Quest Baits Blog

Hi all – I’m delighted to report my PB UK common at 37-8. I’ve been after this fish for a couple of years and as you can see from the photos it’s a truly stunning fish.

The estate lake I’m fishing is very weedy and it can be difficult to find areas to put a bait on. I’m always looking out for areas in the weed that are clearer than others, but with the weed already thick in front of me finding what I was looking for took some time. I found a couple of areas I was reaonably happy with but after 24 hours I’d not had a bite and not seen any signs of fish showing anywhere. continue reading…

By Scott Ratcliffe

I started playing around with different ways of camouflaging my end tackle to suit the lake bed I’m fishing.  I’ve started fishing a large 70 acre gravel pit in the south west which holds a small amount of large carp that have proved themselves to be hard to catch, so I’ve been taking my end tackle to the next stage to see if I can blend it all in to match the lake bed.

After playing around with making my own leads and camouflaging them I started to play with a lead clip, then the rubber and the rig tubing. All you need is a blow torch and some powdered coating which will match your lake bed.

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Nikos Verelis wrote:

Hi mates

I am from Greece and i want to disquss about a lake here in my country. Is a gravel pit with depth 10-45 meters and holds a lot of carps 30+ and barbels 10+.Some years before the fish were taking good our baits especially 10+birdfood boilies with fruit flavours but in our days there are rare catches of big carps.

We are sure the carps didnt disappeared from the lake , but we cannot quess what happened.
Maybe the fish learnt the danger when aprroaching ourboilies? Can you think something?

Some facts:

Lake bottom = mostly sand and stones.

Most used boilies: strawberry, tutti fruti, vanilla, banana

Base mixes:soya flour,semolina,crushed hemp.

Terminal tackle : Korda

Sinking lines and very rare using pop ups or fishmeal boilies.

Best regards Nikos

 Philip Parker wrote:

 I will be tackling a venue that contains a good head of large grass carp. The lake itself is quite shallow 3′-4′ and around nine acres in size.  Can anyone offer some advice on trying to catch them.  Of all the fish I’ve caught this one has eluded me. Surface baits are not an option at this venue. Any advice would be well received and appreciated.

Grass carp are lovely looking fish and a strange species as they are not easy to target. They will get caught on boilies, but this is more often than not in a water that has little or no weed. In my experience on heavily weeded waters they very rarely get caught at all.

Being basically plant eaters the best way to go about attracting them to your swim is with a plant based bait. I have found maize and sweet corn to be very good in this respect. If you put down a large bed of these particles you have a fair chance you’ll get the fish move on to it.

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By Sam Ratcliffe;

I’ve recently made the decision to stop using frozen baits altogether and start using shelf life for all my fishing throughout the year. So far what may seem at first a drastic decision has paid off and I have had some great results to show for it. Quest dips and glugs are a great way to enhance your shelf life boilies, simply place your boiles into the plastic container, I usually put about 2kg of bait per container and add the same flavoured dip as my chosen boilies. Then put the lid on and give it a good shake, this will coat all the boilies which are instantly ready to use.

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