Why are we carp anglers so interested in flavours? Is it because of the effect of them on us when we smell their often gorgeous lingering aromas, immediately makes us feel hungry? The fact is they are a very distinctive reference point for our human senses - and act just the same for carp.

Most anglers seem to overlook the fact that a flavour does not have to evoke the falvour profile of a ripe strawberry to catch fish, and that on the North of England match circuit, pidgeon droppings ahave been treated as a secret weapon and even urea is a proven carp feeding trigger in Japanese experimental trials. Again, relatively few carp anglers realise that many of the relatively few top carp bait flavours are born of fermentation processes that would turn your stomach...

Most flavours in commercial are primarily use extremely soluble alcohol and glycerol bases. However many really great ‘original’ versions of flavours are far more than just this. Proven examples of recommended well proven flavours from more well known UK suppliers are:

* Richworth: ‘Tutti Fruiti.’

* Rod Hutchinson: ‘Scopex,’ ‘Mulberry Florentine,’ ‘Monster crab,’ and ‘Mega spice.’

* Solar tackle: ‘Squid and octopus koi rearer,’ ‘Ester blend 12,’ and ‘Black and Blue.’

* Nash baits: Various ‘palatants,’ e.g. ‘Peach’ and ‘Strawberry.’

* Mainline: ‘Pineapple,’ ‘Milky Toffee’ and ‘Strawberry.’

* Nutrabaits: ‘Cranberry,’ ‘Plum,’ ‘Peach,’ and ‘banana.’

* SBS baits: ‘Bun spice,’ ‘Cornish ice cream,’ Strawberry Jam,’ and ‘Cream RM30.’

* Archie Braddock Baits: ‘Hot magic,’ ‘Sweet surprise’ and ‘Red surprise.’

(Apologies to companies missed.) 

Please note that many flavours have the same name but could vary in concentration and components between companies big or smaller and lesser known. There’s everything to gain from using flavours from smaller companies too. (You can always combine a large companies well known flavour with a lesser known company’s flavour to produce a very beneficial unique effect.)

The fact that their flavours may be different to those normally used is the kind of edge you need and some smaller bait companies have been known to offer very uniquely successful flavours indeed. It all comes down to testing for yourself and trust built on catch experience rather than trust in glossy adverts. Following the crowd is good only as far as you know what everyone else already knows!

The variations in flavour effectiveness is demonstrated in the contrasting results using different currently popular ‘pineapple’ flavours on various waters. The fact is that many flavours do catch better on one water than another and water ph and time of year are also variables in the successful equation. It does help you if you are the first to use a flavour on a water!

All boilie, pellet and dough baits have their own flavour from the base ingredients used. It’s a century’s known trick to sweeten carp baits to improve their carp pulling power, even from the days of Isaac Walton and honey paste. Anyone adventurous enough to taste your baits to test them will have experienced many tastes and flavour combinations that we never find in our normal food.

I find most baits that suggest a fizzy or prickly sensation that kind of ‘lock on’ to the taste buds when tasted are successful. The flavour levels in such baits may be very low or even absent however. Our senses are no genuine guide to a carp’s; it’s like comparing a blunt blade to the finest honed razor’s edge.

There are flavours even nasty enough to make us feel quite sick which will pull a feeding stimulated carp from some distance. When you consider what a carp frequently eats, we would probably never stomach the taste. Whoever ate a stomach full of live bloodworms, or fly larvae!?

Much of a carp’s diet is not necessarily fresh and alive and may have been breaking down for some time in the water and full of bacteria. Scientists have even found urea to be an effective carp feeding trigger, containing those essentials like nitrogen, various amino acids and other forms of amines, mineral salts and so on!

Being scavengers it seems obvious that carp take advantage of many food items which have been broken down by bacteria for some time. Having said that, fermented shrimp is popular in culinary dishes and carp love it too. Concentrated fermented crab juice, and many other fermented fish, shellfish and plant substances for example, make fantastic carp flavours.

