Revealed here is a taste of powerful edges that you can exploit to catch many times more fish including far more big fish too! Summer means raised fish activity and faster metabolism and digestion and we can exploit fish behaviours through the manipulation of very special bait substances added to any ready made bait or included within homemade baits. It is often not simply what you use but how you use it that makes a massive difference to your catch rates!

You probably use ready made baits most of the time, but maybe hope to find little edges of your own to make them perform that bit better, or maybe you are keen to make your own homemade baits that will out-fish readymade baits. Most anglers use ready made boilies or pellets for example in very similar ways in summer or winter. Most anglers seem to think like anglers instead of like carp and this is just one factor I have noticed over my 30 plus years fishing for big carp. Yet thinking like carp is the key to greatest success!

So how does this type of thinking produce greatest success in terms of using baits and bait substances that make a far greater impact upon fish feeding and even powerfully conditioning fish uniquely onto your baits as opposed to competing baits? There is an angler who has promoted himself very widely in many angling publications etc named Ian Chillcott. He is an angler who is not exactly that sophisticated when it comes to bait, and what I infer here is that he tends to use ready made bait supplied by bait companies and puts his faith in their knowledge, experience and insights about substances and how they manipulate and exploit fish sensory systems, and many other factors.

Many people follow this and other high profile anglers by copying their every word but the bigger picture is what really matters. Experience counts for much in fishing, but to put blind faith in something you do not truly understand is simply not the best route to the greatest results. You can put blind faith in bait and then never know just how much better you can achieve, even if your readymade baits appear to be successful! When an angler gives up using boilies and starts using maggots it is a sure sign they do not know how to make bait substances beat maggots, because after maggots have ejected their ammonia and have inevitably slowed their movements and drowned they have very little stimulation and attraction left to offer compared to a far superior purpose designed homemade bait within reach of anyone with enough of the right knowledge as you will discover for yourself!

Most average anglers simply do not realise that they can catch at least 4 times as many fish if they truly understood fish externally and internally and understood far more about the fact that fish are literally bathed at all times in an electrically charged solution to which they are acutely attuned and are sensitized to tiny changes occurring which may offer a vast array of potential food opportunities or threats!

Any heated bait that breaks down into solution by perhaps 12 to 18 hours, 24 hours or longer is not optimised bait at all. Think about it. Fish are surrounded by a multitude of substances in solution all the time. This may be regarded as smoke or background clutter that can mask potential impacts of many of your bait substances leaching from your readymade baits. For example there is dissolved ammonia (ammonium) leaching from decaying leaves and other detritus (or chod,) there are minerals and so on in solution in the water that actually in effect turn lake water etc into an electrolyte. This is important to realise as you can manipulate and exploit this in your own ways!

Then you have all the wriggling moving and live organisms in the water, perhaps zooplankton in the top and middle layers of the water, and of course all the various forms of algeas that colour the water and bloom in warmer temperatures, but which are the incredibly nutritionally rich basic food source of carp besides the minerals they absorb through their skin from the water surrounding them, plus other sources etc.

Many anglers doing fancy articles describing typical chod rigs and stiff rigs with perfectly round pop up boilies in clear water tanks have most likely forgotten that in most feeding situations the fanning of the water by carp clouds the water in the immediate vicinity of baits. Even in the clearer water and over the cleaner gravel bottom of Horseshoe Lake where the under water Korda videos were filmed you can see that the fish feeding on the free baits cloud up the water immediately around baits.

Now here is just little tip just to show you how to think like a fish and exploit this to your unique advantage. Thus far I have painted a picture of how fish live in a world that is constantly changing where the changing levels of dissolved carbon dioxide, (carbonic acid) and different levels of amines and other acids and alkaline substances, mineral salts and so on are all being detected by carp senses by all their sensory systems simultaneously. It is vitally important to exploit as many sensory systems as possible simultaneously in order to fully overcome natural fish caution, and doing this correctly in effect makes your baits addictive and strongly habit forming.

I know of no ready made bait that actually does this adequately, which is why it is possible for anyone to out-fish any ready made bait by making uniquely potently active (and biologically active,) unusually water reactive, highly soluble homemade baits. I have been a field tester for many companies over the years, Rod Hutchinson included. I am a consultant for CC Moore and other bait companies so I have been able to develop some pretty deep insights into the actual comparative performance of ready made baits and individual bait substances applied in a variety of unusual ways.

My specialty is homemade baits of very unusual and surprisingly creative formats and designs made very differently to those advertised in flashy magazines. Some my homemade baits are extremely work intensive and take layer upon layer of preparation and practical processing to achieve the desired active and bioactive effects on carp and desired optimum concentrated levels of bait substances in solution. I have still to find a ready made bait I cannot top in terms of potency of impacts by leveraging and harnessing water reactivity. Making baits react with water so that they impact on carp senses and biological systems in simultaneous ways to the degree that these completely alter fish behaviours and modes of feeding in your unique favour is the goal.

