Quest Baits Blog

Sweet and sticky

Baits, but not as you know it!

Having recently gone onto the wonderful Liver B8 frozen baits I thought Id let you in on a couple of little edges that I’ve been playing with recently. After a good few blank sessions on my syndicate despite fishing really hard, I’ve finally managed a great result. At 3am, I moved swim onto crashing fish. Id promised myself that I would work hard to secure a bite. Id had some Glugged Liver B8 hard hookers soaking for 6 months, these would be the ideal hookbaits, lots of attraction with little disturbance as it would mean just two casts. I dispatched two single hookbaits (drilled and popped up) 50 yards apart, in amongst the showing Carp. I had to sit on my hands

I had to sit on my hands!

not to put any freebies out, Im not a great single bait angler. I needn’t have worried, at 8am both rods ripped off at exactly the same time!! Remember they were 50 yards apart, this is something that has never been done on this lake and something I’ve never done in 20 years of Carp angling. Pandemonium ensued however I managed to get both hard fighting Carp in the net. Both were stunning

Linear and heavily scaled Carp weighing 20lb and 25lb 4 oz. I was over the moon and although I only managed a photo of the smaller Carp, I was elated. The boosted single baits were enough.

The smaller of the two

By the end of my session, my baits had been defrosted and in plastic bags for 4 days, they smelt superb so I fired the remaining 5 kilos onto the spots before leaving. I got a call next day to say the swim was like a cauldron! Interesting….. Id kept a handful of baits in my bag when back at home and after 2 days I took a look at them. The baits were very active, smelling extremely sweet, toffee like even and showing releasing sugars. They looked awesome. I crumbed them up and sprinkled them in my pond at home. The fish went wild, ripping the bottom to pieces. Here was a bait that I would normally have thrown away and the Carp were going crazy for it! Id recommend having a play with your baits in the same way. Im off angling Tomorrow and with me I have some Liver B8 thats been defrosted for 4 days. Nearly ready maybe? Ill let you know!

Spencer

With one thing and another I have not been able to get out as much as I would have liked so far this season, as I write this (14/7/10) I have only managed four short afternoon / evening trips to the River Dove.

The first two trips were to a stretch of the river I had never fished before. The first afternoon I fished an absolutely classic looking swim with two far bank bushes which were on the outside of a bend (meaning that the main area of flow would be pushing underneath these bushes, giving more oxygen in the water in that area

11lb 3oz – a good first trip

and also pushing any food items along with it), this was also the deepest area of the swim. We started fishing at about 4.30pm on what was a really hot day with my mate fishing about 300 yards below me.

At around 6pm the rod fished to the upstream bush gave a ‘delicate’ 3 feet twitch! , and I was attached to my first barbel of the new season. It turned out to be a nicely conditioned fish of 11lb 3oz. As I was just about to weigh my fish, my mobile rang with my mate informing me that he had just caught a barbel of 11lb 10oz. Two 11’s at exactly the same time, can’t be bad! This proved to be a very short feeding spell has the only other bite either of us had came from a very spawned out chub of 5lb 2oz that I had at about 8pm. We packed up at 11pm. All in all, a good first trip.

Next trip was a total blank. I fished another swim on the same stretch without any bites or fish movement whatsoever. My mate also blanked.

The third and fourth trips were to a stretch about a mile downstream. The third trip was again uneventful, but the fourth trip produced a really long hard fighting barbel of 11lb 12oz. This fish snagged me up solid under a tree for several minutes, but after trying various things (slack line worked) she eventually came out and then proceeded to fight like a demon all the way to the net. This is where it is imperative to use a line with a good abrasion resistance and once again the Pro-Tough had performed well. Just to prove how short the feeding

11lb 12oz – ‘fought like a demon’

spells have become, just as I was weighing my fish the mobile rang again with my mate informing me he was just weighing a 11lb 6oz barbel. These fish were both caught at about 10.50pm shortly before packing up.

The fish have now reverted to type (on a low crystal clear river) with little being caught before dusk. Therefore you need to keep any swim disturbance to a minimum from say 9pm onwards so that you maximise your chances of a bite during what can be a very short feeding spell.

The fish that I have caught have fallen to a feeder fished pellet, with the pellet wrapped in either Quest barbel chop paste or Special Crab paste. The feeder being filled with Quest Baits mini mixed pellets.

The main thing I have noticed different about the river this year is the vast amount of streamer weed that is in the water. It is the most I have ever seen, and from what I have been told the Upper Trent is exactly the same. I would have thought that this would have been exactly the opposite after such a long hard winter. Anyone got any theories on this one?

So there we are, 4 short sessions, not many fish caught, but those that were caught were of a good average. That’s really what my fishing is all about these days, ‘Quality over quantity every time’. Although I have no interest in chasing big ‘named’ fish, as long as I am catching good sized fish in fairly quiet surroundings then I am more than happy.

Cheers,
Pat Gillett

By Mark Parry:

One peice of none fishing tackle I wouldn’t be without is the amazing Mosquito Repeller. I have had a couple of these for a few years now and must say they reallyare excellent and only cost a few pounds off ebay. I used to suffer very badly by mosquitos but no more,
I’ve used these on very bad mosquito infested places in France such as La Horre and Salagou and they honestly work. Just 2 x AA batterys and they last weeks simply letting out a very high frequency tone which you can hardly hear. I find that one is enough for the places I have fished in England but I do use two in France and nothing comes in the bivvy. I also think they keep flys away. Very good product I wouldn’t be without.

I have had a lot of success in recent years using my own hook baits and in particular my own pop ups made with cork balls. I have no problem with ‘off the shelf pop ups’ for the majority of my fishing but making my own gives me several distinct advantages. Firstly, no matter how long I leave them out there I know they will remain as buoyant as when they first went in; this is particularly important when using rigs that require high levels of buoyancy such as with a chod rig or rigs specifically designed for pop ups. If I needed to I could happily leave my hook baits out for days knowing they will not sink or become heavy. Secondly, they allow me to tweak flavour levels, add different attractants or even change the colour of my hookbaits to make them stand out. I’ve never understood the obsession with making hook baits exactly match every loose fed boilie – I want mine to stand out so they get picked up quickly. Thirdly, in my opinion a cork ball pop up, by virtue of being so buoyant, behaves differently; by carefully adding the right amount of shot or putty to my rigs I can get them to behave exactly like the other baits out there and the rigs I’m using become very difficult for the carp to detect. continue reading…

Mark Parry asks…

Hello,  I would just like your thoughts on size of hooks for different sizes of baits, now I’ve always used a size 8 for 16mm baits, size 4 for 20mm baits , whats your thoughts ?

About the only drawback that fishing for different species brings is the amount of different tackle that you require to do it properly. I tend to have two rucksacks, and two quivers permanently set up at home so that I haven’t got to keep on chopping and changing my gear to go fishing. The only things I have to move are my flask and camera.

My ‘river’ rucksack had just about seen it’s final days so I decided to buy a new one for the start of the river season.

Looking through loads of different rucksacks the one I decided on was the Gardner Barbel / Specialist Rucksack.

This has proved to be a cracking piece of kit. It isn’t to big, and because of the way it sits on your back you hardly know you are wearing it even on fairly long walks.

The bag has a fairly large main compartment which will take my flask and a water bottle along with a sandwich box, camera and bulb release in a hard case, camera tripod, over trousers and 2 spare spools of line.

There is an insulated top compartment which is a nice touch for keeping freezer baits etc fresh.

There are two side pockets which comfortably take my Avon scales and a weigh sling. continue reading…