Quest Baits Blog

by Samantha Collins-Ratcliffe;

I decided to book a week away in France on a lake that holds big fish and the chance of landing a few good carp, so I called David from Angling lines and asked his advice. He talked extensively about Laroussi and convinced me this was the lake I was looking for, so I booked up for the last week in March. I set about doing all my homework for the lake from the Angling lines website, which was full of useful hints and tips. Then it was time to sort out what bait I was going to take with me so I called Shaun at Quest baits and decided to use liver B8 as a new bait for this year.

I headed off to France on a Quest to catch a big Common, armed with liver B8, 10-15mm shelf life boiles, there was no stopping me, car all loaded for the week. It took 3 ½ hours to reach Le Mans from Roscoff travelling through temperatures down to – 4°C and encountering the odd snowstorm along the way. When I reached Laroussi the temperature had crept up a little to 1°C with the odd heavy downpour but that didn’t put me off! continue reading…

By Roy Van Goor

What time did you catch that carp?

This is one of the things I seem to be most interested in when I talk about catches that other anglers have had. I would say 70% of the anglers on the waters I fish are doing overnighters.. This means arriving at 18.00 in the evening and fishing until 09.00 in the morning.

What I hear a lot is that they are not confident in fishing the days, because the fish feed at night, and not during daytime. Well, in my view some of this is true, they tend to catch fish during the evening, night and morning. But I would never overlook the hours of daylight. I hardly fish overnighters anymore because I catch my fish with no problem during daytime. But a lot of anglers cant get there heads around fishing daytime only. Is it a confidence thing? continue reading…

Hi All,
An excellent interview with the man himself in this month’s Carpology e-newsletter

The CARPology e-Newsletter Five-Minute Interview

This week we chat to Quest Baits main man, Shaun Harrison

“Shaun, can you tell our readers what your company has been up to over the past 12 months?”

Last September we had to move Quest Baits into larger premises. This was our third move in just two years. Everything has moved on at a steady rate since first putting the foundations of Quest Baits together in 2005.

We drew up a very precise five year business plan based around my long experience in the tackle trade and I am happy to say everything has gone to plan. This year (2008) was always the year we were going to make the baits much more widely available through a carefully selected range of shops. Leading up to 2008 we had supplied bait direct from our website www.questbaits.com and purposely kept the baits in just two shops. The Tackle Box in Dartford Kent and Walkers of Trowell in Nottingham, the shop I had worked in for 25 years prior to leaving to set this business up.

We have been absolutely delighted with the response from the shops after doing a mini nationwide presentation tour. Our baits have been accepted with open arms and the sales so far have been truly staggering considering the time of the year.

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Steve Vaughan wrote;

Could you recommend what size hook to use with 18mm baits, I’ve been using size 8 but find i am missing lots of runs on this size

Hi Steve

That’s not quite as simple a question to answer as a lot of people might think, and it certainly isn’t straight forward.

Firstly it depends on the hook itself, as each manufacturer seems to make up their own sizes and they vary immensely. Unfortunately there isn’t a national standard hook size to work from. For example a size 6 Korda long shank is dimensionally a much bigger hook than say a Drennan super specialist of the same size. continue reading…

Nick wrote;

Hi Pat,
Hope you don’t mind me mailing you, have picked up your mail address from the Quest baits website. I have posted a blog along the same lines as this but I was wondering if you could recommend one of Shaun’s baits for barbel along with a pellet. I am fishing the Ouse around Bedford this year for the big girls and wanted something they have not seen before and could start putting in to get them used to it. Any recommendations?
Many thanks,
Nick

Hi Nick

Living in Wolverhampton I am central to a number of rivers and the ones that I have fished for the last two winters (whilst using Quest) were the Lower Severn, the Upper Trent, the Warwickshire Avon and the River Dove. None of the stretches are particularly prolific but in general the average size of the fish is pretty good, although nowhere near as good as yours will be on the Ouse at Bedford. continue reading…

By Jamie Simpson
I have just returned home from my first ever BCAC qualifying event at Cuttle Mill Fishery, near Tamworth. What a roller coaster of emotions I have gone through over the past 48 hours.

We arrived at the venue on Thursday evening for a bit of a social and a look around the lake. We managed to spot plenty of fish during this walk around, with carp bubbling and crashing in several areas. A large proportion of the fish seemed to be in an area between swims known as the Pads and Nevilles. Normally this would not be a popular choice as you are in a corner and penned in somewhat by other swims around this part of the lake.

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