Quest Baits Blog

by Pat Gillett;

Over the last few weeks I have been doing a few short afternoon / day sessions, with the longest one being no more than 10 hours. This really is my favourite type of carp fishing.

I have kept the tackle to a minimum and been very mobile in my fishing. By moving around a lot (sometimes up to four or five times) and closely watching the behaviour of the carp I have been able to catch one or two fish when the going has really been pretty slow.

The Midlands Estate Lake I have been fishing is about 4 acres, crystal clear and very shallow (no more than 3 ½ feet deep). It also has an increasing amount of weed as the weather warms up. 

Stocking levels are not particularly high with approximately 35 fish. Because of the water conditions it really is a better ‘night water’ with most angler’s catching very little in the day. But I have always believed in the old adage of ‘catching on my own terms’ and as such I have still not fished a night on this water. (I get more enjoyment catching in the daytime).

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By Elie Godsi

Whenever I cast out any rig I want to be confident it doesn’t tangle and that when it settles on the bottom the hook isn’t masked by any weed or bottom debris. I almost always mask the hook with either PVA tape or PVA foam or both. Trapping the hair at the same time definitely also prevents tangles. In the photo you can see two set ups that I use for 90% of my fishing..

I use the Extra Wide 20mm PVA tape from Kryston and PVA foam nuggets from Solar Tackle. I would be totally lost without these products, both of which melt completely and never leave any residue at all.

In the first picture the rig above is a simple single bottom bait. In this case the hook is masked with a few turns of extra wide PVA tape which has been licked a bit to make it neat and compact – as you can see the hair is trapped at the same time. This is also a good set up for distance fishing.

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Jan Bašista wrote;

My query is can you send fresh boilies to the Czech Republica if delivery is three days… or would I be better to order shelf-life?
Thanks Jack.

Hi Jack,

Our Quest Baits shelf life boilies are made from identical ingredients to the fresh frozen, the only difference being the type of egg used and the drying process.

These days I rarely use fresh frozen baits myself. Knowing what goes into our Quest Baits range I have no problems at all with the shelf life baits as we don’t use any of those bitter/sweet nasty preservatives that many other companies use and what has ended up giving shelf life baits a bad name.

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Steve Vaughan wrote;

I have just started fishing a new water with a large head of carp to 28lb. It has seen little carp pressure and hardly any boilies, however it does get fished for the large bream that live in the lake. The depth varies from 5ft to 18ft, could you give some advice as to how the bloggers would go about fishing for the carp.

Good question this one and one which could be answered in many different ways!

My approach to any new water if the water clarity allows is to put small traps of bait in likely looking areas then keep walking around the venue until either I am lucky enough to stumble upon a few fish feeding or until it becomes clear that the carp don’t particularly visit the margins during daylight hours.

If I’m lucky enough to find fish I can then experiment to find what sort of baits the fish prefer rather than going in with the bait I want to use.

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by Roy Van Goor

Since  I am fishing for carp I never seem to use a lot of pop-ups. Its just not my way of presenting a bait. …Well, Up to now!!.. Things started when I was discussing using pop-ups on a local meeting with another angler. He told me he was catching plenty on pop-ups on a local venue…where I had never used them

I fished that lake a lot and it got me thinking about it. I wanted to use the pop-ups in a different way, I remembered  a article I had seen in some book.  It was an article about presenting pop-ups on the bottom, making the presentation even better and more detectable for feeding fish.

I searched the sheds for the book and after I found it I had a look again at that article. It would be perfect for my style of fishing and maybe could boosted up my catch rates.. Its suits every possible rig, and very easy to make.. You don’t have to tie new rigs and can change from bottom to pop-up presentation in a second. continue reading…

Justin wrote;

For Roy van goor…  following on a great response from a message answered on 28th March, just wondering how your session went on Laroussi, and if you’ve any extra advise.

Laroussi - 15 acres with carp to 75lb

Hi Justin,

Thanks for your kind words regarding the answer to your previous question.. Well my session was a very good one weight wise,but the numbers of fish was low;

I had 7 takes resulting in 5 fish landed 2 of those where small commons..17 and 18 lb. The mirrors where slightly bigger.. ☺ 40,7 lb…45,7 lb and ☺ whopping 57 lb..( new p.b)

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