Possibly the most overlooked secret to winning the fishing game comes from saving money on bait; but how, do you ask?! Many anglers miss-out on fantastic catches even though the baits they use have proven to be reliable and popular big fish catchers! But you can save a fortune in wasted bait and improve your catches drastically with these extremely valuable proven big fish bait suggestions!

Most often carp and catfish anglers use boilies, pellets and hemp, maize and sweetcorn and prepared commercial ground baits, as free baits to attract and hold fish in their swim. These are obviously consistent baits for fish like carp and catfish. But Often the hidden (or obvious) problem, is that you end up with many fish gorging upon your free ground baits and not getting hooked at all, or comparatively little compared to the feeding activity going on in your swim. This happens far more than anyone is really accurately aware of and is a more truly shocking thing when you calculate just how much of your bait is consistently going to waste...

After all, why bother putting free baits into a fishery when most of it ends up just feeding the fish and not translating into your catch results? One definition of insanity is to expecting different results from doing the same old things... Carp especially are extremely expert at keeping ahead of our angling activities, commonly-used baits, methods and in detecting your hook baits of course!

This very certainly applies to angler-pressured big catfish too, whose bait preferences can definitely alter in response to angling pressures and to previous captures on a bait. So the big trick is trying to keep ahead of the fish and not wasting your hard-earned money every week on bait that does not convert into fish; to achieve very satisfactory fish captures.

For most anglers just going fishing costs money because it is missed money-earning time, and this cost is quite apart from travelling costs, fishing permits, and wasted free bait!

So converting your bait money at the very least into better catches, is perhaps even more of an issue, especially in tough times. Of course every fishery is different and these days there are many waters that are over-stocked to the degree that it appears everyone catches fish successfully. But who is to know just how much better your individual catches can really be until you truly get innovative and prove it to yourself?

The skill and art of ground bait making and the importance of its correct application and timing etc, is a key component in so many top big fish captures for the majority of well-known big fish anglers. (I include boilies, pellets and things like certain flavoured pigeon seeds here on those hard to get into big fish syndicates for example.)

But most anglers do not fish such more elite types of big fish waters, and yet their fish can be equally pressured if not more so, by the growing numbers of anglers frequenting the banks. It is a very common phenomenon for the more wary fish to simply not feed upon fresh baits introduced by anglers upon first arriving at a fishery at all.

This in effect means that the first 3 or more days and nights fishing can be mostly a waste of time. The fish just hang back while the baits become leached of flavours etc and the fish become more confident on feeding on such baits because they have associated leached bait with safe feeding.

Many anglers on pressured waters introduce their free baits into a swim upon arrival and then after leaving fishless, perhaps after 48 hours, another angler comes along and again introduces fresh bait in the same swim; with the same result. Looking at the bigger picture, this kind of thing must go on constantly all over the world on pressured carp waters.

Our angling behaviours can become simply habitual processes, where the thought of what has worked in the past must still work today dominates. But I tend to find each day is a different day and fish behaviour is dynamic constantly changing and adapting and what worked so well yesterday is the very thing the fish are so keenly wary of today!

Catfish are well-known binge-feeders and eventually get hooked while in an eat-everything kind of mood, but many carp may remain uncaught for very long time periods which is a mystery to many anglers. Many fish are seen but rarely (if ever) caught and it can take very simple but innovative edges to tempt such fish.

I am lucky enough to have caught a 38 pound carp that had not been caught in over 7 years, from one UK water. In this instance it took the regular baiting of a swim on a little and often baiting schedule to achieve this catch and it was literally 7 days and nights of hard work just keeping a tiny amount of bait going into the swim every 15 to 30 minutes before a single run occurred. (This kind of phenomenon is a regular thing at many very highly pressured fish waters.)

Apart from this type of unusual bait application that helped fool the fish, the exact baits with their particular combinations of highly nutritional fish feeding triggers, and attractant substances, had not been exploited on the water before (and were used especially because of this fact!)

In this case, (going back some years now) the ground bait consisted of course ground betaine enriched pellets, soaked in tiger nut extracts with added course crushed tiger nuts and shellfish extracts. This combination had simply never been done on this water, and especially not introduced using such a gradual swim building technique.

The success of this method taught me very big and valuable lessons about baits, bait applications and seeing the bigger picture of how competing baits impact upon fish behaviours over time. In 3 months of fairly regular fishing this method produced around sixty twenty pound plus carp, including ten 30 pound fish, plus 3 catfish of around 60 plus pounds and other bonus 30 pound plus pound fish. This was while the average 24 to 48 hour stint angler blanked 80 percent of the time on this water on fresh baits...

With the application of a little thought, catches on many waters can become far better and consistent, and the advantages of doing your own unique thing can pay-off handsomely. This is without spending hundreds and thousands of pounds on popular baits that fish already behave cautiously towards (although they still wish to eat it!)

This example demonstrates the potential of using an usual baiting approach teamed with a new ground bait combination, that fish have not become resistant yet to feeding on very confidently. It might be noted that part of the success was definitely down to the small and irregular crushed bait particles sizes. Also the specially adapted and refined rigs and very small highly soluble irregular hook baits used were part of the successful formula.

It was hard work fishing with the such unusually soluble hook baits used; but it proved its worth big-time! Rigs were adapted and refined during the 3 months in response to fish wising-up to the rigs used, and not in response to baits necessarily.

So I guess you can see why I suggest you too can think your way to more fish with much less wasted money on baits. To leverage the true power of your baits does take a little extra effort on your part; but that effort is never wasted! But I hope this article makes you think a little more of further possibilities the next time you bait-up, as usual...

This fishing bait secrets ebooks author has many more fishing secrets insights and bait edges and just one could impact very significantly on your big fish catches!

By Tim Richardson.

Get far more powerful detailed information, with these unique leading bait making and fishing bait secrets bibles by Tim Richardson:

"BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And: "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And "BIG CARP FLAVOURS AND FEEDING TRIGGER AND CHEMORECEPTION AND OLFACTION SECRETS!" Why miss-out - visit right now!

http://www.baitbigfish.com