garner's 10-minute make | Sweetened pellets and bulk groundbait
The combination of sweet additives and fishmeal-based baits has revolutionised bream fishing, and both these can be incorporated into all your baits.
A couple of days before a bream session, put your pellets into a bait bucket and add two tablespoonfuls of molasses to each kilo of pellets. The sweet, sticky liquid will infuse the pellets, boosting their appeal.
Make up a 50:50 mix of brown crumb and fishmeal Method mix. Add a teaspoonful of salt per kilo.
Mix using water with two tablespoonfuls of molasses added to each pint of liquid.
Mix large amounts of groundbait in a sizeable bucket. A groundbait whisk speeds up the process.
Add boilie flake, corn and pellets. Chopped worm and dead maggots are useful additions too. The baits added to the mix will alter the consistency, so add them only when you are ready to introduce your feed.
10 Bait tips to catch more this weekend!
Always pack floaters
On sunny days the carp will often be found warming themselves up in the upper layers of the water, and the chances are that they will be suckers for floating baits. Most anglers don’t start thinking about using surface baits until we are well into summer, by which time the canny angler will have already have been using them for several weeks.
Feed Groundbait Short
A tactic that has worked wonders on a number of venues already this year has been to feed groundbait just off the rod top at the bottom of the marginal slope. Whether I have been fishing for crucians, tench or carp, groundbait has proved far superior to anything elseat attracting and holding fish in the relatively cold water. A nugget of Sensas Super-G each cast is plenty. Try fishing a 6mm cube of meat, a pinch of bread or sweetcorn over the top.
Fruity Additive For Tench
For some reason, pineapple flavour is one of the greatest tench attractors of all time. When using maggots, this is the additive that I turn to, adding just half a teaspoonful to a pint of grubs. You can even dip your hookbait in the neat liquid to give it maximum attraction.
Sweetcorn Really Takes Off
The bright colour and salty/sweet taste of sweetcorn will prove very effective over the coming weeks. While this bait attracts mainly carp, don’t be too surprised if tench, bream, F1s and even big roach put in an appearance when you have corn on the hook. A couple of tins is more than enough for a session. I prefer to feed little-and-often. A dozen grains of corn fed every few minutes, or after every bite, will be enough to get the swim rocking in no time, so always carry this bait in your tackle bag.
Boilie Time
If I am planning on spending my time over the coming weeks fishing one venue for carp then I will begin a baiting campaign. This doesn’t have to be hundreds of kilos of bait – just a handful or two in the right place can make all the difference. Choose a quality bait – I normally stick with NashBait TG Active – and at the end of every trip introduce a few whole and broken boilies. In no time at all the carp will start to recognise your bait as a free meal.
Micros For The Method
When carp are my target, micro pellets are what I will mould around my Method feeder. Even though the weather might be warm, the water is likely to be several degrees cooler, so it is easy to overfeed carp, even when using just a medium-sized feeder. Micros release maximum attraction and keep the carp working hard, so are ideal for the Method at this time of the year.
Solid Bags
When I need to get a bite fast, especially if I am on a new water, then solid PVA bags are often my first choice. Each bag is filled with broken boilies and micro pellets to create maximum attraction on the lakebed. With the rig and hookbait also inside the bag there is no chance of the rig becoming tangled or catching on weed, giving me the perfect ‘dinner plate’ every time. Tied tightly, solid bags also cast incredibly well, and make a completely different sound to a lead crashing into the water – making them ideal for casting at showing fish.
Zigs In High Pressure
Carp can be hard to catch when the air pressure is high. On warm, still days try a zig, even if the venue isn’t very deep. Start with one set at half-depth and lengthen it to fish closer to the surface as the day wears on. Dark zigs work best for me as they are highly visible when viewed from the side or below. On prolific venues try spodding soup or firing slow-sinking pellets over your zigs.
