Bygone Times Re-visited

[Stour Otter]

Editorial from COARSE FISHERMAN, Coarse Fishing Monthly - August 1981. Price: 60p

Old baits revitalized ... or insane ramblings?
by The Animal

OVER the past few years many articles have been published on the subject of high protein baits, or to give them their correct name, high nutritional value baits, it has been done to the exclusion of other lines of thought on the secretive subject of baits for carp.
HNV baits are not the ultimate bait, as many carp fishermen who have jumped on the bandwagon mindlessly, have found out. These baits can be, in the right hands, very effective, in the wrong ones, no better than a lump of bread or a few grains of sweetcorn.
A person who knows little (if anything) regarding HNV baits would do well to concentrate his efforts on more tried and tested ingredients and ideas.
For those people still with me (most will probably have died of shock after reading the last paragraph) I will explain.
Many household and pet food items will, if used with some degree of thought, produce a bait that will, (if it is well presented) produce a very acceptable carp bait.
For example, when a cat food special is mentioned, to many carp anglers it conjures up thoughts of a can of cat food mixed with flour (and oxos for more flavour) or another binding ingredient, which shows their lack of experimentation and foresight because suitably used, a can of cat food can produce a fantastic bait, a suitable recipe (and one I have used with great success) would be:-

(a) One can beef cat food (mashed)
(b) 2 sachets of beef delicat (reduced) to very small particles).
(c) 0.5oz Stress (A nutritional food for pregnant cats).
(d) 2oz PYM
(e) Liver flavour Go-Cat. (This come in small crunchy pellets and can be made to a powder by treatment in a food blender)

It is a very smelly bait and not one that should be mixed in a confined area with no ventilation -- but it works! To anyone who doubts this I suggest they mix it up and try it next to their normal bait -- don't be surprised if you get a take on it first.
Just for the record this bait is approximately 20-22% protein, and this one bait can be modified to produce many variations for example, altering the flavour of cat food, and replacing the Go-Cat with Herring Meat for a fish-flavoured bait, removing the PYM, altering the proportions of the ingredients or indeed, removing two or three ingredients and adding such things as equivite, sodium, cassinate etc., if it is desired.
By altering the bait's flavour, texture, or indeed colour the risk of it 'blowing out' is greatly reduced, and from one bait a whole season's successful carping can result.
Now, what about luncheon meat? You can't do much with that you might say!, but you'd be wrong, the most obvious treatment is to dye it, but why not deep fry it, and use it as a floater -- yes it does float! or better still, dye it or soak it in oxo stock or flavour it with a spice such as curry and then use it as floater.
Sweetcorn has been used fresh from the can by many anglers, but how many have soaked it in a flavouring (strawberry for instance) then dyed it red and used it!
In a lake where ducks tend to eat floating baits, why not make your own bread loaf (or other floater) and dye it green -- ducks are less inclined to take a weedy-looking floater, but the carp don't seem to mind.
Even potatoes, the bait that brings a smile to the faces of most carp anglers can be made more attractive -- by boiling in a flavouring and/or dyeing them to a selected colour.
Particle baits such as maples, black eyed beans, tic beans, rape seed, and gunga peas all catch a considerable amount of carp, and have been explained in detail by many good anglers.
There are probably hundreds of 'simple' baits that I have not covered, or even thought of, which would catch carp with regularity.
I am not trying to attack the use of HNV baits, in fact I have used them with good effect on most waters I fish (for those who wish to know these waters consist of club and day ticket waters in the Dartford and Medway area). I am simply saying that many other simpler baits will, and in fact do catch as many carp as HNV baits. Provided the same degree of care is taken in their preparation and presentation.

[Stour Otter]

Editorial from COARSE FISHERMAN, Britain's Biggest Selling Fishing Monthly - July 1981. Price: 60p

The effectiveness of meat
by Philip White

LAST season having found luncheon meat to be a productive bait on the Dorset Stour, I decided to try different brands to test their effectiveness. My first thoughts were for a meat that stayed on the hook well enough to withstand the pressure of long casting and yet soft enough to come off the hook easily when striking.

