In colder conditions carp will feed obviously but because they are omnivorous fish that have evolved to survive on a substantial percentage of natural food that is not protein-based, their digestive tract and acid digestive enzymes do not to deal with protein foods as well as they might and lowered water temperatures really restrict the benefits of many protein baits.

In many ways it is better to feed crushed hemp or soluble hemp pellets on a continuous basis than to use high protein fish based pellets as free feed for instance, although of course pellets that have been specifically designed for carp that utilise extremely digestible fish meal and pre-digested fish proteins are a world apart from high oil halibut pellets and trout and salmon pellets for instance!

Feeding free bait and ground baits on a trickle system of little and often is better in summer or winter. In some situations this is not always so depending on the numbers of fish in a swim, ideal temperatures for maximal digestion and so on, but because of the way carp release their digestive enzymes along their digestive tract, regular baiting of free bait in limited amounts means better digestion.

You might wish to fish over larger beds of bait which is fine if you read the fishing situation right. If you have doubts then a highly digestible bait is best used on a little and often baits where possible. Fishing over beds of quickly dissolving baits such as the 2 hour dissolving pellets from CC Moore is a great idea. These pellets will break down fully even in very low water temperatures. This way the chances are your carp will not inadvertently satiate any feeding impulse before getting hooked on your hook baits! Using free baits on a little and often basis keeps them working, burning energy and coming back for more.

This keeps fish feeding regularly for longer so maximising your chances of bites on hook baits - as opposed to using one large single introduction of bait at the outset of fishing that can severely limit chances of hooking hungry fish!

I will consider using almost anything to get a response from fish in winter and have tested some really way-out ideas of my own. Seeds of new ideas have a habits of developing very quickly once you have the tools and techniques and add knowledge to form a bigger picture for use in the creative process. It is just like an artist discovering an added paint stroke or colour to his pallet. It is like a musician discovering notes between the official scales. It is like a chef discovering the fifth taste element.

When I was a kid I fished one particular small shallow 7 feet deep lake in the winter. Regular winter fishing at this shallow lake composed of disguising a 7 foot long rod and hiding it up a bankside bush and simply riding by bike with a fold-up stool and haversack with bait, foods and a flask of hot coffee (no brolly, thermal boots and no bivvy, all-season sleeping bag, bed chair or thermal one-piece suit or deluxe bivvy heater etc to speak of!)

These fishing trips would normally be a matter of hours during the day time - and basically as long as I could stand the cold. I referred to these trips as my commando missions because they were so often simply about surviving the cold with only a positive attitude to stave off hypothermia!

If you have ever had to cycle 8 to 10 miles or more there and back to a water to fish in the winter with your hands nearly frozen to your handle bars by the time you get home then you will get the picture! People forget that in the early seventies most families not only had one TV set but most had just one car. My dad was into rugby in the winter and cricket in the summer so my fishing was done on my own as he had no interest at all in fishing! If I did not go by bike basically I would barely ever have ever gone fishing!

The winters we had in the early seventies could be worse than most we have in the UK today. And I could easily go for weeks without getting even a bite. But one outstanding winter bait I came up with that I formed countless variations on different themes of over the decades, stemmed from simply soaking tiny cubes of luncheon meat in aniseed oil.

Instead of using a tiny hook with a maggot or worm or ordinary bread paste for instance, a bread paste with Marmite and liver pate was prepared with water and aniseed oil. It contained a high percentage of the cheapest luncheon meat or spam available. As I hated liver pate and many other pates it was one sneaky useful way to make it get used up faster from the kitchen so I would not have to eat it - but catch more fish! The cheap or free ingredients approach was all due to having to stretch very limited pocket money as far as possible, usually at the all-purpose store up the road before the days of budget bulk-deal supermarkets (as we know them today!)

But another discovery from those days was that baits that contained both successful oils and leached them very easily in cold water were far more successful than most other baits used against them.

Many of the soft packet and canned type dog foods and cat foods and biscuits are ideal for making a variety of winter baits. Cheap luncheon meats and spam etc normally contain less protein than more expensive products that are harder to digest. They also contain more bulking-out fats, oils and more water, and cheap spices and other taste enhancers etc.

A simple homemade bait based on cheap mashed luncheon meat, mashed bread, a mixture of water, Marmite, wheat flour and assorted pates and aniseed oil is very effective in winter and spring. Just because spring temperatures climb above 10 or 12 degrees for instance does not mean that carp are ready to start digesting high protein boilies that are not energy-efficient to digest so a more easily-digested more open-textured, more water-soluble bait is a real advantage over conventional firm readymade boilies!

Of course such a simple bait like the one mentioned may not seem like a big deal against many of the most advanced readymade carp baits available today that I describe in my ebooks. There are so many things you could do to seriously boost a bait like this, however it has very many benefits and advantages; not least being different, non-conventional and having worked for decades in the cold.

One variation of it was to use a light size 10 hook on a 3 inch length of 8 pound Sylcast line on a running 1 ounce lead. A tiny cube of quality luncheon meat pre-soaked overnight in aniseed oil was placed actually on the hook point with just the tip protruding. A paste of the above was added but contained a percentage of extra wheat flour and water do it was quite soft. This was molded around the bait and hook leaving the hook point protruding, and then cast out.

Fishing small fish waters from my very early days in carp fishing certainly taught me to watch the line pulls, rod tip, and bobbin for any tell-tail signs of action. A long apprenticeship in crucian carp and small carp fishing was extremely valuable! It used to amaze me how fish would inspect a bait, give a line pull or two, and then leave the bait alone without getting hooked, when I was using a big piece of meat or paste on the hook.

This was how I came to refine my use of molded paste, and using a short drop on the bobbin on the line, and always pointing the rod directly at the hook baits wherever possible. I should add that this line pulling stuff goes on literally all the time with carp today - especially in winter and the cold of spring, despite hair rigs, balanced and pop-up baits, and other fishing tactics and methods of many kinds! (Revealed in my unique big carp and catfish homemade bait and readymade bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information - see my unique website Baitbigfish and my biography for details right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

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