Catch more big carp in winter! One of the best times to catch big carp is winter time when harnessing the power of exceptional naturally potent homemade bait is one of the very most effective ways to achieve the catch of a lifetime! Here are some expert tips and insights on winter baits to give you the edge! For those big winter fish you've always dreamed of catching read on now!
One of the biggest keys to successfully catching winter carp is in understanding and knowing how to activate your fish very strongly so that you actually get a pick up, (or even achieve multiple pick ups,) by increasing fish feeding intensity and prolonging duration of feeding!
This can actually be achieved by the choices you make in the ingredients, levels and combinations you choose to apply in your winter baits. You really do have such control over fish to a great degree. This relates to something called metabolism and is essential to understand more about as you will catch loads more fish with this edge! A couple of my bait tuition clients have even caught the biggest day ticket carp at 62 pounds in winter using deeper principles regarding how to harness the power of metabolism in their bait recipes.
Winter carp fishing is more than simply finding fish, which are often shoaled up together in mid-water or even among snags in relatively shallow water, (and not in the deepest part of a lake!) Carp activity is very much dictated and influenced by energy efficiency of their bodies governed by cellular enzyme activity. This is something we can influence and exploit to catch more fish! This is because fish activity is very much about release of energy within fish.
We can give fish energy boosts and directly and indirectly make fish more often and more intensively in many ways (through our baits in solution,) even without fish having eaten any bait! Most anglers perceive bait as little round balls, boilies for example. But for winter fishing boilies are about the least successful baits, at least regarding controlling fish behaviours.
Remember that in winter and early spring fish are often not actively feeding due to the cold temperatures which mean low enzyme activity in cells. This is where carp are living off stored energy, fat and glycogen around vital organs and so on which means much of the time, carp have little requirement for feeding over and above mere survival level, existing by preserving energy.
But we can supply them with energy boosts, metabolism boosts through our baits. Baits must be water-soluble in winter and must become soluble in the water column and spread as far and wide as possible so fish become aware most of their presence. In low temperatures many of the bulk oils in pure form or in fish meals for instance either congeal or solidify or take far more energy in terms of intrinsic resources such as enzymes and amino acids etc to digest in cold temperatures, and in vital time. I say vital time because really in winter the aim is to get as many bites as possible in as short a time as possible!
Fish often switch on and then off again in their feeding, feeding just in perhaps one short burst of 20 minutes if that in winter. This appears the case certainly in bottom feeding and one likely reason is that fish can remain far more energy efficient in water off the bottom, out of the very densest coldest layers. In winter some of the most productive places to fish are not in the deepest swims but those which are a half way point between deep and shallow, which relate to stores of natural food in the silt and dying weed etc, and where the sun's radiation actually penetrates and warms up water that much that keep fish active enough to feed, on the bottom when they do become active.
Often fish will filtration feed in the upper layers where algae is feed energy from sunlight and these feed on minerals etc in the rich upper warmer layers. It makes sense then that carp exploit the middle and upper layers and marginal areas much more when they do actually feed in winter.
In winter because fish will spend so much time off the bottom or in quite often unusual packed situations inactive, you need to not merely fish in far more explorative fashions, but make your baits more active and make your baits more able to activate fish into actual feeding and prolong their feeding for as long as possible!
So for instance, instead of using boiled baits use fast steaming and coat baits in paste. This is absolutely essential if you do not already use paste in winter. The difference in leak off from hook baits and free baits in paste form compared to boilie form is incredible and far more dramatic in terms of catch results in winter especially. But remember to fish off the bottom as well as on the bottom because much of the time fish will be off the bottom and not necessarily in the densest coldest layers of water and be instead where the water is heated by radiation from the sun.
So for instance I find that marginal areas which are heated by morning and afternoon sun are good areas to try fishing in winter and spring, especially near or in snags, near or in old weed beds, under bank side bushes and overhanging banks, alongside or even in reeds, and on plateaus or tops of ridge on sunny days and in the troughs and holes and gaps in bars and in slight holes in clay bottoms in slightly deeper water etc.
Fishing off the bottom means at least light wafting hook baits, up out of chod or deposited leaf and other detritus etc thus making it far easier for carp to detect them or sight feed on them without the hook being fouled or the bait being fouled by dissolved ammonium from decaying substances on the bottom in winter and early spring.
It is like paste is specially invented for winter and early spring and cold temperatures, because frankly most egg bound baits in cold water will easily last long enough intact with zero heating whatsoever!
But what kind of things can we do in our baits to make fish more active?
