Quest Baits Blog

21lb winter scaly

Winter is always the hardest part of the year for catching carp. This year I have been adjusting rigs and fishing different hook baits to try and get me that extra bite. I’ve been using pop up rigs lately and having some good results. The best fish being a stunning 21lb scaly mirror.

Last winter was a very hard time for me as I did about 30 sessions and blanked them all. I Lost fish so I was doing something right to get the bites but I just couldnt land them! Having so many blanks in a row really got my confidence to a very low point. That’s why this year I wanted to up my game and try and get a few fish.

So far I have had 7 fish in 7 sessions. Fishing on my local club water and a few day ticket waters, I have fished lakes about 2-3 days after they have thawed out and knew it was going to be tough I have also fished lakes that have been half frozen when I’m there  and I have still managed to get amongst a few. This just shows how much the carp love the Quest Baits I have been using! continue reading…

Warm, high coloured water – perfect !

I was talking to one of my match angling friends at work the other day and he was asking me how I go about locating barbel in the winter, especially on the stretches that I fish, which in general do not hold that many fish.

Most of this guys’ fishing is done on the Middle Severn or River Wye on stretches that hold loads of barbel and other fish. As long as you fish sensibly on areas like the Middle Severn you can catch barbel in literally any conditions. I used to do it myself years ago and have caught barbel with a river temperature of as low has 3.0 Degrees C and an air temperature of 0 Degrees C.

Pick a swim that you know is a hotspot (holds lots of barbel) feed little and often with maggots and you will catch the odd fish even in extreme conditions. This is very similar to the advice a lot of anglers give about winter carp fishing “For a chance of consistent sport pick a water that holds a large number of carp and avoid the hard waters with a low stock density”. This applies to barbel also, pick a prolific stretch and you have far greater chance of  catching a barbel. continue reading…

I come from the generation of carp anglers that started out making their own carp bait. Quest Baits with their extensive range of boilies pellets hookbaits and pop ups didn’t exist and in fact for a few years I was fishing boilies didn’t exist.  Early attempts at catching carp included a multitude of pastes, cat food and eventually my first boilie manufactured from pilchard flavoured Go Cat Munchies.  Eventually I heard about Fred Wilton and his experiments and started sourcing ingredients to copy his HNV boilies.  It wasn’t too long after that that base mixes, ingredients, sweeteners, attractors and flavours became available commercially and tackle shop started to resemble a chemists.  It seemed that every carp anglers kitchen or garden shed if you were using monster crab; had become a boilie factory.  Equipment wasn’t good and not very efficient and much of the old closed season was spent filling bait freezers for the next campaign.  I remember I destroyed three hob tops in one of my kitchens and demolished a mate’s kitchen leaving the house reeking of Monster Crab and Compound TF when eight of us descended on his house while his wife was away playing hockey in Holland for the weekend. continue reading…

June 2011 and with the Grenville season closed from the end of May until the end of June I took a break from carp fishing for a while. I had several jobs I wanted to do at home and  if I didn’t get them done over the 2 month close season I know full well that I would be another 12 months before I got them done.

Living on my own I find it too easy to go through life enjoying myself and in recent years have tended to put more and more decorating type jobs off, thinking ‘I’ll do it next week’ but never do!

I'm quite lucky where I live with a nice choice of walks

I like to have an hour walk in the morning before work with Brook my Staffordshire Bull Terrier bitch.  Being quite fortunate where I live I can alternate this between a wooded hill walk or a river walk without having to get into the car and drive anywhere.

It was during one of these morning river walks that I spotted a few chub in my local river which were larger than I had seen before. Now these weren’t monsters by any stretch of the imagination but were larger than I had realised were living there.

The following morning I was feeding them 10mm boilies and soon our varied dog walks saw us not varying it at all and all of the walks were down the river as I started to get these fish waiting for their breakfast each morning. Brook didn’t seem to mind the ‘same old’ routine as she was included in a few boilies treats herself which she didn’t get on the hill walk.

It was whilst feeding these chub that I stumbled across some barbel – again not monsters but lovely to see on the river where I had first cut my angling teeth. I had caught tiny gudgeon sized barbel there 10 years previously whilst teaching Ruth to trot a float and to be fair had forgotten about them. Now it seemed they had grown on a little and would be good fun to try and catch on such a tiny river. On a stretch of around a mile I had found 5 barbel. 2 pools had 2 in each (along with lots of chub) and one pool had just one and again with lots of chub. I ended up watching and feeding these same 5 barbel every day not actually seeing any others. continue reading…

Here is yet another message I have received confirming that Poisson Chat really do not like the ingredients we use in our anti Poission Chat bait Pineapple Crush.

Hello Shaun,

You may not remember but I promised to report back to you about how Ghurkka Spice fared against the Poisson Chat’s compared to Pineapple Crush on the reservoir I fish in France (Lac de Pincemaille/Rille).

Well sadly they loved it!

Any unmeshed Ghurkka Spice were noshed by the little buggers very quickly. I did try meshed Ghurkka Spice on the hair, but still managed to foul hook them anyway. Considering the number of Poisson Chats in the lake I reasoned that the carp probably weren’t getting the chance of any freebies anyway!

I even tried double 20mm boilies (one Ghurkka Spice and one Pineapple Crush) on the same hair as an experiment, within an hour or so and a few bleeps I reeled in to find the Ghurkka Spice completely gone but the Pineapple Crush untouched. This happened a couple of times without actually hooking the chats because I put the pineapple on the hook end of the hair (a potential good tip for the future when fishing Pineapple Crush alongside another bait the chats might like.

I think to summarise, a bit of a thumbs down for the Ghurkka Spice on heavily ”chatted” waters, but what a good test for Pineapple Crush against the chats! So no guesses as to what bait I’ll be taking to that water next year.

I hope this has been of interest to you.

Regards

Martin Park.