The first meat I tried was 'Royale Dane'. This meat stayed on the hook while casting and came off sufficiently well when striking, but somehow it did not have the attracting power I required, probably due to the fact that it is not a very greasy meat. Secondly, I decided to try the greasiest meat I have ever seen, 'Country Maid'. This is a very soft meat, so a small piece of grass pushed just through the bend of the hook then pulled just through the meat held it on nicely. I found that the barbel seemed to come more quickly to this bait. I'm sure the smell of the meaty oil drifting through the channels of weed was luring the barbel into the swim more readily to look for the meaty offering I had presented to them, than when the barbel were just looking around for bits and pieces and then coming to the meat by chance when they were within say a yard or two of it. I had been very successful with his meat but thought I should try more brands for effectiveness.

The next variety I tried was 'Spam Chopped Pork and Ham'. This I found very oily and also very salty. Results were far better with this brand straight away. The better quality fish seemed to fall to this meat more readily than any previously tried. I also found it particularly effective throughout the winter. It seemed that the combination of the oil and salt of this meat tempted the better quality fish where others failed.

'Royal Oak' was tried for a very short period. This was a very dry meat without much flavour and apparently without much luring power. My friend, Steve Howard, put me off this meat during a session on the Royalty. He had forgotten his lunch so during his apparent spell of starvation he dug a tin of Royal Oak out of his rucksack and promptly scoffed the lot. A couple of hours later he went a funny shade of green and said he felt ill. So I came to the conclusion that what's not good enough for my mate is not good enough for barbel.

The next tried was 'Plumrose Chopped Ham and Pork'. This was a highly effective meat but I didn't catch as many quality fish as on 'Spam'. A few more brands of meat were tried but I'm sure I have found the two most effective meats on the market, Plumrose for a bag of fish and Spam for the better quality fish.

My fishing partner, Howard Lamb, and myself experimented with lengths of tail throughout the season and although one day a short tail was effective say 2 in., and the next day a long one, 6 ft. I found my usual 8 in to 3 ft rarely failed me. The method of legering however did matter. It soon became apparent that a running lead was highly effective as opposed to a paternoster, but the amount of lead was crucial in this. If, say a lead that just held bottom was used, when a bite occurred no matter how savage the take, or how quickly the strike was made, it would be missed. When a heavier lead, say 3/4oz or 1oz was employed, the fish more times than not were connected with, resulting in more fish on the bank.

I'm sure this was because with the light lead when a fish took the bait the lead would fly up off the river bed thus scaring the quarry. With the heavier lead it seemed as though when the fish picked up the bait the lead stayed put just long enough to enable the strike into the fish before it knew much about it, or alternatively the weight of the lead caused the fish to hook itself.

The last question to be answered was size of the cube of meat. Normally I find a 3/4 in. cube is most effective. However, on one stretch of the Dorset Stour I fish, the barbel have become wary of large cubes of meat, so I tend to put a piece on just large enough to cover the hook and this seems to work very well. A similar situation exists on another stretch of the Stour, the fish are very wary of a large cube. This particular stretch has been hammered with particles and the fish seem to accept little else, so to remedy this I cut the meat into 1/4 in. cubes and fish two of these on a size 8 and fill an open ended feeder with a few cubes, also as an attractor. The results of which were very pleasing.

During the winter as bites become scarce, cubes of meat were used as large as 1 1/2 in. long and 1 in. wide which resulted in better bites. However meat cubes of this size seemed to occasionally come off the hook when casting, so I pondered on the idea of hook size around 1/0 and 2/0. Hooks of this size seemed a very crude idea to me, but on trying one evening with a huge piece of meat about the size of a matchbox and twice as thick, this resulted in a relatively small barbel of around 4lb. The object of a meat cube as large as this was to put off the small fish in the hope that a better fish would take the bait. I was successful with this idea one evening, however, when I landed a barbel of 9lb 6oz. I have given consideration to presenting an even larger cube of meat intended for an outsize fish, but that's for the future. I have all next season to experiment and try out a few more ideas.

Meat, like all baits has its highs and lows, certainly by experimenting I have improved not only my catches, but also the stamp of fish caught. Having said that hopefully this year I will be able to develop my techniques even further.