Carp respond and react as much to changes in the water that literally surrounds them, as much as actual stimuli in water intended to effect a change. I wonder just how many anglers really understand how various forms of the awesome fish feeding triggering betaines react with water. This is something very much worth discovering, and I have indeed written a 100 page book on betaines such is their power. The fact is that electrical exchange of particles of molecules of water in reaction with any bait substance is critical to the success of that bait substance and the initial degree that fish feeding is achieved via external and internal sensory systems and other biofeedback impulses and stimuli within fish.

The second stage is how fish in response to detected stimuli actually release hormones, amino acids etc in the brain and how these switch on moods and physical activities ranging from gulping of the water, to full on head butting of the lake bed, or even simply traveling 50 metres following the concentration gradient of substances becoming solution leaching from a baited area.

So many factors come into play in the bigger picture of how carp live and how we can apply all these in catching more fish, by thinking like a fish. I know you want a few tips in how to improve your bait performance. Many of you use a tub with spikes inside to crush boilies, pellets and so on to make a coarse or fine meal or powder to use in your water soluble bags and webs made from polyvinyl acetate. The use of powders in such soluble bags etc to deliver soluble stimulation and attraction to the water column is successful and that is well known and applied in action by many anglers today. However I will question very seriously the actual potency of crushing boilies and pellets for this purpose.

The reason I question is very obvious and I hope that by now in reading this you have you carp thinking brain in gear and well and truly turned on! Boilies and pellets are machine formed, and rolled or extruded and cut, and then heated, maybe even coated in oils or soaked in glugs or dips. But the fact remains that these have been heated and will not form the most potent and most impactfully concentrated solution of stimuli in water. In effect using the ground up boilie and ground up pellet approach is a second rate method. It simply does not deliver maximum potential impacts via the water column nor into solution that will surround and envelope carp so promoting the most powerful feeding frenzy possible.

Heated boilies and pellets act in water like someone smoking a joint standing next to you. The smoke rises and spreads and you can detect it via the air molecules impacting your sensory receptors. But what I am talking about is surrounding carp in a cloud of stimuli that lingers and keeps being refreshed by further concentrations of solution around them, much like standing right next to a massive smoking bonfire surrounding you with smoke, or like being in the middle of a steam room where you are imbibed with the stimuli of burning coals and steam entering your pores.

I am talking about fish being surrounded by intense stimuli constantly and not simply being aware of a few plumes of attraction from scattered and soon washed out baits, whether spod mix, ground bait, boilies or pellets etc.

The average angler expects miracles from the baits they use, because they do not understand them in terms of how water reacts with their individual and combined components, and how these in solution impact upon carp in multiple ways on a multitude of levels internally and externally.

Thinking like a carp involves imagining that you are like a swimming tongue. You are directly in contact with food signals via receptors packed in the skin on your face, your nostrils, lips, plate, throat, digestive canal, fins, lateral line, belly etc. Most anglers seem to think of baits as something to be tasted or smelled, but carp are very different. They have an ancient brain, short digestive tract, and different nervous connection to different brain areas and so on, and operate naturally in stimulating solution and not in air. Do not think like a human in air but like a fish in water. This is central to thinking about how to improve your baits.

Years ago many anglers used trout pellets as loose feed. Indeed spodding out pellets as loose feed and using trout pellet paste and trout pellet boilies was a successful method. However, in the cauldron of competitive angling you need to improve beyond the current level of performance and this means developing your own understanding. I took some risks in terms of experimenting with baits that were not cooked and without fail these baits always out-performed all the cooked boilies and pellets made by bait manufacturers. I was exploiting the fact that fish live in solution!

I remember the first day it occurred to me to crush and over-flavour my homemade boilies. This was in the late nineteen eighties when most anglers were still using round boilies as loose feed as beds of bait. Some were soaking their hook baits in extra liquid substances to boost results. Instead I crushed my baits and soaked the coarse bait in liquid stimulants of many forms. My catch rate quadrupled instantly, and the results meant I could fish anywhere, even massive lakes like Lake Salagou and know I could pull in and stimulate fish from a range and concentrate them in my swim.

However, the big question was not making bait substances become concentrated solution, but which substances and which combinations promoted the most intensive and most beneficial feeding responses in my unique favour. I say this because I had various bait companies beginning to grow up in my local area including mainline and Nash, but then again fishing against and out-fishing such readymade baits was never a problem anyway.

