As a plea to the average carp and catfish angler; it is possible to double and treble your catches (and more but you probably would not believe me,) by treating fish as swimming tongues! It seems to go right over most anglers heads - that fish can be manipulated (big-time,) by what is dissolved into the water that surrounds them from specifically adapted baits... Let this be the start of something big for you too!

To begin with, I’ll group carp and catfish together, because many anglers catch both or target both and seek the biggest ones possible. These fish share so many dietary essential requirements that baits meant for big carp or catfish will often catch specimens from each group. Carp and catfish are like swimming tongues because they are covered in receptors cells inside and out that maximise the ability to detect potential many food substances in concentrations as low as 1 part in a million or even 3 parts in a billion! This is why us humans tasting a bait substance is rather an exercise in personal taste and opinion as opposed to a scientific method of selection! 

Another point is that specially evolved cells called receptor cells are found in various concentrations on the external and interior of fish. These have many various special adaptations. For example, some detect various substances like amino acids, or mineral salts or vitamins for instance. Many different substance-specific cells and different functional-orientated cell are found in the surface skin for example and are distributed over the body, and in particular areas like the face, fins, nose, throat and interior of the mouth etc.

As a side note here; even oils are partly soluble and this is significant especially in the use of lecithins in lower temperatures, improving digestion, more effective bait substance distribution in the water etc. Apart from cells involved in chemical detection in the water olfaction and chemoreception, there are many others, such as in the lateral line special pit cells. These continue from the tale, along the flanks and down around the eye and along the bottom of the jaw ending very near the mouth.

These are so vital to Cyprindae fish for example, that the jaw of these fish is shaped to allow this distribution of nerves and sensory pit arrangements from millions of years ago in their evolution. Over all the various systems and their different functions combined act like a biological radar system and enable the fish to be as aware as possible of its surroundings.

For instance the water oxygen concentration or dissolved carbonic acid concentration in various times of year and seasons. A lowered carbonic acid concentration in water on the end of a strong oxygenating warming south-westerly wind in the UK for instance, can often lead to fish preferring the water conditions where the bank faces this wind.

Catfish tend to binge-feed and are extremely active in very high temperatures hunting in the middle and top water layers and ambushing prey from underneath for example.

But this feeding is sporadic in temperate, northern European temperatures and climate conditions. Outside of summer, feeding can become very much more limited whereas carp can often feed well all year round in much lower temperatures than catfish.

Carp can often be tempted to feed on your bait in at least one swim on a water somewhere in the water column, most of the time. But this is only provided you make the most suitable approach in the right area of a particular swim for example. Too many anglers do not expect much between conventional feeding times and this is really ignoring the fact we can make far more opportunities than falling asleep behind a static conventional 3 rod fishing set-up for example! (Quite a few forty pound plus carp have been caught on so-called zig-rigs; when such fish have proven extremely hard to catch, even on a critically-balanced bait on the lake bed...)

Carp and catfish have barbels; the highly sensitive projections around the mouth that in one role, help them find food. These have some of the highest densities of cells adapted for receiving chemical feedback from the water in solution.

Your bait substances imbibe water or dissolve in water to form solutions. These substances have a highest concentration nearest their source and this gets weaker as you travel away from it. Fish are able to detect these solutions and home in and follow the concentrations back to where they are highest and so find your free baits and hook baits for example.

So your bait solutions travel and disperse into the water column and eventually, at various rates dependant on many significantly important factors, they reach the vicinity of fish. This is where you bait in solution comes in contact with specially adapted receptor cells in the fish. A molecule of your bait (or key metaphorically) may fit into the cellular structure (or lock) as it were. It seems these cells can in some cases accept more than one type of key, or even adapt and this helps possibly in exploiting abundant new food supplies.

Certain molecules will be more in demand by the fish nutritionally. For instance, without essential amino acids the cells into fish will simply cease to function eventually, but signs of depletion will be expressed in deficiency diseases for example long before this. What this means though is that the instincts and programming of the fishes bodies and brains will make it seek certain substances in particular, and this is something you can really take advantage of.

Below:Bait knowledge really pays you back big-time! 2 forties in 2 hours... (June 2005.)

Special proteins sends appropriate messages to the brain where the fish release special chemicals which lead to the fish behaving appropriately to the particular combination of chemical message received plus input from all other senses combined in the brain.

All this happens pretty instantly. You can add sight, colours, shades, sounds, vibrations, micro-electrical fields input, smells and tastes and internal gustatory feedback etc all together in the brain, so a lot is going on which you can exploit!

One important aspect is that if you have too many eggs or too many burgers, you are very likely to not want more for a while. Part of what is happening is that you are fulfilling many of your amino acids needs for instance by gorging on these protein foods. For this reason, when you taste another burger, you may not taste it in the same way as you did the first one.

