Quest Baits Blog

Observation was the key

Elie G — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:02:24 +0000

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. On the second morning I was just about to cast out when a fish rolled over one of my areas. I cast to it and saw that my rig landed about 15′ short of where the fish had rolled. I reeled in, recast further this time and hey presto - I found a lovely clear spot I’d not been aware of before. I marked up the distance on my line with pole elastic and in no time I had a bait on that spot. In this case it was a rhaja spice pop up over rehydrated rhaja shelf life boilies. No surprise when the next morning I had the first of three takes on that rod. The first one was the big common. I also had mirrors - a double and a twenty the following evening. Just goes to show how important it is to keep watching for any signs that could help turn a blank into a red letter day.

Happy days, Elie G.

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Observation was the key

How to camouflage up your end tackle

samantha — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:34:35 +0000

By Scott Ratcliffe

I started playing around with different ways of camouflaging my end tackle to suit the lake bed I’m fishing. I’ve started fishing a large 70 acre gravel pit in the south west which holds a small amount of large carp that have proved themselves to be hard to catch, so I’ve been taking my end tackle to the next stage to see if I can blend it all in to match the lake bed. After playing around with making my own leads and camouflaging them I started to play with a lead clip, then the rubber and the rig tubing. All you need is a blow torch and some powdered coating which will match your lake bed.

First heat up the lead of your choice until it goes warm and sprinkle the powder over it until it’s fully coated. Then give it a quick flash with the blow torch and hang it to cool down. After try coating a lead clip, the best ones in my opinion for the job are Rigmarole Freefall clips as they are made from tin and will take some heat, then you can coat it with ease. When trying to coat the rubbers, and after a few mishaps, the best way is to push a long screw into the rubber until it comes out the other side then give it a quick flash with the blow touch all over. Sprinkle with powder and give a flash over again until it goes smooth.

When it comes to tubing use freefall micro tubing which has a stainless steel coil running though the centre of it, cut it to the length you require then heat it up until the plastic coating goes shiny. Then sprinkle with powder and as it dries give it a flash over again this will make the tubing smooth and it will sill stay flexible. When all the components are placed together the result will blend into the lake bed you are fishing and hopefully fool even the most wary of fish.

All the best with this method

Scott

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How to camouflage up your end tackle

Reader’s Query: Grass Carp

paul.cooper — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:36:03 +0000

Philip Parker wrote:
I will be tackling a venue that contains a good head of large grass carp. The lake itself is quite shallow 3′-4′ and around nine acres in size. Can anyone offer some advice on trying to catch them. Of all the fish I’ve caught this one has eluded me. Surface baits are not an option at this venue. Any advice would be well received and appreciated.

Gareth Watkins replies:
Hi Philip,
Grass carp are lovely looking fish and a strange species as they are not easy to target. They will get caught on boilies, but this is more often than not in a water that has little or no weed. In my experience on heavily weeded waters they very rarely get caught at all.
Being basically plant eaters the best way to go about attracting them to your swim is with a plant based bait. I have found maize and sweet corn to be very good in this respect. If you put down a large bed of these particles you have a fair chance you’ll get the fish move on to it.
Over this I would suggest a popped up bait a few centimetres off the bottom. While they will pick bottom baits up this is not their natural feeding habit so you’ll mostly likely get more takes on popped up maize, for example.
They are very fragile fish that don’t fight that hard until you get them close to or on the bank. I often think that until you try to net them they don’t even realise they’ve been hooked.
Once close to the net though they often go balisitic and can wipe all your other rods out. On the back they are also very lively and need to be treated with care. They will often lose scales and get red on the flanks as the thrash around. I would say keep them wet, do you weighing and photos as fast as you can and get them back in the water. Under no circumstances sack them.
Hope this helps
Gareth

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Reader’s Query: Grass Carp

Glugged Boilies

samantha — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:43:47 +0000

I’ve recently made the decision to stop using frozen baits altogether and start using shelf life for all my fishing throughout the year. So far what may seem at first a drastic decision has paid off and I have had some great results to show for it. Quest dips and glugs are a great way to enhance your shelf life boilies, simply place your boiles into the plastic container, I usually put about 2kg of bait per container and add the same flavoured dip as my chosen boilies. Then put the lid on and give it a good shake, this will coat all the boilies which are instantly ready to use.

I like to leave mine for a good month though as this will enhance the boilies and have maximum attraction throughout a session whether it for just a couple of hours or a weekend session. In my opinion I would say leave all the hassle of associated with frozen boilies and give shelf life a try.

