Quest Baits Blog

Are you ready to take advantage of favourable conditions…

By Steve Guy

Many anglers have ideas of fishing through the autumn and winter, but no matter how enthusiastic, I’m sure a lot will have put the gear in the garage or shed a month or so before Christmas, and will not have ventured out since.

Well let’s not forget Spring is not so far away, even last weekend for example temperatures around my Shropshire water were 13 degrees at 7.30 on Saturday night, so are you ready to grab the gear and take advantage of any mild spell we are likely to get in the next few weeks?

If you’re anything like me I could always do with being a little better organised, so maybe now’s the time to spend an evening or two getting the tackle sorted and ready to go. continue reading…

Paste – A Winter’s Edge

By Jamie Simpson;

Catching carp in the winter certainly isn’t easy, but you can put things in your favour with a little thought.

Over the last couple of years I have used more and more paste during the winter months. The reason for this is quite simple really. With colder water temperatures I don’t want the attractors of my bait to be locked in. Even in the coldest of conditions the paste will breakdown, thus giving off a trail of attraction. As you generally won’t be putting free bait into the swim, the draw is entirely from the scent trail given off by the paste.

I generally fish a Rahja Spice hard hookbait with Rahja paste wrapped around it. To add to this I will often use a small bag of either 10mm (3 or 4) baits or crushed 15mm baits (2off). This gives the fish a mouth full of bait and one that they often find hard to resist.

On several occasions I have managed to put fish on the bank whilst everyone else seems to be finding it difficult. continue reading…

Have you ever caught a carp from under the ice, by design? Shaun Harrison certainly has!

by Shaun Harrison

I had invited Elie Godsi along to ‘The Inner Sanctum’ for the afternoon to fish as my guest. After the long walk to the pool, we were both disappointed to find it frozen over apart from a small bay in the northwest corner. I decided to set a rod up and give it a couple of hours.

I was able to drop the rig eight feet out into the lake and onto a ledge in around three feet of water. A bright red, critically-balanced whisky boilie was delivered to the lake bed and left in isolation under the ice. J

ust an hour later I was playing a carp from under the ice. The size of fish in these conditions is pretty much immaterial but for what it’s worth it turned out to be a mid-double.

This fish definitely gave me a much bigger sense of achievement than a lot of the larger carp I have caught over the years, particularly as it came from under the ice. continue reading…

by Shaun Harrison;

A favourite method of mine, especially in Winter is frequent recasting with bright ‘in your face’ baits and personally I think none are more effective than the many varied Artificial Hookbaits which are now available.

Now I guess this may surprise a few anglers, after all I run a bait company and here I am advocating artificial baits, but anyone who has read my work over the years will realise by now that I tell it how it is! I see no point in pulling the wool over anybody’s eyes.

The simple fact of the matter is that I have used a lot of artificial hookbaits and to my mind they have many advantages over the most carefully prepared natural bait. By natural bait, I am of course, referring to real food items, because boilies can hardly be described at natural.

Many anglers seem quite happy with artificial corn which is now available in a few difference guises, although we really have Enterprise Tackle to thank for bringing the artificial baits to the fore. I rarely use the artificial corn myself – much preferring the artificial boilies which Enterprise also supply. continue reading…

Poisson-chats;

There have been a few posts on the web forums of late about the small fresh water predators called ‘Poisson-Chats- Ameiurus melas (Catfish in French). Many anglers who have been to France will have been confronted with them.

Now these fish are not Wels catfish (Siluris Glanis), they rarely grow to over a pound and are generally only a few ounces in weight. But they are indeed extremely troublesome creatures. They are omnivorous, hunting in shoals and feeding on much the same food as carp… and that includes your bait. There is nothing more frustrating than fishing all night with no bait on your hook.
But don’t despair just because a water holds these fish, there are numerous ways to avoid them and have some great sport with the carp!! continue reading…