It seems that taste buds cells can become closed as it were or saturated and insensitive to any more stimulus of this kind as it is satiated. This is obviously only temporary and while they are able to be stimulated they can become even more sensitised by regular contact by something called cross adaptation of receptor cells; that make it easier to taste them more intensely.

In the same way, you can over-stimulate fish receptor cells by over-loading your baits with the feeding trigger betaine hydrochloride or with concentrated solvent based flavours for instance. You might get takes immediately upon first introduction, but then nothing else for a period of time because the cells have effectively been blasted and so are closed to being affected any more.

This can be applied to fishing to impact on fish behaviour far more powerfully in many diverse and related ways. In successful tests on koi carp for example, I used ascorbic acid in test baits to see how low I could get the pH before they stopped responding, and discover what the particular bait solution pH they responded most intensely. The same can be done with betaine hydrochloride (HCL,) and very many other substances.

It is also highly significant that any of our senses strengthen by repetition and regular use; for instance your eyesight will actually improve if you stop wearing glasses and do special exercise for your eyes. In a similar way, a newly blind or deaf person will adapt by strengthening the other senses sometimes to just incredible degrees! Sometimes a person may want a particular food at a point in time. Now take a second to consider why this is!

Also many people prefer certain foods to other, and may not even like some foods that are favourites of other people, and fish I’ve found are just the same and are individuals. For example, certain big fish can get again and again on a certain protein rich substance or even on a particular flavour with a very specific profile of components, that copies with the same name do not catch. You might like one chilli dish or not another, or a Cola, or chocolate bar etc.

When you find something that you like, you tend to have more of it; and you get a real taste for it. Your taste is very important and is changeable and adaptable to a degree depending on age, health, fitness, your unique body metabolism, genetic variation, usual diet eaten and so on.

Fish are just the same and it is often easier to catch all the big fish in a fishery on more than just one version of a bait in part to this effect. Bigger very mature fish do not have the same amino acid requirements as younger faster growing fish and tastes and preferences expressed in what baits some fish will eat more than others is important.

Top carp angler Kevin Nash was a dab hand at bait making, but in order to catch his famous Essex record, he had to design a number of different baits before his target fish finally began eating the bait that he was eventually caught on... Yes there are so many readymade baits around and you can keep on changing baits, or stick with one for years, but if your do not know how to really exploit the substances they are made of (and don’t even know what these are,) then you are leaving rather a lot to blind faith and second-hand recommendations that they will work for every single target fish in your water.

It is well worth finding out more and the difference in your catches as a result will really make you wish you had known years ago because the power it gives you over your fish and over so many competing anglers and their baits and baiting approaches is awesome!

Now here is my big point. Imagine the power of being able to manipulate fish by training their receptor cells, by repetition; by regular contact with your nutritionally stimulating bait. It really works and unique newly established baits in a water tend to catch the big fish very quickly... It works for me even if angler like Chris Ball insist readymade baits are fine for him and he took a number of evenings to make homemade bait once which put him off.

But he unfortunately obviously did things in the most slow and boringly conventional ways possible and missed the potential for literally thousands of big fishing edges that take very little time and effort that seriously boost catches compared to the average angler using readymade bait! Perfectly round baits are simply not necessary; as proven by the success of particle baits like hemp seed, beans, peanuts and tiger nuts, nuts, peas, seeds and pellets etc!

The fact is I can make innovative nutritionally alternative baits at the rate of 3 kilograms for a quid per kilogram in as little as 15 minutes; start to finish. (And hook many big fish while fishing against popular commercial baits that are12 times that cost!)

So do yourself a big favour and change your personal power over your fish once and for all and find out more about baits, flavours, feeding triggers, attractors, excitants, growth factors, bait ingredients, additives, fish olfaction and chemoreception. As they say; knowledge is power! This is no exaggeration and I constantly receive many amazing big fish catch reports regularly, from anglers adapting their readymade baits and making their own uniquely productive very economical homemade baits.

Knowing how to make your baits work to maximum effect consistently (as opposed to against you at times,) and instead of remaining ignorant, literally multiplies your big fish catches while saving you a fortune in bait costs - for the rest of your life. It truly pays you back to be in the know so find out more right now!

By Tim Richardson.

Seize this moment to improve your catches for life with:

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Readers recommend reading this ebook first because it offer the most powerful and detailed explanations of how to make your readymade and homemade baits work to maximum effect on vital fish senses (much detailed!)

- The other ebooks in the series give you even more tools to do this in a huge variety of ways in practice; to transform your big fish catches even more - and show you how to save a fortune in bait costs for life!

Do not make the mistake of prejudging this potent and extremely hard-earnt information - you don't know what you don't know until you know it! - you will be very pleasantly surprised with your results!

Tim Richardson is a big carp and catfish bait maker and proven big fish angler of over 30 years experience.

His unique homemade bait making, bait enhancing, fishing secrets guides are now proven cutting-edge tools for success; for anglers just like you in 46 countries.