Samantha Collins-Ratcliffe

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Glugged Boilies

Reader’s Query: Braided Shock Leader Knot

shaun — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:53:03 +0000

Steve Vaughan
Could you recomend a good strong easy to tie shock leader knot for attatching a 45lb braid shock leader to 12lb mono mainline.

Hi Steve,
When using braided leaders I use a reverse of my combi-rig knot http://www.questbaits.com/docs/videovault/combirig/index.html Instead of making the initial loop with the nylon as illustrated in the attached clip make the loop with the 45lb braided leader and form the knot with the 12lb nylon.

Best fishes

Shaun

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Reader’s Query: Braided Shock Leader Knot

So what is a lot of bait?

jamie — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:57:23 +0000

By Jamie Simpson

Carp fishing has certainly been developing at an amazing rate over recent years. Just the other day I was sat having a chat with a good mate of mine and we got on to the topic of bait.

Now this conversation went down the route of how much bait you would use in certain circumstances, which has got my brain really working.

In my early days this bag would have lasted me weeks

Going back to the late eighties and very early nineties I would knock up a four egg mix and expect it to last me a couple of weekend sessions at the very least. Well I reckon that a four egg mix equates to about a pound and a half of 14mm baits, which would be a couple of hundred at the most. Generally that would be it, no pellet, hemp, corn or anything else. On arrival I would generally put in a couple of pouch fulls and if I caught I would add another pouch of boilies and so on. I remember putting in half a bag one day and worrying about ruining my chances. It’s crazy to think that way now but I was naive at the time and having come from a coarse background of fishing a few maggots and the odd grain of corn, 14mm boilies seemed so big.

Between our group we would commonly use the term I have filled in when in reality we weren’t even scratching the surface of what they could devour.

Over the years I have witnessed some occasions where I am certain you cannot over feed them. On one occasion I watched two Carp that probably weren’t even doubles munch down 2 pints of maggots in no more than a few minutes. That same day on a commercial fishery I had probably 300 Carp climbing over each other to get at my floaters, they were in a complete frenzied state.

Particle and pellet are a cheaper way of introducing a lot of bait

Over the last year I have had the good fortune to assist a good friend stock and feed his fishery. There are around 500 carp in the lake and the amount of food they get fed is incredible. On occasion I have personally given them over 40kilo of bait in an evening along with my mate giving them a similar amount. This is obviously done at the times of year when the are most active such as April, May, September and October. However a lot of people would be surprised at just how much you can get away with feeding them in the depths of Winter.

So What is a lot of bait?

In the right conditions on a well stocked lake I would have no hesitation putting in 10-15kilo over a 48 hour session, if I thought that by doing so it would benefit my catch rate. The key to this is knowing what the right conditions are and that comes with experience and watercraft on the chosen venue.

A mid thirty from a French trip where the more bait they got the more I caught

For a weeks session in France I would certainly take atleast 30kilo of boilie, along with Rahja spod mix and Rahja feast as well as 5 kilo of pellet and 5 kilo of hemp. That is the amount I took on a recent trip, however due to the fishing conditions I brought all but 5kilo of boilie, 5kilo of Rahja feast, the hemp a bit of pellet and some of the Rahja spod mix back. Had the conditions been different I would have probably used the lot. About 3 years ago I ran out of bait on a trip to Maurepaire where I landed 34 Carp to just over 40lb. I would have caught more fish for certain had I taken another 10kilo of 20mm Rahja with me. That trip I had taken 25kilo of Rahja in 10mm, 15mm and 20mm. This may seem a lot of bait, but when you break it down it equates to 4kilo a day spread over 3 rods with around 400 Carp to upper 40s with the average size being around 28-30lb. I would imagine that if a group of 6 Carp came into the swim they could eat that amount comfortably in a very short period of time.

A good amount of people would look at that amount of bait and say that it equates to over £200 worth of bait for a weeks fishing, yes it does, but it is one week a year where I have the opportunity to catch fish of a size that I do not normally have access to. With that I will not compromise my chances of a fish of a lifetime due to not being prepared to part with the extra bit of cash for the bait. After all the majority of carpers I see on the bank nowadays will be sat behind a few grands worth of rods, reels, alarms and sat in a £400 bivvy.

In my mind the biggest factors are conditions, stock, history and the most important watercraft.

Cheers

Jamie

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So what is a lot of bait?