Meaty Hookbaits
Punched meat has been an absolute revelation to me over the last few years and has caught me specimens of a number of different species. The unique texture, bright colour and strong flavour of meat mean that it is a bait that really stands out. What is more, it is very easy to prepare. I cut a tin of luncheon meat into 8mm thick slices and then use a bait punch to produce hookbaits on the bank. For small species, such as crucians, a 6mm bait is best, while for bream and carp I use 8mm or 10mm baits.
Feed The Edge
Punched meat has been an absolute revelation to me over the last few years and has caught me specimens of a number of different species. The unique texture, bright colour and strong flavour of meat mean that it is a bait that really stands out. What is more, it is very easy to prepare. I cut a tin of luncheon meat into 8mm thick slices and then use a bait punch to produce hookbaits on the bank. For small species, such as crucians, a 6mm bait is best, while for bream and carp I use 8mm or 10mm baits.
Top margin baits you can use right now!
With spring now here Daiwa's Will Raison offers some timely advice for the best margin baits to be using right now. Here are his top baits to use when fishing for big carp down the margins.
Sweetcorn
Forget using a single grain of corn in the margins – two pieces will get you more bites and bigger fish, working on the principle that a carp will spot two bits of yellow corn far quicker than just the one, especially when the bottom is being churned up by feeding fish. Corn is also a heavy bait that won’t be washed about and is hard for little fish to rip off the hook.
Dead Red Maggots
Without a doubt the number one margin bait! I cram up to seven or eight dead reds on to the hook to create a massive hookbait that no carp can miss or refuse.
Deads are very soft and still look like their live counterparts to the fish, but don’t wriggle. When fishing over a large helping of dead reds, carp will move in and hoover up the lot, including the hookbait. They’re a very light bait that are easy for the fish to suck in.
To make dead red maggots I simply clean the sawdust off a few pints and put them in a plastic bag, remove all the air and seal them tightly. The maggots then go into the freezer for three days to ensure they’re dead – I have frozen them for one day before, only to see them come back to life!
Worms
These are venue-specific baits in my experience and tend to work on waters that see a lot of chopped worm and caster used by anglers– the carp get a real taste for them.
They’re also great if there are a lot of roach and rudd in the peg that are smashing maggots to bits. I’ll fish one or perhaps two for a big bait. They’re also worth having in reserve as a change bait when using maggots and groundbait, as the bites can be very savage.
Luncheon Meat
Meat can be very cyclical, in that it works over any other bait for spells during the spring and autumn. However, in July and August I would still have some 10mm cubes with me to slip on to the hook as a change bait.
Dr Paul Garner's 10-minute make | Grilled meat
In hot weather luncheon meat can become very soft as the fat in it melts. To make a much tougher bait, try frying the meat first. This cooks out the fat and puts a tough skin around the bait.
Cut a tin of luncheon meat into three-quarter-inch slices.
Heat up two teaspoonfuls of cooking oil in a frying pan.
Add a teaspoonful of garlic powder to the pan.
Fry the meat for two to three minutes on each side.
Break the meat into chunks to give you the perfect bait size.
Dr Paul Garner's 10-minute make | Boost your pellet feed
Plain pellets will catch plenty of carp off the top, but you can test out different flavours and attractors very easily by top-coating your feed with different liquids. I also like to make up some PVA sticks of pellets that allow me to catapult baits much further, should the fish be at distance. Normally I put in this preparation at home so that I am not wasting time on the bank.
Mix one pint of 3mm Riser pellets with two pints of 11mm floating pellets. This mix creates a much tighter PVA stick than big pellets alone.
Add two teaspoonfuls of TG Active boilie dip to the pellets and shake so the bait is evenly covered, then allow the liquid to soak in for 10 minutes.
Wide-bore PVA mesh makes up small, round sticks. These can be catapulted accurately up to and beyond 50m if the fish are well out in the middle.
Store PVA sticks in a bucket of pellets. This absorbs any moisture that might melt the PVA, and the sticks will always be ready to hand.
