Many anglers fish without ever knowing how their baits actually induce fish to behave the way they do; in taking bait and hook into their mouths. But if you knew better how to achieve this effect in practice, and how to manipulate it more appropriately at times, do you think this would increase your chances of bites and fish landed? If so, then read on!

Bait always involves confidence and indeed many anglers constantly doubt their bait because they do not understand how they truly work, except having very limited and even incorrect ideas or impressions about proteins or flavours; as a result, many anglers are negative about certain baits, without even ever having used them personally! Confidence catches fish for many reasons because it makes you fish better and be sharper and more tuned-in and expectant of success, so you tend to do more things right at the right time, more often, but you can all the confidence in the world and still blank because of a lack of knowledge and understanding! Confidence is the thing that sells commercial readymade baits and anglers take second-hand opinions from so-called big-name anglers thinking they will emulate their success using the same bait, forgetting that many (not all) big-name anglers are the most skilled and talented anglers of their generation.

Now you might wonder what all this confidence stuff has to do with actually knowing something useful about vital carp senses beyond appreciating that they like a bit of protein or a maybe have a flavour preference now and again. In terms of flavours, not all are the same! If I suggested that chilli powder can help your bait be detected from greater range by senses involving various specialised receptor cells and specialised canal pits along the lateral line (and in the actual skin of the fish,) this might be new to many.

Science is tricky and seemingly irrelevant for many anglers until they realise the enormous significance that chemicals change in solution with water and many substances are simply not the same in water as air, and fish are experiencing different chemicals all over their bodies and not just on the tongue like humans. Imagine garlic on the tongue; it is mixed with air and saliva, but in mixed just water, garlic produces different compounds and the tastes and smells we experience as humans will be different ones that carp experience. This means that the flavours or pungent smells we might imagine impact on the fish may well not be present in the same form at all, and this might mean that something else is triggering a response from carp, even an internal one where something in garlic is acting to produce thermogenic (metabolism and digestion speeding-up effects for example,) and even have very potent antioxidant and antimicrobial impacts etc.

Carp are turned-on by far more than a vanilla or strawberry flavour combination and in fact often these will provide no response at all as they are not true feeding triggers as such, but some bait substances compensate for this by affecting carp in far more profound ways internally! Science is hard right; well I did an easy test on carp baits today by eating wheat-free biscuits and a wheat free doughnut; all done in interests of science and in the best possible taste! Sometimes there are substances used in foods and baits which are naturally there or added deliberately which induce you brain create the sensation of pleasure so you enjoy them more…

What a disappointment it was to eat the wheat-free foods and not want more! Although they still have all the same ingredients like the flavours, sweeteners and enhancers etc, something vital was missing that made me want to keep on eating and this is why I only had one doughnut; Homer Simpson would have been shocked to say the least! There was no key vital substance in the food to make my brain release a rush of feel-good hormones that occurs naturally in the wheat-based foods.

If you apply this to fishing, it is like using a bait with a flavour and sweetener, and fishing next to it a bait with the same ingredients exactly, but with that extra vital brain chemical releasing impact. Which food or bait will catch more fish and which might you go for preferentially?! As it is your brain the makes the decision for your body you may have no choice and you may have noticed that so many people over-eat wheat-based foods and store-up fat as a result despite this being far from a healthy thing to do; it’s natural drug-induced behaviour for sure, even though certain emotions are frequently still involved!

In fact many of the same ingredients are in so many foods that in bulk are definitely harmful to the body, but induce people to buy them. Any carp angler knows that tiger nuts and peanuts for instance also have substances that also lead to this type of behaviour. Whether you term this induced habit-forming or addictive behaviour, it is just as profoundly significant, applicable and powerful when it comes to getting a bait edge over your carp and over other competing baits… This fishing bait secrets ebooks author has many more fishing and bait edges - just one might well impact very significantly on your big fish catches!

By Tim Richardson.

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