Happyshort

Carp can be far easier to catch when you study how and why they feed the way they do and exploit this behaviour within your baits and baiting tactics and many various formats and recipes are available to use; here are some key tips…

Carp feeding activity and food consumption increases dramatically in line with raised water temperatures and saturated oxygen water concentrations. What this means for us is that each fish will have a minimum food requirements they must eat in order to survive and why not ensure that food happens to be your bait?!

Protein and amino acid needs are extremely important to carp and other fish and animals because the basic chemical reactions which take place in metabolism (involving oxygen) use amino acids which form temperature sensitive enzymes in the cells which lead to the production, storage and release of energy in fish. It is well known that unsaturated oils represent double the digestible energy of other food groups like proteins and carbohydrates. Great examples of such oils in baits are: pure salmon oil, hemp oil, garlic oil, various marine oils from molluscs and crustaceans, and a wide variety of other vegetable oils, for instance sesame seed oil, sweetcorn oil and peanut oil.

The requirement for essential amino acids can also be exploited in your baits and various ground bait formats. The daily carp needs for lysine and methionine are known for instance, but to provide these in your bait is far easier than you might first think. Having studies many papers and scientific books for a long time now it is clear that certain foods represent easy and reliable bait ingredient and ground bait additive solutions and one that immediately that comes to mind that has very good digestibility and nutritional attraction and great solubility in water, is fermented shrimp, or Belachan. Belachan was at one time a secret bait additive because it could really make that difference between a good effective bait and a sure bet type bait due to its fine carp catching characteristics.

Fermented shrimp has many key characteristics of very easily available bait ingredients and additives which have formed key roles in top carp baits like those sold commercially for decades. High levels of very digestible protein and soluble amino acids, plus essential taste enhancing salts and essential feed-triggering unsaturated oils too among other features, make this additive a great representative example of an all-round great carp attractor in all kinds of carp baits and ground baits. Fermented shrimp is still available in various Eastern condiment type sources of course, but more and more it is being marketed by bait companies in different forms, such as a liquid additive with added stimulatory red chillies and so on.

There is not scientific absolute carp bait as such as in the real world carp do have longer memories than the mythical 3 minutes which many anglers mistakenly believe. Even goldfish can be trained in similar ways to dogs to perform tricks by introduction of food rewards and fish learn by association very much. In fact this learning by association can be us as fishermen’s worst nightmare making carp extremely difficult to catch indeed. But of course, we can also manipulate this learning behaviour by exploiting bait and baiting tactics and method very much in our favour.

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