Quest Baits Blog

By Jamie Simpson

I decided to write this piece about one of the hooklink presentations I have been using to good effect this season.  I would recommend the use of this rig on firm bottoms such as sand and gravel, light silt and sparse weed, but not fished in thick weed or heavy silt as I feel the hooklink may sit up off the bottom awkwardly.

Just recently I have started using a lot more combi-link rigs again, and for the life of me I can’t remember why I stopped using them in the first place, perhaps the introduction of the coated braids maybe played a part in this.

With a lot of anglers switching to combi-rigs made by simply stripping coating off the braid I think I may have been a little paranoid that the fish would suss it out and my results would suffer.

I used them almost all the time in the late nineties and I guess I must have either moved onto a venue that I found an alternative more productive, or as I said, become paranoid about their effectiveness with so many other anglers now using a similar type of presentation. Anyway I have been using them quite a lot again this year on a couple of venues and have tweaked them to suit my requirements really well. continue reading…

by Shaun Harrison

Since James Harrison’s first piece in this magazine about carp captures being a result of many things coming together at the same time and most captures basically being ‘meant to be’, I have got to thinking an awful lot. Obviously, the more experienced angler will always catch a few more because he/she makes sure to be there when the right factors are coming together and the rig is in place ready for where the fish will undoubtedly turn up.

I have looked long and hard at my own fishing and, these past couple of weeks apart, I have never particularly struggled to catch carp and for many years I have used exactly the same rig for all of my bottom fishing on everything except soft silkweed. continue reading…

Steve Vaughan wrote;

Could you recommend what size hook to use with 18mm baits, I’ve been using size 8 but find i am missing lots of runs on this size

Hi Steve

That’s not quite as simple a question to answer as a lot of people might think, and it certainly isn’t straight forward.

Firstly it depends on the hook itself, as each manufacturer seems to make up their own sizes and they vary immensely. Unfortunately there isn’t a national standard hook size to work from. For example a size 6 Korda long shank is dimensionally a much bigger hook than say a Drennan super specialist of the same size. continue reading…

by Shaun Harrison;

Just had a bit of an interesting lesson drilled home to me and caused me to take a step back and take a fresh look at my angling. I have always said I like to keep a open mind on things and try and be as different to others as I can. If everyone is using pop-ups I will use bottom baits. If everyone is on tiny baits I will try large baits and so on.

However, last week during a short day session I was totally outfished on my own water! I had taken a guest Dave Booth along with me and promptly sat there and watched him catch four carp whilst I struggled to hook one only to lose it again a few seconds later.

continue reading…