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.

Two opening sentences from my answer to the question asking how we use the Glugs.

Spencer answered straight away that he is happy using baits which have been left soaking in a Glug for 6 months. I was glad this came through as I had said everyone will have different preferences. Spencer also mentioned the Boilie Dips which are much stronger smelling and far more concentrated than the Bait Glugs. The Glug will be relatively smooth on your tongue – the dip will be too powerful. I liken it to fresh orange juice and undiluted orange squash. You could eat food with fresh orange juice poured over but not with undiluted orange squash. For hook baits only you can get away with really heavily flavoured baits as the carp never get to taste them properly.

I have caught a lot of fish in the past on hook baits soaked in neat 1000:1 flavours which goes against what I wrote about preferring subtle smelling/tasting baits but is something I still occasionally try – particularly on waters which have seen little angling pressure.

The reasons for my preference towards subtle flavoured baits are purely from conclusions drawn from the waters I currently fish. They will all produce to heavily flavoured baits and in one instance the water produces better to heavily flavoured hook baits. However and this is a big however, I have found that the average size of the fish caught on my heavily flavoured baits is much lower than that of those caught on my subtle flavoured baits (this is also a big reason why I still like to pre-soak my freebies).

Now this got my brain thinking for a logical reason to this. I was definitely noticing a difference then the penny dropped. I know it is not always the case but on the whole the smaller fish are from a younger year class. It would appear through studying carp for many years that some of their senses don’t develop until later life.

I believe that the younger carp feed primarily by sight and powerful underwater signals where as the larger carp are much more capable of detecting the very smallest food signals and will often amble across a subtle bait in a swim whilst the younger ones are tearing around eating the obvious baits.

I remember reading somewhere years ago by either Rod Hutchinson or Kevin Clifford commenting about the Redmire carp. Basically they were watching the fish feed and from the vantage point of a tree they baited with different coloured food items and commented that the smaller fish were very quick on the brightest baits and the larger fish were generally picking off the dull baits. This to me would againindicate the small fish were feeding by sight where as the larger fish were utilising other developed senses.

Food for thought perhaps?

Heavily flavoured baits may produce more fish over the course of a season but are they the ones you really hope to catch?

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