The first is to realise that protein causes a thermo-chemical reaction in fish and that this is seriously significant in low temperatures. This involves release of energy. We can fuel energy release and activate fish systems and release of their enzymes etc by what we choose to use in our baits.
Among the most highly thermogenic, biologically-stimulating substances are the milk proteins as they take so much energy to digest. These in extract and concentrated forms may be anything from 88 to over 96 percent protein and be soluble. Some of the most well known protein ingredients for winter fishing are the caseins and soluble caseins, and the whey protein forms and hydrolysates.
Basically for instance when making pastes for winter, sodium caseinate and calcium caseinate are invaluable high protein soluble casein binders delivering awesome levels of true feeding triggering amino acids.
These are not the only fantastic high protein ingredients but are some of the most well proven over the decades for big fish. Other materials such as Robin Red additive are not rich in amino acids yet do contain loads of energy-releasing and calorific sources and metabolism-boosting substances etc and are on many levels very water soluble and easily detectable to carp.
Many anglers feel that using low protein baits in winter is best. Others find more success using high protein baits. My personal experience over the past 35 years of making homemade baits and comparing them to leading brand readymade baits is having more success using very low volumes of very high protein baits.
How these baits are made and processed to be most digestible in terms of free baits and if they are cooked or pre-digested in various ways, enhanced in different ways on many levels and more all come into this too. I am only interested in truly optimising and maximizing my baits. It is a totally different approach to trying to establish a food bait long-term.
Truly exceptional homemade baits will work instantly and you can keep on altering their contents and forms and keeping them working instantly over and over again without them ever blowing and use the least possible volume of bait so you never over feed in winter or at any time of year.
But long term food baits by necessity require using volumes of bait; which really can satiate fish. I much prefer using naturally instant baits which are exceptional in natural stimulation properties in low volumes in winter (and the rest of the year.) I don't want to spend a fortune and feels loads of stress keeping a bait going on and on through the cold or any other time when it is just not necessary!
Why bait up a swim for others to follow you in and exploit the situation? I much prefer make the very best bait possible and to fish and catch and never worry about keeping a swim or bait going!
For a beginner bait if you start off with something rich in molasses, yeasts, milk proteins and enzyme-treated proteins (soluble energy short cuts in other words, delivering masses of free form amino acids to trigger feeding and attract carp to your swim and hook,) then you will do okay! However this is just the beginning!
The art and craft of winter baits is about how to genuinely maximise and optimise your homemade baits for low temperatures. Eggs lock up and coagulate, becoming insoluble when cooked. I cannot imagine a worse scenario in terms of not optimising and maximizing any carp bait for winter. Avoid eggs in winter! Eggs will make your baits very successful in being very inactive at the worst time possible!
Avoid eggs and do not heat any of your baits apart from your hook baits and even then use paste as a wrap around any cooked baits, or use a heated hook bait alongside a paste bait! Your milk protein content will hold your baits together absolutely fine. When using paste baits you can use wheat gluten as a binder as an alternative in low levels, or simply use ingredients such as CLO ground up bird foods which contain glutens which will bind your baits and make your hook baits hard.
Personally I avoid locking up my winter baits by using carbohydrate based bird foods as I much prefer milk proteins in particular for hook baits. Milk proteins are quite bland in terms of palatability. Bait palatability is like the difference between tasting crisps without salts and flavourings compared to those optimised for taste and smell!
So winter baits must be enhanced in various ways to achieve that vital just one more effect and to increase the activity of bait in solution and ease of detection by fish. This is where an enormous range of palatability enhancers, appetite stimulators, feed stimulants, palatants, flavour components, attractant compounds, special liquids and powder enhancing additives and so on really do pay off!
One additive which is well proven I've found in winter and any other time is CC Moore intense sweetener powder.
This sweetener has no bitter back taste associated with many liquid and powdered sweeteners and as a powder it will release its impacts over a long period of time and increase the intensity and duration of feeding and positively enhance the impacts of many bait ingredients including amino acid-rich additives and potent flavours, sweetening oils used and rounding off your baits very palatably indeed. I have found that it will even sweeten and improve other sweeteners including molasses meal!
This intense sweetener will work in any bait recipe used at just 4 grams per kilogram of base mix. Their fruit zest is a hugely effective palatant enhancer flavour which has a powerful citrus effect. There are numerous sweeteners which are not merely sugars or similar to them but do actually give fish an internal cellular boost and increase that vital duration and intensity of feeding in the cold! Salts and natural plants products are extremely important in enhancing very successful winter baits as these reflect aspect which carp naturally are seeking and exploiting at this time!
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