Cold weather fishing conditions demands that your hook baits and ground baits are really well designed for this time; otherwise fishless sessions can be a frequent undesired occurrence! Bait really does make all the difference so read on to boost your catches...

Baits work even better in winter if you boost their water solubility and digestibility and even thermogenic impacts upon fish. Carp are cold blooded and the importance of this needs to be appreciated. Their bodies operate at water temperature...

This is an advantage in that they are not losing vital energy by having to maintain a constant body temperature like us humans. However this can limit their efficient physical movements and locations in a fishery, and vital physiological activities such as their ability to digest foods in lower temperature regimes.

Low temperatures directly and indirectly affect those vital catalysts or enzymes that in effect keep the carp body functioning; not just in regards to digestion. This also applies to the inside and outside cells too which are needed to keep the energy in a carp being distributed and sustain carp through cold periods when feeding and digestion is more limited.

What we can do with our baits is exploit how carp bodies function and actually assist them by giving them easily digested foods, stimulating substances to kick-start physical and physiological activities such as swimming motion and digestion. We can provide very powerful reasons for relatively inactive fish to feed on our baits and this can easily give creative anglers fish right through those cold periods when most anglers are going home having not had even a bite!

Winter and early to mid-spring especially can be very hard times. Part of this is more recently due to effects of global warming and use of high oil pellets and so on. Along with the use of mass baiting using high energy free feeds comes the problem that carp can actually store so much excess energy from anglers baits that they have less requirement to feed so much through the winter. Those boilies for instance with the more easily digestible ingredients and more bio-activity stimulating additives and liquid components etc obviously have many more comparative edges at this time for instance.

In fact on many fisheries, the use of huge quantities of regular free baiting can result in the levels of natural food stocks to rise. This means highly digestible and nutritional natural food items can become far more available at both ends of the carp growing season from spring summer to the end of autumn. Having said that of course, many fish are showing very significant growth through the winter months too; and in far more waters today by comparison to the growth rates of carp fished for in so many waters in decades past.

It cannot be under-stated just how good a result such as a string of good doubles and twenty pound carp really were in winter during the 1960's, 1970's and even up to the early 1980's. Gerry Savage is legendary for his pioneering winter carp catches from Kent waters at a time when most anglers considered successful and consistent winter carp fishing to be far too difficult to even contemplate!

The fact is that winter can be the best time to fish for carp because so many anglers that crowd the bank come Easter and warm sunny days, are mostly absent at this time. This can seriously benefit your results especially on the very tough pressured waters where you really can achieve the kind of results that over summer months can prove elusive as carp become more wary of hook baits and exploit natural food to a far greater degree in avoiding our rigs and hooks!

So what can you do to boost your catches? Regular introduction of bait into a water is one of the most serious edges for countless reasons. I've been able to establish new baits to fish even from November, January or March. Timing is important, and you get to become a bit fanatical about weather, temperatures, winds, air pressures, wild fowl activities and any fish movements and catches recorded. Many of the biggest fish in the country are caught in winter.

I recall talking to Jon Pack about the day he caught the famous old British record fish from Colnebrook down here in Kent; and I was fishing that day too on an Essex water and it was absolutely freezing! However his long-established food bait proved itself even in these conditions... (Fish meal baits do work in winter however plenty of other options with lower protein and oil content really have proven ideal for this time.)

I realise many anglers rely on so-called instant readymade baits in winter and it is a simple process to make your own although to make them to anywhere near the complex standards of a Tutti Fruitti boilie like that of Richworth or of a Rod Hutchinson winter bait can take a deeper knowledge of how baits work, how fish senses work and how to exploit these things using specific bait substances.

One factor many anglers over-look is the acidifying effects of autumn leaves decaying on the bottom. This can lower the pH of the lake water. At such a time, increasing the levels of your bait flavours and betaine (or betaine hydrochloride) can really pay off. In fact raising the levels of very soluble liquids in baits of all kinds is highly beneficial although of course hemp oil is a very proven winter catcher for instance, along with very many essential oils (and their highly bioactive components.)

The leading UK (and European) bait company Ccmoore, is a source of very many well-known and unique winter and all year round bait improving substances. One I recommend is the new Feedstim XP (and liquid Super Slop,) but there are many many others most of which are hidden gems as it were! The steeped black tigers, hot hemp and tigers and particles in Talin plus various of the ground bait and method mixes, base mix ingredients, liquid flavours and additives etc, are absolutely ideal true confidence-boosting winter baits.

If you are looking for a couple more personal tips to boost your baits in unique ways, I seriously recommend the hydrolysed salmon protein, the premium grade liquid lecithin and high purity betaine offered by Phil who runs Carp fishing pellets, (just Google-search for Carpfishingpellets.) I've found these to produce excellent results in cold temperatures. (Making an outstanding and unique bait dip for example with these is simple!)

In addition, the unique grade of green lipped mussel extract I recommend from Newfields baits has been very productive for me in winter recently; even in cold January conditions. (Homemade creations really can pay-off big-time especially in winter and adding the highest quality green lipped mussel extract to your PVA bag mixes bait dips and ground baits etc reaps big rewards.)

Something that I am a great fan of is putting additives, bait ingredients, flavours, enhancers, extracts and various liquids etc together in new and unique ways and this does mean mixing products from different bait companies and from many other sources. Mixing ingredients in unusual combinations to maximise the impacts of feeding triggers and attractors on fish senses is a topic covered very much in my publications because it is a sure way to keep results coming in a very big way when you really apply it!

Many carp anglers spend winter reading and dreaming about summer days, when many of the biggest fish are actually being caught by sensibly clothed thinking anglers; who leverage their bait to maximum effect in winter...

By Tim Richardson.

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