Masters of all things rough,

What are some of your favorite concoctions for catching carp? I am familiar with the traditional corn or bread/bagel, but I know you fellas get way more hardcore than that. I'm not sure if the carp I'm targeting are grass carp or common, so I was wondering if you can catch both on a similar bait. I've seen them eating bread crumbs that have sunk when people try to feed ducks. Maybe that's a clue. I'm no expert, that's why I'm asking you fellas

Thanks a lot fellas!

maize (soaked & boiled field corn), boilies/pop-ups (european carp bait) on hair rigs, and for those who fish american style probably canned corn and doughbait(here is your bread) straight on the hook. We mainly target the common carp, but we occasionally hook into the grasser, they don't exactly feed on the same foods as common carp. I've known of free lining/floating piece of bagel on top of the water for grassers.

It just depends on what lake you are fishing.

best all around instant bait, canned sweet corn...catchs fish when nothing else will

Medicine Man ,

I am still relatively new to this type of fishing myself , but what I have found to be very enjoyable is making my own concoctions using various ingredients to make my own special dough bait to fish with .

My first dough bait is a widely used one that will work on carp and buffalo in most lakes I have used it . It was given to me by ByGeorge , Ratmo's brother , we have used it at lake Weatherford and done well with it . I have also used it at Grapevine and caught large buffalo with it. It is a very durable and very easy and inexpensive bait to make .

1. Take approximately 1/2 to a full loaf of white bread and remove the crust .

2. Take the bread without the crust and get the bread moist under the faucet , then wring out the excess water from the bread .

3. Put the moist bread in a bowl and add cotton seed that you can purchase at most feed stores . Add enough cotton seed to give the wet bread some firmness , use enough that as you work it in to the bread it becomes very firm . You should have a ball of bread that is dark brown in color and about the size of a magic eight ball if you use a whole loaf .

4. You can fish with this as soon as you make it , place the dough bait on a small hook . Try to use a small circle hook for best results . If made firm enough you should be able to avoid having to use a treble hook .

That is one of the most commonly used dough baits . After using that you can try different things to add flaovos to it by using strawberry or vanilla extract to the mix for added appeal .

Here you go,

Here is some fantastic info on baits and Carp fishing.

This is a quality web-site.

http://members.chello.nl/tmarapengopie/carpbaits.htm

Maize and boilies are great they are hard and fished on the hair and the small nuisance fish leave them alone for the mos part. If nothing else is workin I switch to sweetcorn. It will always be my confidence bait.

Thanks a lot, fellas. I tried crushed Total/Wheaties in Big Red and pond water. Had the fish feeding on the dough balls, but they never took one with a hook in it. I mean, they were in 3 feet of ultra clear water, and I could see 3-6 of them at a time sucking up the balls. But, as I mentioned, never with a hook. I'm thinking of trying sweetcorn. I also think maybe I over-chummed. When I left, there were still dough balls on the bottom, so maybe there were just too many, and the lack of hook-ups was a sampling error. We'll see. I'm going to try corn and plain old white bread soon. Bread might be the ticket. The reason I can always find these carp is that they cruise the banks at the end of the day where people most often feed the ducks and eat the sunken leftovers. So, maybe just stick to bread and not get too fancy. Hopefully there'll be pictures to post soon.

Medicine Man: If you can, try putting out a few lines at a time, each with a different bait. If's a pond where they are used to eating bread, then bread will definitely be one of your best bets. Sometimes it takes carp a while to acclimate to a new food that's been introduced into their water when they will take something they're used to feeding on right away. If you can use three poles, try one with dough bait, one with bread, and one with corn, all three fished in a chummed area.

Also, if the water is really clear, it's possible they see your line or hook or weight or something else that clues them in to fact the doughballs with hooks are dangerous, while the ones they eat are safe. I've seen them do that in Euro carp fishing videos where they used an underwater camera. The carp come in, eat all the chummed boilies, hover over the hook-bait boilie, stare at it, then swim off. Pretty amazing, very smart fish.

Nightcrawlers also make an excellent carp bait, as they're completely natural, and they will often take those when they don't want to take anything else. Or, when you first draw them into the area, sometimes they'll take a nightcrawler before they get used to the other baits, say sweet corn, and then they start taking that as well.

Good luck!

Obviously over here in the UK boilies are the most commonly used bait with their high nutritional content.

Other baits i like to use are corn, maize, trout pellets, chum mixers (dog biscuits), sausage meat the list is endless.

But by far (for me) are Tiger nuts.

***********WARNING***********
These MUST be prepared correctly.
Failing to prepare these correctly can cause fatal consiquences to fish as the can swell up in the fishes stomach causing possible death.

