Quest Baits Blog

By Jamie Simpson;

Over the years I have found on several waters the need to cast that little bit further than I can reach with my normal 12lb big game line. (Check out also the Angling Lines Blog article on “Distance Casting”). I have tried many different materials over the years and spent quite a bit of money on the tactic.

Firstly I would like to state that I won’t use leaders and light line if I believe it will be detrimental to the well-being of the carp in the event of a crack off or lost fish. Therefore I will not use them on extremely weedy waters where the lighter 8lb or so line will part. I see no point hooking fish I cannot land.

If it is safe though and I think it will make a difference then I will feel totally happy using leaders. I started off using amnesia leaders at first and although they did a fair job and the material was fairly cheap, they were a bit stiff and I wasn’t happy with the knot. I would say this was in the early nineties and before the tapered leaders were available. continue reading…

By Pat Gillett;

It is surprising how many anglers that give up and sit in the house just because the river is flooded or even in some cases just carrying a bit of extra water. For years it was a commonly accepted theory that it was always best to fish a river just as it was ‘fining’ down after a flood. Over the last few years though (especially on rivers such as the lower Severn) it has been recognised that for barbel the opposite is in fact true. The fish will very often feed the hardest at the ‘top of the flood’ in fact on a couple of occasions using two rods I have had a brace of double figure fish hooked at the same time.

If you wait till the river is fining down there is a good chance that you will struggle as the barbel will have probably gorged themselves during the high water levels and will no longer be feeding for a while. Obviously here I am talking about extra water that is in the river due to rain and which will generally cause the river temperature to be on the rise. If the extra water is cold (such as snow melt) it can be the kiss of death. The same can be said if you suddenly get a few frosts when the river is in flood. High coloured cold water and you are going to be ‘scratching’ for a bite.

So as long as you can fish safely get out there and give it a go. Some of the biggest barbel have been caught when the rivers are in flood, probably the most famous for the Midlands area was Howard Maddocks’ record fish caught from the Lower Severn when the level was so high there were only one or two areas that were fishable. continue reading…

I wanted to share little tactic that I use a lot during the colder winter months. I like to use PVA in most of my fishing situations.

Of course most anglers know that the dissolve rate of PVA goes a lot slower in the cold water temperatures during the Winter months, some types of PVA don’t in fact dissolve at all! Looks a bit strange when you reel in and see the stringer is still there… undissolved.

Sound familiar??

What do I do to be sure that its gone within a few seconds after casting out my bait and stringer ?

There are several types of PVA on the market –  bags, strings & funnel web.

But what I wanted to talk about are the stringer type of PVA.

What I tend to do is unravel the PVA string, most of the stringer materials are 3 separate thinner strands. continue reading…

I guess it would raise a fair few eyebrows if I told you that I rarely use a conventional, freshly-frozen or preserved shelf life boilie. What is more, I can’t see myself using conventional boilies in the distant future either. All the boilie-type baits I use are air-dried then re-hydrated.

Why?

Because I get a lot more takes on them than I ever did on conventional baits!

Although I have messed around air-drying baits in the past I must admit, like a lot of anglers before me, it was simply to try and produce harder baits or to semi-preserve them on a longish session, rather than use preservatives that I don’t really understand.

It wasn’t until I joined the infamous Mangrove Syndicate in deepest Shropshire that I came up with an idea that I thought might just give me a bit of an edge over the other members. I was struggling. Yes, I was catching carp, but not as many as some of the other members. This is when my old grey matter usually starts to bubble away at its greatest capacity. I was racking my brains for an edge. It had been years since I had last fished such a silty lake. The whole of the lake bottom seemed to comprise deep silt in the clean areas or mega-deep silt in the other bits.

continue reading…

Here is a short Winter Carp Fishing video clip, shot in December that shows that the extra effort of moving swims can really pay off. It all goes to prove that five minutes in the right place, especially at this time of the year is better than a day in the wrong spot. The carp are there and they will feed in short spells.

Following on from the discussion on nuisance species, poisson-chats and crayfish, I’ve added a link to a video tutorial where I explain how to mesh up, and use shrink tube to protect your hook baits from these fish and to get you more takes.