Quest Baits Blog

Can you please tell me what you think are the best rigs for winter and the cold weather.  Thanks.

Cold water rigs for me, differ very little from my normal rigs, however I do like to scale things down somewhat. You have to only go back to your tiddler bashing days to know that fining your rigs down results in more bites and winter feeding, which is often short, highlights this.

There are many rigs in use today however most carp anglers have a failsafe rig which always seems to work for them. The rig that I’ve had my most success with by far, in all conditions, is a simple blow back rig, fined down with a size ten or twelve Mugga hook.  This rig has caught me winter carp from day ticket waters, to club lakes to hard UK syndicates with fish up to 36lb in the depths of winter.

The materials I use are a 15lb coated braid hooklink, I like PB products Jelly Wire, Gardner size 8 or 10 Mugga hooks and Fox Teflon rig rings in 3mm.

I’ve pictured the rig here as it is actually on my rods now, a simple split shot at the break in the braided hooklink coating (about 1 1/2 cm from the hook) is all that you need if you want to use it for pop-ups, a rig that I’ve caught UK carp up to nearly 56lb.

I fish this rig at approx 9 inches to start with, lengthening or shortening as required.  Remember if the fish can’t get it in their mouths they can’t get hooked! Two 10mm Quest boilies make the ideal hookbait.

Couple this rig with a running lead, or as I do with a shake free semi fixed lead, and you have everything you could need, come rain or shine, sun or snow!

Good luck, Spencer Humble

Greg asks;

Is it possible to plumb the depth of a lake with a ledger rig? I’d like to find where the gullies and gravel bars are.

Hi Greg the short answer is yes you can.  You can gather an incredible amount of information about your swim by simply tying a lead on your line and casting it out.

If you cast out a lead and let if descend on a tight line you can count down the number of seconds until the lead hits the bottom.  A 3oz lead falls at approximately 3ft per second.  It’s not an exact science but it will give you an indication of the depth. It is difficult with depths under 4 or 5ft because the lead is on the bottom before you can start your count.

The accuracy of this process can be increased by adding a marker float to a lead on a running link.  Stopping the retrieve every few feet and measuring the line taken from the reel as the float rises to the surface will give you an accurate indication of the profile of the bottom.  It also gives you the depth of features such as bars, humps and plateaux as you locate them.  The lead can stick or hold on the side of a bar, and the slope of the bottom or bar can increase the resistance of the retrieve confirming what the float tells you. continue reading…

Hi there,

I’m quite new to carp fishing and was wondering when you glug your boilies do you leave them submerged in the glug for a long time or once they’ve had a coating do you put them in a pot for future use. I know the question is quite basic but like I said earlier im just starting out.

Kind regards, Simon Jones

Hi Simon,

Good question that one and one which you’ll get a different answer from different people as everyone has varied views on how heavy to flavour a bait. Personally I don’t like my boilies smelling too strong but there are plenty of fish caught on real heavily flavoured baits.

At the end of the day it very much comes down to confidence and how much the fish have been subjected to in the past. I tend to pick up a better average size of fish by keeping my baits subtle smelling rather than real strong. You need to experiment on the waters you are on though as I still fish one place which hasn’t seen a lot of pressure and those fish do seem to home in on strong flavoured baits.

The following is how I use Glugs in my own fishing.

Shelf Life Baits

• Hook Baits – I usually fill a empty pop-up tub with boilies, add a bit of Glug at a rate of 10ml (2 teaspoons) per 200ml tub (our pop-up containers) then simply leave them near the kettle or wherever I’ll be passing regular and give them a shake about each time I walk by until they have soaked the glug up and become less messy to handle. These I am quite happy to carry around in my rucksack for some time. You can add more glug at a later stage if you wish. I prefer to do this a bit at a time rather than leave them soaking in it.
• Normal Free Baits for baiting with – I don’t often glug them but if I do I simply give them a light coating then shake them around in a polythene bag until they are evenly covered. I would prefer to do this 24 hour before using them. quest-baits-glugs-how-to-use/#more-2922″ class=”more-link”>continue reading…

Hi Shaun,

Just ordered some of these excellent baits after a remarkable experience yesterday.

I was fishing my local stretch of the Bristol Avon near Chippenham in Wiltshire and happily banging out roach of a pleasing stamp on maggot, corn and bread, rotating the baits as bites slowed. Oddly, not a chub in sight and I would have normally expected to pick up a couple. Another angler stopped for a chat, mentioned the Chubby Chops (swiftly avoiding a slap by mentioning that it was bait) and suggested I try a couple. I packed a small feeder with the same light groundbait mix I was using to keep the roach coming, hair-rigged a Chop and cast into the same spot I had been trotting over.

