Many new fishermen are tempted by the huge size carp can reach but need to know more about baits for this especially hard fighting fish. Carp fishing beginners often lack the experience of fishing for other species to help them in their quest and often fishing for this fish is far from easy, so any little edges can make all the difference!

Your bait choice is of paramount importance and too much time and money spent on tackle alone with little thought about bait can produce less than the results you are hoping for! Carp fishing is incredibly exciting, but it helps to be catching a few fish regularly along the way. Catching fish is the fastest way to learn, rather than not catching fish! Like anything else in life, feedback or your good and bad catch results guide you on the path to more consistent catches and this can takes years of experience.

However, a few simple bits of advice can help multiply catch rates enough so can get all the positive feedback (catches) you need to learn fast!

Find a range of easy waters to fish. Many beginners make the mistake of trying to catch a big fish from a big fish specimen water, which can lead to many new anglers becoming disheartened or even catching the fish of a lifetime immediately and then feeling like they have nowhere left to go. Even if they only have smaller sized fish in them, the experience of mastering fishing for these fish will really boost your experience and confidence. You may be very surprised to discover that there are some very difficult to catch smaller fish!

Fish with a more experienced carp angler, maybe someone with a couple of year’s carp fishing under his belt. Finding someone keen to share their knowledge of their waters and baits, rigs etc with you is invaluable and this really will help you progress. Having 2 people’s input is especially useful because often the other person experiences different things to you in terms of how fish act in their swim and to different tactics. Fish location and ground baiting and new bait establishment is that much easier too.

Many beginners start by buying the cheapest hooks they can, or even buying hooks which look big and heavy so they can get a big bait on. Whatever hook is used must be needle sharp. Carp are incredibly talented and resourceful at getting rid of fishermen’s’ hooks. Very often this will be without any knowledge of a bite having ever taken place. Often a hook which is not sharp enough to penetrate deeply enough initially gives the fish the easy change to wriggle free. Using a hook sharpener before every cast is my number one tip for consistent success after great location skills and rig and bait use and application is understood.

Of course, using rigs that do not allow the fish to use your weight as a fulcrum or lever to get the hook out are a great edge on many waters today. Light ‘running leads’ with a back-stop on the line to bump your hook in are very effective and often give great confident bites compared to using semi-fixed heavy leads where sometimes only a couple of ‘beeps’ might register on your bite alarm.

Many carp anglers use a ‘semi-fixed rig’ of around 8 inches in length and this will catch you fish on most waters. This is usually attached to a swivel which fits inside a lead weight or sinker and the weight of the sinker helps hook the fish initially, sometimes making it ‘bolt’ or flee, resulting in a full-blooded take. The safety of fish is to be considered as there have been occasions where fish have been lost and the main line has broken, leaving a fish trailing the rig and lead, which is not good for the fish and can end up with a fish being fatally tethered. The only way to really have confidence in every

There are very limited choices of rigs that a beginner can use with confidence. The conventional hair rig with a ‘line-aligner’ bit of tubing is absolutely fine for most situations. This design when teamed with a combination ‘rigid’ plastic coated and inner supple braid hook length such as ‘Kryston Snakeskin’ or ‘Suffix Stealth Skin’ is very successful. Varying the use of different colour hooklengths, in braids, plastic coated braids, monofilaments, multistrands etc, gives a varied experience of these materials and where and how they are best used.

Getting to know which rig and rig material to use in different fishing situations can take much time and it helps to practice fishing marginal swims where you can actually observe how fish react to you bait and rigs. Different things occur in or over silt and water weeds of different descriptions and fishing over gravel bottoms can require specialist rigs too especially where carp can normally see your line on the bottom.

Most beginners start out carp fishing by buying readymade bait while they are in a fishing shop getting those hooks and other essentials. Bait for carp fishing can be extremely costly and many beginners are amazed by the amounts of bait often used by successful fishermen. Clever leveraging of bait is really ‘where it’s at’ for the average angler even for more experienced anglers.

As for bait, let’s keep it really simple. The fishing magazines are full of all kinds of advice. Much may well come across as contradictory or confusing. I’ve often been asked “What bait are you using?” The clue to success is not necessarily what bait, but how it is presented to the fish. In some swims there is literally only one small spot that carp will feed on and correct presentation of your bait is vital. The successful use of red-dyed sweetcorn (pre-flavoured) on a river where carp confidently eat free baits of yellow corn, but find it easy to detect and reject hook baits for example.

On some waters there is a ‘going bait.’ Basically there is a bait on one particular type being constantly introduced which the fish treat as natural food such is its abundance. Certain manufacturers’ boilies for example can dominate a water for long periods of time. But do not be fooled, you will catch fish on other baits with persistence. If the most popular bait is a boilie or pellet then why not ‘top’ it to get better results than the average guy also using these baits? The key is to make your bait a bit different to the ones that have hooked them previously, but are similar enough for the fish to recognise and readily eat. Soaking baits in a watered-down flavour solution is a simple quick way to do this.

Making your own paste or dough bait to wrap your hook in or put on the hook itself and to use as free baits and ground bait is a very great edge indeed. Where most beginners would use a readymade boilie or pellet, why not break them up and use them as the base for a paste. A food blender or food grinder in combination with bait meals or powders and binders like eggs has been used for decades with great success.

On many waters, ground baits using ground up pellets and boilies can be very much more effective than their ‘whole’ round or pellet shaped counter-parts. Bulking out your ground baits with bird or pet foods works a treat. Bread based ground baits are great and very few carp refuse bread. In fact try this tip: Use a boilie and a pellet on your hook or hair and add a big coating of bread flake covered with a layer of bread paste with yeast extract like ‘Vegemite’ or ‘Marmite’ or even cheese powder or garlic granules with a little salt.

Why not try soaking your hempseed and other particle baits in yeast powders or corn steep liquor for boosted attraction, or add chilli oil or halibut pellet oils for instance. Cat foods and dog foods with added liver powder and green lip mussel extract make excellent ground baits. These raise the amino acid and betaine levels in your bait which carp seriously love. Even ordinary flavour-soaked corn flakes or pre-soaked cooked cracked corn, (sweetened with brown sugar and lightly salted,) will work.

Regular effective ground baiting by various techniques and the learning of this art, involve some one of the greatest secrets in carp fishing.

The numerous options for differentiating your bait from every other angler are fantastic. Making your own versions of adapted or enhanced readymade baits can produce amazing results. That’s the joy of ‘topping’ a popular bait; let everyone else do the expensive baiting up work for you. Just keep on slightly adjusting your bait based on the most popular others are currently using and keep ahead of your fellow anglers and the carp at the same time... Good fishing!

By Tim Richardson.