Quest Baits Blog

24.10.09

A recent session really brought home to me how much luck can play in the capture of a good fish. We all like to think that all the fish we catch are down to things like angling ability and top notch baits etc, but sometimes pure luck can play a large part in success.

My latest bit of good luck came on my first visit of the season to the Lower Severn. I was fishing has a guest on a Midlands region Barbel Catchers Club ‘fish in’, on a stretch of the river which I had never even seen before, let alone fished, so it would be a case of hoping for the best and waiting to see what, if anything came along.

We met up at about 12.30pm and were greeted with leaden skies and persistent rain. The river itself was really low with very little colour (as are all of the rivers at the moment), so it would probably be a ‘scratching’ type day. The only plus was that at least the river was flowing, as at times of very low water the Lower Severn can sometimes appear as still as a lake. continue reading…

By Pat Gillet
1. Different size baits

A method I use quite a lot during the months of say August and September when the carp are having a good feed (especially for wary fish) is to feed with different sizes of bait. For example I will feed Quest boilies of 10, 15 and 20mm. I will then tie up a circular 6 bait pva stringer of different size baits and fish a hair with say a 15mm & 10mm bait on it which when the pva has dissolved, will sit right in the middle. The theory behind this method is that when the carp is feeding it will find it much harder to detect the weight of the hook than it would if it were just feeding on the same size baits. This method has brought me a lot of success and is the method I used to take fish to 55lb 4oz from Island Lake in France last year. continue reading…

Over the years I have gone through many different types of swim feeder for my barbel fishing, from making them myself from film canisters and women’s hair rollers to the one that I use now which are the large Drennan oval feeders.I have used the Drennan ovals for about the last 10 years and I find their shape and adaptability to be second to none. The shape means that they hold well in the current without the rolling affect of a lot of round feeders. They are also very adaptable in the ways that they can be modified.

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I was fishing a local syndicate water recently when after about an hour a strong south westerly wind got up.  Now this water is no more that 4 feet deep and a strong wind even at this time of year generally kills the fishing stone dead.

I was only on one of my short afternoon sessions so decided to carry on, anyway 6 hours later I hadn’t had so much as a sniff or even seen a sign of a fish so I packed up knowing I should have gone somewhere else.

This session got me thinking about another shallow lake that I no longer fish. This lake again was no more than 4 feet deep but it had one very discernable difference to the syndicate lake mentioned above, in that around 75 % of the lake was covered in lily pads.  The vast majority of the time the carp would lie up amongst the dense lily beds and you were doing well if you averaged 1 run a day.

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One of the interesting things about barbel fishing through the Autumn and winter is the amount of different baits that can be used to catch them, and how on some days they will favour one particular bait and ignore anything else.

With this in mind it pays to take a small variety of baits with you so that you can in fact change or experiment to find the bait the barbel want whilst you are there. Just because you have a good catch on say pellet one day, don’t become stereotyped into thinking that this method will always catch you fish as the barbel can be contrary creatures at times.

In fact I can think of many occasions over the last few winters where a change of bait has brought instant results. Also when fishing two rods less than 10 yards apart on different baits, i have had as many as six good fish on one bait whilst the other rod has remained motionless. continue reading…