In a way, the moment you think like a fish and stop having a mental paradigm of baits as a concept or format such as a round or barrel shaped boilie or pellet, or indeed any fine powder PVA bag mix or spod or slop mix with whatever particles and pellets etc, then you open and free your mind to thinking the right way round. Be the fish you are dreaming of catching by imagining all the potential sensations that your baits will deliver internally and externally in solution, and how these might make you feel inside. This method is an easy way to practice this insight. Do not think about bait in terms of the idea that a fish gets fed up eating beef and fancies and ice cream instead. This type of thinking is meaningless misguided and even infantile.

Think receptors, think about these senses opening and closing and turning on and off like switches. Remember that one of the limitations of highly nutritional baits is that once fish have received enough nutrition from them maybe even from consuming a mixture of competing baits, then they will no longer require that nutrition and so these baits will be far less effective in various ways.

What becomes solution or at least very partially solution better when you compare a dry pellet to one that has been soaked in hot liquid foods? I mention this because for years the average angler was using dry pellets simply because he was copying other anglers and this was the way these were used. I never met another angler who thought like a fish and turned those pellets into a highly soluble paste type of thick slurry and benefited massively by doing this and thinking like a fish instead of an angler!

You have to at some stage experiment and stop copying others and I for one really recommend you empower yourself by being different bearing in mind that you need to think different thoughts in order to do things differently. Some things you try will go directly against all preconditioned dominant thought attitudes, opinions and even supposed logic. Carp break rules all the time. They are dynamically evolving creatures so fully exploit this fact instead of brainlessly following what the herd all read and copy in magazines!

Baits are about far more besides merely nutritional bait theory. You do not need protein to catch carp, and you can make carp addicted to bait even when no protein is present. Although amino acids are the building blocks of vital proteins, amino acids and enzymes etc essential for a carp to live other factors are just as important in the competitive world of catching carp and exploiting the potential of actions of bait substances. Just remember that proteins work by being in solution, in short chains, very small molecules capable of being easily dissolved and easily digested and assimilated through the carp digestive tract wall. Low molecular weight substances appear in reams of lists of successful carp bait substances I could mention.

But bait does not have to be too complicated that just trying to decipher the mysteries of enzymes and amino acids turns your head to mush! Think like a carp and do all you can to learn about them. Sadly the general level of insight is pretty low judging from the usual carp magazine standards, and those who really do know carp in a profound way usually have a scientific background and not an ex-sea fisherman or railway worker or bin man, plasterer or whatever.

In writing my own ebooks even with help of PhD biochemists, electrochemists, marine biologists, nutrition experts, flavorists and so on, the picture is still very difficult to understand clearly. Few scientific absolutes exist in carp fishing when it comes to bait substances and baits because the number of variables to overcome and control are so numerous when real time fishing scenarios.

Also each and every carp is a unique genetically different dynamically evolving individual. Fish respond to all that impacts them in their environment so just as in quantum physics just the act of fishing for them, or observing them can skew results and muddle conclusions about many things carp do and why this is. Many remarks about the behaviour of carp in response to baits and rigs in underwater videos such as the Korda ones are obviously very vacuous and misleading and really require an over-haul!

Summer is often thought of by anglers as hot air and warm sun. But think about summer from the senses of a fish and you will be sensing oxygen saturation in terms of energy efficiency of your body and you will avoid areas of water with high carbonic acid concentrations. So you will spend much more time in shallow water and top and middle water layers and avoid colder water layers in certain conditions and winds. Even view winds for what they really are in electrical terms as charged particles that mix with water molecules.

As a carp you would be sensing the concentrations of zooplankton concentrations in mid water and the wriggling of bloodworm sticking out of their holes in the bottom sediment, and knowing the concentrations of snails and snail eggs and snails and mussels in aquatic weeds that oxygenate the water and provide shelter. There is far more to this picture but this is a taste. Details of bait recipes, ingredients, additives etc are secondary to understanding fish. Fish understanding is the starting point not ingredients! Once you understand fish externally and internally to a good degree and how water has such a significant part in the whole equation of bait reactivity etc then you can really make some good baits that easily out-fish readymade baits!

All the significant aspects of digestibility and solubility of winter bait substances are actually incredibly effective in summer temperatures. It might be a surprise to know that those ready made and homemade baits you might rate as top winter baits are actually best in summer when adapted using extra components and substances to take advantage of warmer water temperatures and increased fish metabolism etc.

All it takes is to think like a carp and see the bigger picture by learning more about carp and developing your own understanding. The secret of success is in empowering yourself, just as the saying goes: knowledge is power!

If you are intending to forget all you have just read and simply go on using ready made baits with an average angler herd mentality type of relatively closed mindset then expect the merely average results or even lack of success that herd mentality brings. The choice is free and it is yours to make right now; will you decide to open your mind and reap the huge rewards of getting the bigger picture? Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!