Here's a piece writen by a good friend of mine detailing all about them............

The Tigernut "My Top Bait" - By Dirk Wise

Tigernuts are a superb bait for carp, but do you know how to get the best of them?

Tigernut (cyperus sculentus lativum) or 'Chufa' as it is known in Spanish, is not actually a nut, but a small tuber. It was first discovered 4000 years ago and comes in several varieties,the most common being 'llargueta' (long) and 'gordeta' (round).

Tigernuts are mainly grown for Human consumption, the nuts are prepared and eaten cold as a kind of sweet, the mik is treated and bottled, the flour is used to make cakes and biscuits and the oil is used for cooking. For further info please check the following link http://www.tigernuts.com



CULTIVATION

Tigernut cultivation requires sandy soil and a mild climate. As such, the geography of Valencia, situated on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, makes it the ideal location for producing the highest quality tigernuts.Tigernuts are planted during April and May and must be irrigated every week until they are harvested in November and December.Immediately after harvest, the tigernuts are washed with water in order to remove any sand and small stones. Once the tigernuts have been cleaned, they are dried out in order to preserve them. This is a natural process that requires 3 months. Temperature and humidity levels are carefully monitored during this period. The tigernuts are turned over every day to ensure uniform drying.Best times to buy are March - April.

Tigernuts can be stored without losing any of there unique properties for up to 2 years after purchase. It is important, however, that they are ventilated regularly and that the nuts that you buy have been fumigated to protect them from any kind of damage that may be caused by bugs or insects. I have noticed in the past that some of the nuts that I've purchased have had small clusters of white eggs on some of the nuts, these are the eggs of a small moth, that turn into maggots that will not only eat your tigernuts but any other bait you have, be it boilies or base mix. You can still use these nuts over a time but I would strongly advise you to use them as quickly as possible and store them in a air tight container outside of your house, in your garage or garden shed.

PREPERATION

Soak for 24 hours, boil for 30 minutes then place nuts and cooking water in a air tight bucket in a warm place for 48 hours. After they have SLIMED they can be kept slimey for quite some time although a full air tight container is required. Freezing is also a good alternative although I don't have any room in my bait freezer most of the time and prefer fresh to frozen.

ADDATIVES

Some Anglers add sugar,maple syrup or even cola to them after cooking to sweeten and flavour the juices, although I prefer them natural.


RIGS, BAITS AND SETUPS.

Before I go on I'd like to make clear that I am not sponsored by any company or individual and that all the products I mention I pay for the same as everyone else and these are just products I have tried and found to be up to the task at hand.

I tend to use a lot of critically ballanced or floating tigernut baits.

Most rigs can be used for fishing tigernuts whether tied with braid, mono or one one the thousand " Snakebite " types of coated braids. I tend to use a dental floss hair, my reason for this is that I find that the seperation of bait and hook to be paramont in the hooking of the carp and if this cannot happen due to the hair not being flexible enough the battle has been lost before it began. Mostly a half thickness dental floss hair whipped onto the hook first, then the " no knot " knot whipped over the top and a small piece of stiff plastic tubing or shrink thubing over the top as a line aliner.If I use the excess braid from the " no knot " then I rub this between my fingernails until its a bit worn and more flexible. I also tend to use a stringer made of five or six " PVA nuggets " to keep the hookbait above the lead for a few extra seconds after the lead has hit the lake bed, the pva then disolves and the hookbait slowly sinks the last ten or fifteen centimetres landing softly on the lake bed, with a combi rig the stiff section will also push the hookbait out away from the lead allowing near perfect presentation. As the nuggets are not fully disolved they float to the suface to mark the spot for baiting up over the top.

1. Standard single bait longways on the hair.

I find that a long tigernut mounted on the hair with a gap of up to two centimentres between hook and bait works best here. I also don't use a normal stopper I make a stopper out of thin garden wire that is bent in the shape of a " W " with the loop of the hair in the middle of both bends and the points pushed into the tigernut to keep it in place.




2. Single pop up tigernut boilie.

I used to make my own pop ups until the recent marketing of "Dynamite Baits " " Monster Tigernut pop ups" in 15mm and 20mm, these I have found to be very good the 15mm's will hold up a heavy size 4 or 2 hook such as a " Fox XS " and the 20mm will hold up a size 1, also needing extra wieght added to critically ballance them. I also fish pop ups straight off the lead with hooklenths anything from 50 - 100 cms in length.



