I, like most carp anglers, read a lot of carp mags, the weekly papers and the monthly mags plus every book and catalogue that I can get hold of. We are always looking for the last piece of the jigsaw that will let us see the whole picture. Somewhere in amongst all that information there must be the hidden secret, the few words that will make your season. Well don’t tell every one, but this is as close as you are likely to get.

The vast majority of us have to make do with the waters close to home. Fishing for doubles with the hope of a twenty or two. You will get to know the best swims and in time the hot spots within those swims. You will also get to know the most productive rigs and what baits the rest of the boys and girls are using and if you want instant results you can use the same baits, on the same rigs in the same swims. But then you will probably catch the same amount of carp as the others, if you have less free, time then you will probably catch a good deal less.

It will soon become clear that the carp are not always in the hot swims as they start to treat these areas with caution and will spend an increasing amount of time elsewhere. By this time catches are slowing down, some of the not so committed anglers will move on to another water, some will change there rigs others will blame the bait but if the carp liked the bait in June then, unless there is something wrong with it, they will still want it in September. As almost all bait manufacturers will have field-tested their baits for two or three seasons they should go on working for a considerable time.

A nice mid twenty from a swim that's never fished. 

The problem is that almost all the baits that the carp have been caught on will have behaved the same and the carp have found a way of avoiding the one with the hook. If you change your presentation from a bottom bait to a popup it will work for a while but they soon cotton on, plus every other angler will be able to see what you are doing so they will do the same and the carp cotton on even quicker. You can critically balance your hook bait but it still stands out, allowing the carp to avoid it.

So what’s the answer? How about making every bait behave differently. You can do this by using 10mm,14mm,16mm,18mm and 20mm baits plus a few chopped baits of each size and baiting up with a spod or P.V.A stringers. This will make it very hard for the carp to detect which bait has the hook in it plus there are very few carp anglers who are willing the go the trouble of rolling lots of different size boilies. If you think that your hook baits are still being identified then you can adjust your base mix as well as the size of your baits, let me explain. If you were to add 1oz of shrimp meal to 1lb of base mix you will end up with much lighter baits, that move about when the carp feed on them. You will need to experiment a little to get the correct buoyancy, if you add too much shrimp meal your baits will float away. You can also make baits heavier by adding limestone grit to the base mix again about 1oz per lb. should be about right . If you find that your baits are too soft you can add a small amount of blood meal to the mix, this will make them hard and rubbery so you will need to experiment until you get it right.There are several other ingredients that you can use but the three that I have mentioned are the three that I find most useful.

This fully scaled mirror went 10lb and was one of five in 3 hours.

You can also use these ingredients to get the best from swims that receive little attention from other anglers. If you can find a swim that carp pass through regularly then you could be able to get them to feed in that area by using the best bait for that particular swim. If you know that several carp move through a swim on their way to one of the hot swims then you can stop them from reaching their destination by giving them what they want, where they least expect it. On one of my local lakes there are three hot swims in a row then four swims that don’t get fished before you come to another three good swims. All the popular swims have several spots where you can be pretty confident of a pickup so why is it that the other swims never seem to produce fish. The answer lies in the make up of the lake bed. All the good swims have a reasonably hard bottom, there has not been any weed in these areas for several years, so when you bait up your baits are in full view of any passing fish (or swan) over the years the carp have grown accustomed to feeding on the boilies that they can see. If you were to bait up with standard boilies in one of the swims that does not get fished very often then they just sink in the silt, when the carp pass through they can smell food, but can't see any so they move on to the swims where they can see and smell the baits. I think its more than a coincidence that the feeding times in the popular swims are shorter than in the not so popular swims. I think that any baits on the hard bottom areas are soon eaten whilst in the silty swims the carp have to work harder for their food. If you baited one of the silty swims with a mixture of heavy, standard and semi buoyant baits then it is possible to take several carp out of one of these swims in a single feeding spell. I have often fished in these swims and done really well, catching carp all night, indeed that’s the only problem with this method, you don’t get a chance of any sleep because you are up all night playing fish. I remember one night last season when I baited a swim with buoyant 8mm,10mm,12mm,14mm,16mm baits and standard 12mm,14mm and 16mm plus 16mm,18mm and 20mm baits that were cut in half, in total I used about five pounds of bait and landed twelve doubles and pulled the hook out of a further three. Truly the catch of a life time.

So there it is, the final piece of the carp angling jigsaw (who am I trying to kid).

Leigh Holman

P.S. Don’t forget, this is supposed to be a secret....