Cooking On The Bank PT 2

samantha — Mon, 04 May 2009 16:53:11 +0000

Scott Antony Ratcliffe

Quest Baits Consultant & Master Chef of Great Britain

How many of us take tins and rehydrated food out with us while fishing, even if it’s a short session or a week’s session? Here I’m going to show how easy it is to cook fresh on the bank while you’re waiting for that special take.

How to make

Fillet of Beef, beetroot, purple broccoli, sweet charlottes red wine jus

You will need

7-8oz Beef fillet (British)

Beetroot

Carrots

Sweet Charlottes

Purple Broccoli

Tarragon

Black olives

Red Wine

Salt & Pepper

Olive oil & Butter

Step by step

1- Pour the olive oil into a hot pan

2- Add the butter to the pan

3- Place beef into a hot pan top with salt and pepper

4- Peel the charlottes place into pan and then turn over the beef

5- Peel and chop the carrots and add to the pan

6- Add the baby beetroot to the pan

7- De-stone the black olives, chop and add the pan

8- Add ¼ of the red wine to the pan

9- Place the Purple Broccoli around the beef

10- Add some cubes of butter

11- Peel the leafs of the tarragon and place in the pan

12- Arrange the ingredients on the plate

13- Beef fillet on the bank (Done)

Happy Cooking

Scott

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Cooking On The Bank PT 2

Springtime Success in France

shaun — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:46:30 +0000

Top French carp angler Bruno Médou has just sent us a report from his latest trip to the central ‘Morvan’ region of France, and area rich in carp waters and renowned for the large fish that populate its waters.
The region is heavily forested with a large variety of pines, and as Bruno says it gives it a Canadian feel. The beauty of the setting contributed immensely of the pleasure of his trip.
Bruno had the good fortune to spend his trip on three different waters, which had never seen carp anglers before, and was fortunate to bank specimens on all three over the magical 15kg mark (33lb).

An accomplished photographer Bruno has sent us a series of beautiful photos. See Slideshow below:

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Springtime Success in France

Top Tips - Use Blunt Hooks!

Elie G — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:15:13 +0000

By Elie Godsi

Here is a scenario I see time and time again wherever I fish. Carp anglers find a spot they like the feel of with their marker floats, like a gravel patch or a gap in weed. Then they check out the actual condition of the bottom of the lake around their marker float by casting their actual fishing rods, rigs and all, to the spot they have identified. Then they pull back - with the rigs they are about to bait up with, all along the bottom. Why would anyone do that?

It seems blindingly obvious to me that this is asking for trouble as your hook is going to get blunted in the process. Avoiding this could not be simpler. Most of us use quick change clip systems that allow hooklinks to be changed quickly. When I have a rig that has become blunt, say after landing a fish, I keep it in a sleeve marked ‘blunt rigs’. I always put this on my fishing rods and use this rig to check out the fishing spot. Once I am happy I can fish to this spot, my line is marked so I can recast to the same place every time. Only then do I change the blunt hook and link for my actual baited fishing rig.

Simple but effective!

Elie G

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Top Tips - Use Blunt Hooks!

The Carp Don’t Know the Rules

Ron — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:03:26 +0000

I relearned and old lesson last weekend, you may think you have the lake sorted out but no one tells the carp the rules. When I joined Shaun on our syndicate water Grenville Lake he had already fished for 24 hours. He was fishing a swim in a bay that he knows well and has fished successfully over the last year. I chose a swim at the other side of the point on his right. Conditions for us both looked good. Within an hour I was getting liners over the Surf n’Turf and after three hours I had a run that I did not connect with. I sat confidently for another 24 hours; while the new wind that should have pushed the fish towards swung slowly around 360 degrees and the temperature cooled considerably. Was I worried was I hell? The fish in this lake always fish off the back of a cold wind. Don’t they? The wind picked up and I sat it out.

Shaun was nearing the end of his session, and decided to pack his gear and cast the rods out in another swim for the last couple of hours. He set up on the far bank with the wind hammering in towards him where I should have gone if I hadn’t known the rules and perhaps hadn’t been so lazy. That afternoon he had three chances and landed a fabulous scaly mirror of nearly 19lbs on a glugged Surf n’Turf boilie. The lessons to be learnt? Don’t assume the fish know your rules, don’t stereotype your fishing, be observant, always pay attention to changing weather conditions, and don’t let that mountain of oh so essential gear stop you moving. You may miss that fish of a lifetime. As Shaun said, “two hours in the right swim is better than forty eight in the wrong un!”

Cheers Ron Key

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The Carp Don’t Know the Rules

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