The art of effective ground baiting can make your results explode, period! In fact you could say that very often, those who catch the most big carp, catfish, bream, crappie, trout, tench and bass, do so because of how fish respond to their ground baiting! Winners of fishing matches and tourneys are usually the very best and most skilled at this art and skill. But what many forget is that often they also often have bags of bait knowledge in order to exploit it fully!

To get fish feeding in more natural ways often requires you applying a consistent regular supply of bait into your swim. This conditions the fish to keep returning for more! One of the best things you can do in fishing is get the smell of bait dispersed throughout your swim and concentrated where at the proximity of your hook bait.

I say ‘smell,' because often what is used for ground bait in terms of flavours will fast dissipate and ultimately fully dissolve in water so after a short period the fish cannot so effectively track its source by seeking the source of concentration! (Less viscous smell sources are more effective in moving water for instance!)

When I first began carp fishing over 35 years ago I used the most common form of ground bait, which was bread crumbs made from old loaves. For years I used this effectively. I might add finely chopped luncheon meats and spam each with different fat and meat content and various rates of oil release and solubility's in water. Then sweetcorn and liquidised sweetcorn were added.

Hemp with aniseed oil, or maggots, yeast extract, spices and herbs, condiments and sweeteners from the larder, were added over time to add to the effect. Each new bit of information gleaned from other anglers or new ingredient found in the kitchen or supermarket was put to good use! I did notice that fish would certainly linger for longer, feed more intensively and competitively and less cautiously the more ground bait I regularly introduced.

Most often, the amount of ground bait I could afford for a days fishing was the actual limiting factor in the number of fish I could catch in a day. In those days Where I lived in Essex had few big carp waters and anyway, it was great fun getting great keep nets of fish of many species and learning ‘the trade' as it were.

The is not much difference between fishing for smaller carp in the double figures and single figures and for fish over 70 pounds as certain waters I've fished. Although you can always use tiny dissolvable bags or nets of ground bait next to your hook or even just use over-flavoured ‘single hook baits,' the fact is that huge bags of fish have always been captured due to constant application of the most suitable ground bait for the venue, swim and fishing situation in question.

There have been times when baiting with trout pellets and pet food pastes were the only method used. Others when boilies where used solely. These days carp get to learn all about the free food we anglers provide and are very skilled at isolating hook baits and rigs. Sometimes it seems like once one big fish sorts out the ‘bad bait,' the rest seem to know by ‘telepathy,' avoiding hook baits without even testing them! But I'm sure some of this is to do with their body language, movements in a swim and excretion of pheromones and substances and behaviours we have yet to discover.

One big point to make here is that the chemical nature of your bait can be discerned by fish from the dissolved substances impacting upon all its' receptors as well as by more obvious senses like sight, sound, feel etc. This means that fish can avoid your bait and know if they regard it as having ‘dangerous previous associations' without ever touching the bait. This has great implications in terms of using new or alternative flavours substances and bait and ground bait ingredients. (Why keep flogging a ‘dead or nearly dead horse' when you can find a ‘race winner' with a little research!?)

When fishing for big catfish I do not fish live baits as that's for sadists. There are so many diverse species of catfish with different feeding habits and quite a number reach 40 or 50 pounds or far more. The use of ground baits in cat fishing cannot be underestimated! If your species of catfish spend their time in the top layers of water ambushing their prey, why not exploit ground baits to concentrate their prey in your swim? Soon you will have the pick of the biggest catfish in the lake!

You can even adapt your ground baits so they pull into your swim specific species like roach and rudd, tench, small carp and so on. An easy hint here is that many fish seem more able to detect certain bait flavours with a different pH and are even labelled as such like ‘Bream Attractor' or ‘Roach Attractor' etc. Hemp with aniseed oil has always been a favourite, although if you want carp, then fennel oil is even more effective and little used.

Flavouring and dying sweetcorn and tiger nuts for instance is only the start of what you can do with these legendary baits...

Catfish definitely are more attuned to decaying carcasses than carp and they seem more adapted to detect amines of various kinds, especially ‘decaying amino acids' given off. Putresine is another amine which may or may not be repellant or attractive.

Certainly catfish will eat food we as humans would be ill if we ate! Part of the attraction of baits that are braking down with bacterial enzymic action is that both us and fish have such ‘healthy bacteria' in our guts to enable us to more fully digest foods like certain proteins that our digestive juices can only break down to a limited stages.

For this reason, anything that we use as part of our ground baits for fish that enables better digestion and utilisation of food and use of energy is generally a good thing and multiplies feeding responses hugely. The use of enzyme treated fish meals in pellets and of fermented products and bye-products like those of fermented shrimps, corn steep liquor, fermented soya products and so on are well known stimulators.

Certain oils will remain in the proximity of your hook baits longer than highly soluble flavours based on solvents like alcohols, glycerol, propylene glycol etc. There is often debate as to the real effect of flavours on fish senses. Because flavor substances and components are so diverse, with literally millions of possibilities to be used thing get complicated fast in regards their use in fishing baits.

There are relatively few so-called ‘true' fish feeding triggers which may be more specific to each particular fish species sensory cells. However, flavours work, whether impacting fish directly or by changing aspects of the water that fish detect acutely which draws their attention or stimulating internal feeding and digestive responses they work and in a myriad of effective ways. Very many flavours work far better in combination with others especially after being used as a single flavour in popular baits; so be brave and experiment it's so worthwhile!

The fact is that even ‘base mix' powders like caseins and soya meals and other flour have innate flavours and smells. Even rubber or plastic baits are certainly not as free of ‘signals' to various fish senses as many fist imagine, including that of a different pressure or ‘feel,' which and can give you ‘edges' in many different ways. In fact covering your hook in rubber to ‘soften it' can work exceptionally well. This is especially so when using a soft bait, which more wary fish can play with and get hooked on more easily than standard harder baits which are may be very familiar with!

‘Halibut pellet oil' tiger nut oil, krill oil, wheat germ oil, peanut oils, herring oil, tuna oil and so on are all proven. You can ‘hedge your bets' on catfish and carp waters and design your hook baits and ground baits and methods for either species or for targeting the very biggest of both species. But don't be surprised if you get a personal best of a different species along the way too!

This fishing bait secrets books author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges.' Just one could impact on your catches!

By Tim Richardson.

These are the best guides to improve your catches:

"BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!" AND "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" AND "BIG CARP FLAVOURS, FEEDING TRIGGER & CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS" SEE:

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