Dr Paul Garner's 10-minute make | Margin meat
Meat is a cracking bait for margin fishing. I like to give mine a bit of a twist to give it maximum pulling power and make it really stand out.
Cube a tin of luncheon meat using either a sharp knife or a meat cutter. I prefer 8mm-10mm cubes for themargins, as they pick out the better fish.
Add some chilli and rock salt flakes to three tablespoonfuls of hemp oil.
Pour the oil mix over the meat and give it a shake to cover it evenly.
For best results leave the oil to soak into the meat overnight.Store it in the fridge to keep it in top condition.
How to make the bread and corn super mix
It may not look the most appealing bait, but Craig Mortimer’s budget bread and corn mix is unbeatable!
Whether a carp is 3oz, 3lb or 30lb, they will never turn their noses up at a free feed of bread and corn. Match anglers use both to great effect right through the winter and well into early spring, so why not adopt this approach when targeting specimen carp?
Even if the fish are completely dormant due to the cold water temperature, the bright visibility that these two baits bring to the table is usually irresistible. Being primarily flavour, colour and cloud, there is nothing to really feed upon, apart from the hookbait.
Gardner, Sticky and Daiwa-backed Craig Mortimer has been using this mixture of ‘match baits’ over four years and his results speak for themselves, with a 31lb 12oz being the biggest to fall to his tactics. With this in mind, Craig’s carping approach just had to be checked out, so we met the 30-year-old Ipswich rod at The Nunnery Lakes complex near Thetford, Norfolk and asked him to guide us through this magic carp mix.
How to make Craig's mix
Starting with a whole fresh sliced white loaf, he places the lot in a bucket and adds water to produce a mush. Next in goes a 900g bag of frozen corn that has been liquidised, as well as another full bag of frozen whole corn.
“I like to add around 1/3 to half a kilo of crushed Manilla boilies and 100ml of the corresponding liquid as this enhances the flavour trail and gives the bigger fish something to graze on without filling them up,” he added.
“If I am fishing somewhere shallow or over the top of zigs and I want the slop to make more of a cloud in the water, I’ll add a little more liquid and lake water. Alternatively, if the venue is deeper, I stodge it up with the addition of more liquidised breadcrumb or groundbait.”
The beauty of Nunnery is there are few, if any, silverfish, but if a water does hold bream, you can get plagued by them at times. By fishing a boilie on the hook, if you do hook a bream or roach, it will generally be of a better stamp, so still worth catching.
“I have found in the past that feeding silverfish will draw in the carp, which soon bully these fish away from the swim, so it’s a win, win,” Craig told us. Follow the simple steps below to create your own corn mix on the bank!
Start by putting a whole loaf of fresh, sliced white bread in a bucket, and add water
Use your hands to break up the bread and crusts into a soggy mush
Once you’ve got rid of all the lumps put on the lid and drain off any excess water
Next into the bucket goes a 900g bag of frozen corn that has been liquidised
Give the mix a good stir until the liquidised corn is fully mixed in with the bread mash
Another whole bag of corn, this time frozen, is then added to the bucket
The addition of half a kilo of chopped boilies provides a few bigger food items for the carp
A glug of Cloudy Manilla liquid helps to enhance the flavour trail of the mix
Dr Paul Garner's 10-minute make | Spicy carp corn
Carp love corn and they love spicy baits, so why not combine the two in this cornucopia of flavours that can be used in PVA sticks and bags to stunning effect?
Drain off the liquid from half a tin of corn and then blot it dry using a couple of sheets of paper towel.
Add a tablespoonful of chilli flakes to two tablespoonfuls of hemp oil and mix this with the corn. The oil will prevent the PVA melting.
Add a handful of TG Active Stick Mix to the spicy sweetcorn. This will enable you to compact the PVA sticks that bit better.
Make a PVA stick using the corn mix. This should be about 4ins long.
The finished stick can then be hooked on and will melt within seconds, leaving a spread of tasty corn around the hookbait.