Quest Baits Blog

STARTING FROM SCRATCH….

I’m fortunate enough to visit a lot of Angling Lines waters, many of them very lightly or never fished before I get there.  Because of this the information usually available to the customer has yet to be compiled and I really am starting from scratch.  This blog piece is about how I tackle an untried/untested venue in France.

I try to research the venue at home and the first place I visit is Google to search for maps and photos of the lake.  I search for alternative names for the venue particularly on French angling and tourist websites. Most lakes have been fished at some time in their history and it’s amazing what you can find out with Google and a Babelfish translator.  My visits are a week at most but can be as little as three days so I like to be well informed

Next it’s Metcheck or my new favourite Accuweather for a long range weather forecast for the time my visit.  I pay particular attention to new winds, wind strength and atmospheric pressure.  Fish don’t always follow the wind, buts it’s always worth searching the windward side of the lake on a new wind. continue reading…

As the weather is still up and down with temperature going below zero on a regular basis here’s a tip I thought you might find useful.

To stop my line freezing in the rod rings I’ve been rubbing glycerine on them.

A bit about Glycerine;

Glycerine can be brought from any chemist or Tesco’s in the baking department.  In the real world it’s used in many ways… baking, cooking, making soap and of course, bait making.

It’s a neutral, sweet-tasting, colourless, thick liquid which has a high boiling point.  It can be dissolved into water or alcohol, but not oils.  On the other hand, many things will dissolve into glycerine easier than they do into water or alcohol.

Anyhow… that’s the real world… it’s best use is stopping your line freezing up!  Give it a go!

Regards, Scott

It’s so easy to turn up at a lake and go for the easy option of fishing the swim right next to the car park, especially when the weather is not in your favour.

Or if you’re feeling at little more adventurous you’ll head straight for the swim that people are talking about as being a so called hot spot.

As we all know there is more to landing a big carp than this but we sometimes choose to ignore the obvious.

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Having read Spencer’s post from last week it occurred to me just how many anglers probably have hung their rods up over this particularly difficult and frustrating winter of frozen lakes and snow blocked tracks.

Well, a word of warning here, nature is starting to wake up again along with the carp becoming more active. 6am this morning the birds were singing their hearts out as I sat drinking my wakening cup of coffee. I strolled outside, lean’t against the bridge of my garden pool and couldn’t help but smile. Nature was telling me that everything is starting to return from the winter slumber.

It really is time for you to be thinking about dusting the gear down if you want to tempt yourself one of those gorgeous late winter carp still sporting the beautiful reddy orange tinge they develop during the winter months.

Winter carp usually look as though they are in their full peak of health as well as usually being up in weight, which is total evidence that they still carry on rooting around and feeding all through the winter.

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We spoke previously about the ever faithful Chod rig, however it is far from the answer to all our rig problems. Different fish feed differently and in particular Commons seem to be much more cagey around pop-ups and choddy’s than those greedy Mirrors. In my current syndicate water is a carp that is very very rarely caught however when it is nailed it seems to be on pop-ups quite some way off of the bottom!

I’d just like to add a couple of pics of the other two rigs I use. With these and the Chod in my armoury, I never need anything else.

The Merekat Rig

The Merekat rig.

The title gives it away a bit!

An x-line hooklink (Maxima in summer/cloudy water) tied with a no knot, but with the hair trapped by just two turns of the knot, with a further 5 turns up the shank. A stiff rigger hook is the perfect hook for the rig, changed to a Korda Choddy when fishing over gravel, as they have a beaked point. A figure of eight loop fixes the hooklink to the swivel. I particularly like this rig with a bottom bait with a small plug of a matching pop up, nicely balancing the bait. The Merekat rig… Simples!

My multi-rig

My multi-rig

Invented by Micky Kavnanagh, made famous by Johnny Mac and made personal by me! The Multi rig.

I use this rig for pop ups, bottom baits and my favourite with twin barrel shaped bottom baits.

The benefits of this rig are numerous, however being able to change your hook in seconds is a massive bonus. Yes you spend more on hooks, but you definitely get more pick ups by doing so! continue reading…

Finally most lakes around here have eventually crept back up in water temperature to make the catching of carp a much more realistic prospect than it was a couple of weeks back.

For 30 odd years I have taken water temperatures during the winter months. I don’t mean just dangling a thermometer in a few inches of water in the edge as this will give you a false reading compared to the temperature in the depths you are fishing. I have simply cast my thermometer into the sort of depth I am fishing then simply cranked it back in quickly and taken the reading.

So, to save you many years of work before being able to come to any semi accurate conclusion I will share what I have learned after 30 years of doing this on so many different waters I would struggle to list them. continue reading…