3. Stacked Tigers and cork or pop up boilie critically balanced.

When using long tigernuts use a piece of cork thats been soaked in tigernut oil to ballance everything out, just snipp bits off the cork or tigernuts till it all just sinks and sits on the bottom of the lake. With round tigernuts use a pop up on top and add a piece of lead solder to the inside of the boilie to ballance everything as you don't want to dammage the boilie to much, as this will cause it to take on a lot of water and sink causing the presentation to suffer. If you use two round nuts try a 20mm pop up, if you use one nut then a 15mm will normally be enough.To keep everything together push a small piece of cocktailstick in the " hair hole " from the tigernut hearest the hook.




My main setups these days are these two.

1. Mainline Braid with spiced leadcore leader as long as I can get away with when casting,a leadclip of some kind, with again as small a lead as I can get away with while casting,and a Armaled speed swivel and cut down tail rubber.

2. Krysonite mainline nomally 15lb, Sufix memory free clear leader in 20 or 30lb, again to a leadclip and quick change " speed swivel ".

Sometimes I'll use an Inline lead with the insert replaced by an Armaled shokka plug, instead of the leadclip setup but the rest stays the same.

The hooks I use are nomally Fox XS in sizes 4, 2 and 1 as well as the Kamasan B775's in size 4.

Anyway I hope I've given you an insight into one of the most under rated baits around that when prepared and applied correctly acounts for some very big fish.

I hope this helps some of you to put a few more biggies on the mat.

All the best and let your next fish be your biggest.

diezel

Here is a response I recently put together regarding a bait question.

(1) What kind of baits do you recommend?

The most instant carp bait known to man is canned sweetcorn. The combination of high visibility, sweet taste, and small size seem to make sweetcorn nearly irresistable to carp.

That said, I often use soaked and boiled field corn (deer corn) instead. While not as instantly attractive, it is a consistent producer and can be rigged in such a way as to not be pecked off the hook by hungry bluegill and the like.

Most American carp fishermen also have a fondness for various "secret" doughbaits. Truth be told, it seems that more than half of them are either some combination of Wheaties cereal and Big Red Soda or alternatively cornmeal concoctions. Dough baits are to carp fishers what hand tied flies are to fly fishers. There is a genuine satisfaction in catching fish on a bait you've concocted yourself.

A primer on carp baits would not be complete without at least a mention of "boilies". Boilies are hard spherical baits ranging from about the size of a sweat pea (micro boilies) upto about the size of a golf ball (donkey chokers). Were invented in the UK. Like us, the Brits used to fish many doughbaits, though they typically call the Paste Baits. However, in the UK there are many smaller species which are attracted to soft dough baits. These smaller nuisance species would often whittle away at the bait until the angler was left with a bare hook. Given that it may take several hours for a large carp to swim by, this did not inspire much confidence. One was frequently left wondering, "Do I have any bait? Should I reel in and check?"

Eventually, someone attempted to make tougher baits that could not be pecked away. They accomplished this by adding egg to the recipe and then by boiling the finished doughballs. The albumin caused a tough skin to form around the bait. In time, carp fishers learned that the tough baits were really no deterrent to carp since carp possess something akin to molars in the throat. These throat teeth (pharyngeal teeth) are commonly used to crush mussel shells, tough seeds, etc. The boiled doughbaits were easily crushed by the carp but fairly impervious to the attentions of other smaller species. Since those humble beginnings, Boilies have become big business in the UK. They come in a massive array of colors, flavors, textures, nutritional profiles, etc. I'd like the UK Boilie bait business to the soft plastics industry here in the USA. In fact, there are now at least two American boilie producers. The first is the BoilieShop USA located in New Jersey, the second, LoneStar Baits ( www.lonestarbaits.com) just opened its doors right here in Texas. Both of these companies produce very attractive baits which are also designed to be quite nutritious for the fish.

If the carp are feeding while ducks are being fed, I'd suggest using a hook with a little splitshot or no weight at all. Put some canned corn on your hook. Wod some bread up the shaft of your hook, leaving the barb area with only corn on it. THrow some dog food or bread in the water, cast out your rig, and hold on. If you miss the fish that way, try using a slip bobber, so you are more apt to see a bite. Good Luck

I haven't given tigers there chance fished them and caught a couple of times but I always go back to boilies, alot of what I have been reading suggest using a single tiger cast away from your baited area just out there on its lonesome I have yet to try it but it has banked many nice fish in the UK recently that was a really great write up thanks for sharing!!

If I were site fishing/stalking what I believed to be grass carp, I would try a piece of bread on the hook. I wouldn't squeeze/squish the bread as I would want it to float on the surface and not sink. For common carp, canned sweet corn is pretty much the best "instant" bait (that or bread).

BUMP!