Quest Baits Blog

Words and pictures by Pat Gillett:

I have just got back from a week’s social in France with my non-fishing kid brother David. He wanted to see what all the fuss was about fishing in France. I was his gillie for the week, finding clear spots, placing the baits etc. I must have done a decent job has by Tuesday he was already asking me ‘where are we going next year?’

We travelled down on the Friday and stopped in a lovely little campsite right by the side of the River Marne in Epernay. It was obvious from the brown colour and the height of the river that France had, had a very wet spring like the one we have just had. This became even more apparent when we got to the lake and found that the water level was actually coming over the front of the stagings.

The lake was very weedy at our end and was very much uniform in depth ranging from 7 1/2 feet to 9 feet in depth. It had steep margins that just fell straight off to about 8 feet. On arrival I spent a couple of hours leading about and marking the lines for the first night. Whenever I get to a new water I never put much bait in on the first night and this was to be no different has I put no more than 40 boilies over any of the rods. I put 2 rods each in open water and one rod each to the far margin at the bottom of the shelf. Baits were a mixture of the Quest Rahja Spice and Magnum White Boilies. The first night produced 2 upper doubles to my far margin rod but nothing to any of the other rods. continue reading…

Rod bending action on the first day of the year.

I am not one for making new year resolutions but I guess deep down for a while now I have promised myself a little more time angling on my local patch and to try and not keep pestering the carp week in and week out. It is so easy to find yourself in a routine simply because it suits. For years now I have pointed my Land Rover bonnet south or west and driven for a couple of hours for most all of my angling and in doing so I invariably pass so much incredible fishing along the way.

It wasn’t always like this. I started to travel simply because I had to travel if I was to be able to fish for the size of fish that used to seem so important to me. But as the years have moved on and I have grown, the fish have too and now I have fish on my doorstep which are much larger than the fish I used to have to travel for a couple of hours to reach. Having said that, I’m not size motivated at all these days. I haven’t been for years as in my mind the venue, the methods, the people and to a certain extent the security, come much higher on my list of priority than the size of the fish these days. Okay, obviously it is a massive bonus if I can combine everything and still have big fish to angle for.  continue reading…

Words and pictures by Lee Wheeler:
A few weeks ago I entered a carp cup match sponsored by my local tackle shop “Tackle Up”. The draw took place at 8 o clock in the morning and I drew peg 18 which was a swim that had a large amount of water in front of  it. Fortunately the other pegs along my side were not drawn so I had a range of ideas where to fish.

I started off by fishing a spread of Ghurkka Spice boilies over an area where I had seen a few fish show and after about 15 mins of having the rod out the bobbin pulled up to the top and line started to tick off the reel. I hit the take and I had the fish on. Unfortunately after about 40 seconds of having the fish on it came off, this was not a good start as someone else had just landed a fish and was in the lead!

I put the rod back out but everything went quiet for everyone so I decided to get my bag of dog biscuits and see if I could get the fish feeding confidently on the surface. After about 30 mins of constant feeding I had the fish feeding like mad, I didn’t have a controller float with me so I resorted to using an idea which a friend and I came up with which was using an apple core as the float. On the hooklink was a size 12 mixer hook and a trimmed down Ghurkka Spice pop up. The fish just werent having it. After having about 4 fish mouthing my bait and then spook off I decided to change hookbaits, I put on an 8mm cork ball soaked in Rahja Spice Bait Glug I cast the apple core and cork ball beyond the feeding fish and slowly drew it over them, within about 10 mins I had a fish stick its mouth out and suck in my bait the apple bobbbed under and I struck the rod hard. The fish weighed 11lb 6oz and that put me in second place shortly after one of the others were into a fish once landed his fish came in as 18lb 4oz which put me back down to 3rd place. It was game on now and I was trying my hardest to bag up on a few fish I got the rod back out and I was soon into another one, once this fish was weighed and landed it all kicked off I then had 3 more fish in about an hour and a half. I was now in 1st place with a very convincing lead. It came to the end of the match and I was the winner with a total of 5 fish and a total wieght of 68lbs.

Once again Quest Baits came out on top.

Thanks Lee Wheeler.

After visiting a few fisheries for day sessions over the last few weeks, with the occasional fish caught, I am now on the shores of a lake within walking distance of my home for a short session of 24 hours without pre-baiting. It’s early in the morning that I arrive at an arm of the lake that I like because I know it’s where the fish like to get together before spawning.

My early season bait has been Rahja Spice because it is really spicy & I know that carp love the spice without fishmeal, particularly in these cold water conditions.

I put my rods in the boat and rowed my baits out to 2.5m of water near the dead wood on the opposite shore.  Bait was 20mm boilies above a bed of hempseed with boilies cut into pieces – a great mix that I like very much early in the year.

Everything is in place and it is in the afternoon that my first run occurs. A nice mirror with nice round belly and a yellow tinge – very nice! Before nightfall I have 2 more great fish of the same caliber.

That evening I baited up again and the next day a festival with a lot of runs!  The carp are on the move and I am in the right spot.  I fish until 7pm then retire exhausted.  What a great day!

See you soon at the edge of the water…

Romu

Hi all – I’m delighted to report my PB UK common at 37-8. I’ve been after this fish for a couple of years and as you can see from the photos it’s a truly stunning fish.

The estate lake I’m fishing is very weedy and it can be difficult to find areas to put a bait on. I’m always looking out for areas in the weed that are clearer than others, but with the weed already thick in front of me finding what I was looking for took some time. I found a couple of areas I was reaonably happy with but after 24 hours I’d not had a bite and not seen any signs of fish showing anywhere. continue reading…

By Pat Gillett;
Towards the end of April I had a week on one of the Angling Lines venues called Long Lake. I have written an article on the weeks fishing on the Angling Lines’ website. Now although I didn’t catch any massive fish I did catch a few. But the main thing that the week brought home to me was how little things can make all the difference in fishing.

On Long Lake you book a swim for the week. Each swim has its’ own ‘end of swim marker’s’ which show the angler the exact area of water he has in front of him and should stop anglers encroaching on each other’s water.

I had got swim number 4 which was pretty much in the centre of the lake but also by far the narrowest part of the lake.I set up the marker float and plumbed the depths etc. About 10 to 15 feet back from the ‘end of swim marker’ I had an area that sloped from (left to right ) 12 feet deep to 14 feet deep. Now with the weather predictions I would have thought this was perfect so I marked up 3 rods plus the spod rod to fish this area.

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