Quest Baits Blog

Me and my mate Phil Calloway have fished big pits for many years and would I think consider ourselves to be reasonable long distance casters.  There does come a point with most of us when we reach a limit to the distances we can achieve.  I’ve practised,changed rods, reels, line, leaders, leads but the reality is I’m improving in only feet or even inches.  I’d assumed it was a physical thing and that perhaps I just wasn’t powerful enough to achieve greater distances.

Over the last year I’ve taken action sequences of casts using the sports setting on my Canon EOS 40D. This mode takes around 6.5 to 7 frames per second.  On my cast and Phils this freezes the action sequence of the cast into five frames. Yesterday I had the opportunity to photograph distance caster Mark Hutchinson and captured the same cast sequence in 4 frames. He did complete it in three but I didn’t manage to catch it on camera. Too fast!  Its rough maths I know but his cast action is between 20 to 40% faster than ours and I that’s where I believe a lot of the extra distance comes from.

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Phil Calloway 1

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Mark Hutchinson 1

Guess I need to get some more practice!

Cheers Ron Key

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All loaded and ready to go

In April this year I’ll be off to Luke Moffatts’ La Graviers for the first time in search of monster carp.

As always anglers who have visited waters before are queuing up with advice.  I have been told that a lot of the fishing is at range, placing baits from a boat.  I’ve also been told that the bream are a problem.

Now if I’m placing baits at over 200 metres and hook a bream at 2am in the morning I’m not going to be too pleased!

Use 20mm+ baits and bigger hooks I’ve been told… a bit daunting to someone who thinks 15mm is a big bait and who’s normal hook is a size 8!

So… the age old question;

What are your strategies for avoiding bream.  Are there any baits, flavours, ingredients, additives to avoid.  Can you effectively avoid catching nuisance fish and target only carp?

Cheers, Ron

Over the years most of us refine our presentation and arrive at a point where we have a favourite rig. We do of course change our presentation to match the conditions and multitude of problems we encounter, but I bet if I could do a rig check on your rods over the course of a season, more often than not I would find the same type of rig.

The rig shown will be recognised now by everyone, popularised by the angling media as the claw rig it is in fact a bent hook rig.

I was fishing in the early eighties when the rig was first developed, spending much time destroying mainly trout hooks with my pliers to develop the perfect bend. The extended shank and the aggressive bend turn the hook very efficiently.

Although now discredited for “double hooking” I still believe it is one of the most effective hooking mechanisms ever developed. The amazing growth in the availability of carp hooks and rig components means that the hooking mechanism can be constructed with the same hooking characteristics, but without the potential to damage fish as the shrink tube can straighten when the fish is hooked.   

I usually construct mine now with a size 8 Korda Longshank X .  A BB shot perfectly balances the rig every time with a 15mm Quest Baits pop-up (the one in the picture is covered with heat shrink tube to protect it from signal crayfish, I’ve been fishing in the Colne Valley).

This rig or something very similar to it has hooked a very large proportion of the carp I have caught for the last 20+ years.

What’s your favourite rig, and why?

Cheers Ron

Sometimes fish show at extreme range which for me is anything over 140yards+. I’m lucky enough to have the tackle and with some tuition from Mark Hutchinson the technique to allow me to fish at these distances, but find it impossible to get any free offerings that far. I know Mark puts spods and markers over 200yards but not me.  

I have caught fish on single hook baits at long range but feel uncomfortable fishing in this way as it all seems a bit hit and miss.

When I bought my latest rods I selected them with the idea of fishing solid PVA bags with Quest Micro Feed or finely crumbed boilies packed tightly around the lead. After my performance in this weeks rain and storms I’m not so sure anymore.

So here’s plan B. I’ve sourced some 2 ½ oz long thin gripper leads. My plan is to mould boilie paste around them into an aerodynamic shape, making the casting weight up to 4oz + so that I can achieve the distance.

My question is has anyone tried anything like this and was it successful, and what are your alternative strategies for providing some extra attaction at extreme range?

Cheers  Ron Key

By Ron Key
When winter arrives and the carp start to feed less frequently, and perhaps only feed for very short periods, I want to create a situation where my bait will deliver maximum attraction without fear of overfeeding the carp.

At times like these I like to crumb or chop my boilies because once the boilie skin has been broken it allows the the flavours and attractors to be quickly released. My preferred method of delivery is 5 or 6 crumbed fruity or spicy boilies in small PVA mesh tubing ball attached to the hook. When distance is a major requirement small solid PVA bags are used, packing the crumbed boilie around the lead, folding in and sticking the corners of the bag to create a more aerodynamic shape. continue reading…

I relearned and old lesson last weekend, you may think you have the lake sorted out but no one tells the carp the rules.

When I joined Shaun on our syndicate water Grenville Lake he had already fished for 24 hours. He was fishing a swim in a bay that he knows well and has fished successfully over the last year.

I chose a swim at the other side of the point on his right.

Conditions for us both looked good. Within an hour I was getting liners over the Surf n’Turf and after three hours I had a run that I did not connect with.

I sat confidently for another 24 hours; while the new wind that should have pushed the fish towards swung slowly around 360 degrees and the temperature cooled considerably.

Was I worried… was I hell?

The fish in this lake always fish off the back of a cold wind. Don’t they? The wind picked up and I sat it out. continue reading…