An hour and 6 chub to 3 1/2lb later and my two Chops were decimated. Fantastic!

I have to say I missed quite a few bites and think that my size 12 Drennan Super Specialist about 5mm behind the bait was probably not the optimum set-up but it was getting dark and I didn’t have time to experiment.

What would you have done – longer hair and bigger/smaller hook or larger hook and tight to the barrel?

Best regards,  Graham Parry.

PS, I ordered some Barbel Chops as well. What would you combine those with – I fish the Wye and Gloucester Severn in the Summer and Autumn and was thinking of grinding up some chops and mixing in a little of the Archie Braddock’s powder but choice of pellets to bulk the mix?

Hi Graham,

Excellent – our biggest problem is getting people to try these things. We are more than happy knowing the baits will then do the rest for us without the sales patter.

The water temperatures are still running very cold which affects the metabolism and feeding style of the fish. It is easy to draw sometimes the wrong conclusion when it’s as it is at the moment. Sometimes simply mounting the bait in a different manner (lengthways or sideways) can often make the difference. One thing I would most certainly have tried with the limited time which often stops us changing rigs would have been to cut one end off of the bait. continue reading…

Tom asked;

Thanks for the reply like most nowadays I read you must use 10mm in winter and so on.  Just to give you the background on the lake it is a old estate lake about 4 and a half acres in size and it has got lovely beds of lily pads that unfortunatly seems to have faded out of most lakes which is disapointing. It is very silty which is the bad smelling stuff at times and finding the gravel seems to be the best place to fish. Would you recommend a fruity trifle pop up that has been glugged to keep the smell out or bottom baits.   Cheers for your help Tom

Hi Tom,

Glugs come down to a personal choice scenario. They give a lot of people a lot of confidence but nowadays particularly during the colder months I find myself using them less and less. It seems the common denominator that most seem to boost the flavour of their bait during the winter, so it is something I no longer do. I have always tried to be different to others in my own fishing and since starting to use ‘conventional’ flavoured baits rather than boosted flavour baits my winter catch results have far from suffered.

Regarding the areas to fish and the situation of the ‘smelly’ silt;

I have spent a lot of time on silty waters. Probably the most famous of these is the Mangrove in Shropshire where I was lucky enough to be a syndicate member for many years. The Mangrove is thousands of years old so has a massive build up of silt.

Pop-ups didn’t work very well at the Mangrove. Silt feeding carp simply feed ‘in the silt’ and this is where they expect the food items to be. Certainly any free baits you fire out will end up in the silt rather than hovering over it. It all comes down to confidence at the end of the day but try fishing two baits close together on the same baited patch. One popped up the other on a normal bottom bait and see which method the carp prefer on the water you fish.

One thing I would advice if the baits are taking on a lot of the silt smell would be to pre-soak your baits in bottled water before you go fishing. This way they will soak up ‘tasteless’ water and be less capable of taking in so much of the silt taste.

If you can find some firmer areas of silt then these are the areas I would concentrate my efforts. Firmer areas are firm because they are regularly fed upon. They can be very difficult to find but one major clue and one I incorporated into my Mangrove fishing was to always smell the lead when you wind in. The swivel will always trap a little sediment and water from where you have been fishing. You will soon find the really nasty areas to avoid and once in a while you will wind in ‘clean smelling silt’ – if that makes sense?

Hope this helps
Best fishes, Shaun Harrison

Hello Shaun

I need some help please I have just started to fish a lake which has a little weed on the bottom so I have started to play around with the reverse combi rig. I cannot work out how to tie on the supple braid for the hair part so I was just using IQ for both the boom section and for the hair. But after seeing a picture of your rig in Carpworld I think it could be the missing piece I have been looking for.

So I was wonder if you have the time if you could send me a few pics to show me how to tie this rig as you do as I am almost there my e mail is……..

The above is an email I received to-day. I have left the persons name off so that you can see I treat questions with confidentiality. If ‘Mr Stiff IQ’ wanted to keep this as a little trick up his sleeve on the venue he is fishing then I’m not one to alert the anglers there as to what he is doing.

This is a good question and one I have received several times since I first published it after my success catching Buffalo Carp on it in Texas exactly this time last year. continue reading…