Many anglers ‘swear by’ particular flavours and even fixated on them. Baits work to stimulate a feeding response in many different potential ways because each element of your bait may be detected by different parts of the carp’s body and senses. How many anglers consider the effects of their bait on the neurons in the lateral line from a distance, or on sensory cells in the fins at close range?

Like a shark, carp use different super senses to sense and track its way towards potential food and these change in importance as range changes. Scientists say at range a range of one mile, the acutely sensitive nose area of a shark can detect a drop of blood in the water. However, when up close, other super senses take over and in the case of sharks, electrical detection is highly tuned.

Carp are part of an ancient teleost group of fish and perhaps we still have not fully recognised or discovered exactly what’s going on when a carp is sensing food and its environment. Also it’s harder for us to appreciate because many flavour molecules behave differently in water to air, where our senses are involved. For example the way garlic differs in water to air.

Maybe a flavour is best seen as part of a full sensory attack, using the bait to intrude upon all the relevant senses that trigger feeding response in the carp brain. Just to sidetrack a little, I feel that carp do have a ‘sixth’ sense; perhaps they ‘track’ their environment in other subtle electrical ways. Sure they associate danger with all kinds of fishing equipment, bait ingredients and fishing activities.

Some aspects of a flavour may effect carp in very subtle but powerful ways. Adding betaine to flavours (in the commonly used salt form) enhances their chemical effects and stimulates various carp’s nerves far more usefully.

Then there’s the interesting question of fish hormones released in response to emotional states and other ways including fish body language and various activities which may be used to communicate information between fish. Hormone formulations specifically to designed to encourage feeding behaviour are available, and it could be there is much more than meets the eye, regarding female hormones, especially in attracting big ‘perhaps more dominant’ fish, although many big carp seem to be females.

Carp bait flavours have become an orthodox must have for many anglers, without much consideration for what the flavour is potentially doing to the carp in order to effect the right response. Flavours are part of our armoury for keeping ahead of fish danger response behaviour. If the question of why is there such a bewildering diversity of commercial carp bait flavours available, it is this.

Just looking at a handful of commercial bait companies, flavours can total a combined list well of over 100 varieties. The potential flavour permutations purely if you use flavours to differentiate your bait from others is staggering.

It is only human to use flavours for that bit of extra confidence! Carp fishing can be very unpredictable and challenging much of the time. So it is logical to design or enhance your baits to stimulate carp in as many attractive ways as possible, whether using alternative flavours or combinations or levels, to perhaps flavour in combinations with amino acids, salts, sweeteners, enzymes, oils or whatever else you wish.

Many anglers are into using traces of flavours, using them in very low levels in fact in such low amounts your cannot sense them present in a bait. I do not know if this is a new option to you to use a combination of flavours in tiny amounts for instance.

It does seem that many very successful ‘long-term’ boilie baits have low flavour levels, but this rflect the unialmost universal widespread use (or misuse) of solvent based flavours. Then again, many of the most successful acids ever used as carp attractors are definitely best in tiny ‘drop’ doses and carp certainly are well aware of these. It is obvious a carp senses make those of even a bloodhound pale into insignificance...

Even in pellet type bait soaks, where pellets are now so diverse in content, size, porosity, oil quality and content and so on, everything you can think of to enhance boilies with, can apply to these baits in some way. Flavours can be applied and used in many various creative ways to your fishing situation that can give you that different and unique winning edge.

In wildly different levels, betaine and N-butyric acid are very currently popular examples, but there are many more to be explored. As quick last note, did you ever notice the potential of Chinese 5 Spice or Thai 7 Spice in solution, or even that cough mixture or cold remedy?

I’m a bit of a fan of natural flavours, although there are some extremely good nature identical flavours available, some of which do not actually occur in nature and have great potential - the web makes it easy to source unique samples these days and avaoid those horrendous costs associated with certain proprietary carp bait flavours! So anyway, the world's your oyster - anyone out there using oyster source?

By Tim Richardson.

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