The Forgotten HOOKBAIT ...
We all add it to our spod mix, but how many of us use corn on the hair? MATT RHODES does, and has been catching on it everywhere he goes...
“Long before the carp gain enough confidence to sample a boilie, the yellow stuff has gone”
IF YOU were able to take a sneaky peek at the rigs of the anglers on your local lake, I’d put good money on the fact that 99 per cent of them will be casting out a boilie in one form or another.
There is nothing wrong with a good boilie, and I catch most of my fish on them, but there are other baits that I am convinced can give you an edge at certain times, especially when the fish aren’t playing ball.
One of these stands out, in all senses of the word, from the rest – sweetcorn.
PROVEN PEDIGREE
Believe it or not, back in the 1970s sweetcorn was THE bait ‘edge’ to have in your armoury, and it was spoken about in hushed tones. It took countless lakes apart back then, both in terms of numbers and size of fish caught. Chris Yates’ legendary 51lb 8oz British record from Redmire was caught on freelined corn in 1980. Need I say more?
Fast forward nearly half a century and I bet the carp in your local lake see loads of the stuff. Corn has become a standard ingredient of loosefeed mixes. It’s cheap, highly visible and hugely attractive to carp, so a tin invariably gets poured into the spod bucket whenever it is time to give them some grub. In effect, therefore, carp anglers over the last decade have been prebaiting with corn on a MASSIVE scale – literally tonnes of the stuff must have gone into day-ticket venues up and down the country, yet here’s the thing. How often do the carp actually get caught on it?
My observations in the edge suggest that carp feed on corn with little or no fear. Often this is the first bait to get cleared up when the fish come in, and long before the carp gain enough confidence to sample a boilie the yellow stuff has gone. So, it begs the obvious question - why aren’t we using it on the hook?
Well, I will let you into a little secret. Over the last few years I have been using it, often only on one rod, and right through the year, and it has caught me a lot of good fish from just about every venue that I have taken it to.
So this season why not do something a little bit different and leave the boilie off one rod, at the very least?
SIMPLE RIGS
Using corn straight from the tin on a hair rig can be quite tricky, and in reality the bait is too soft to leave out for any length of time with confidence.
Sometimes even the force of the cast is enough to dislodge it, and if it does make it to the bottom intact, silver fish have a tendency to suck it up and leave you fishing with a bare hook, none the wiser. Maize is a better option if you want a tough, natural hookbait, but most of the time I opt for a piece of plastic corn instead or, sometimes, a
small yellow plastic barrel hookbait which looks just like a huge kernel of the yellow stuff.
Plastic corn has a couple of advantages. Of course, it is much tougher than the real thing and so you are never going to lose the hookbait on the cast, meaning that you can leave the rods out in confidence. Plastic baits are also much more resistant to small fish, so you won’t be kept up all night winding in small roach. Finally, most plastic corns are slightly buoyant, so you end up with a slow-sinking, but not critically-balanced, hookbait.
Carp feed confidently on corn, so complex rigs are not required. I use a 15cm supple braid, such as Nash Armorbraid, to a size 7 PinPoint Long Shank Twister hook, with a small piece of silicone tubing over the eye to form a kicker. The weight of the hook is more than enough to anchor the buoyant hookbait, which hovers above it, hiding the hook. The hair is tied fairly long by modern standards to give the hook and bait more separation, which improves hooking.
ON THE MENU
Believe it or not, I don’t actually use a lot of corn in my feed. In fact, much of the time I have done best when fishing a corn rig over a spread of boilies. My thinking is that the carp
will investigate the commotion as the boilies go in, but often won’t feed on them for some time. A single bit of corn sitting there is likely to be picked up without a second thought, though.
Because of the longish hair I favour, tangles can be a bit of a problem, but this is easily rectified by threading a small PVA stick down the hooklink. I fill this with dry maize meal, which carp like the taste of and which makes a 50p piece-sized pile of bait on the bottom, helping to draw attention to the hookbait. Well, at least until the carp come in and wash it away...
If you want the confidence of introducing a little bit of corn close to the hookbait then there is a simple way of making sweetcorn straight from the tin PVA-compatible. All you need to do is first dry away any excess moisture with a piece of kitchen towel and then add a tablespoonful of salt to neutralise any remaining moisture.
Finally, add a pinch of maize meal to remove any remaining liquid. Now you can make up a small PVA stick of corn knowing that there will be plenty of time to cast it out before it melts.
NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK
I know some anglers who only fish corn over a heap of spodded bait. To me, this is like fishing with a needle in a haystack. The more corn you introduce, the less chance there is of a carp quickly picking up the hookbait. It can be frustrating to have lots of shows and liners without a proper bite, so my advice would be to keep the amount of corn in your feed to a bare minimum.
By all means, if the carp in your venue respond to the sound of a spod going in, give them some bait.
I will use a pretty standard mix of hemp, small pellets and crushed boilies with just a pinch of corn in the mix. To my way of thinking, this gives the best chance of you getting a quick bite.
BOOSTED HOOKBAITS
Having caught a lot of carp on single pieces of plastic corn in the middle of the night I am convinced that it isn’t essential to flavour artificial baits to get a response. I do, though, slip a few bits of fake corn into my bottles of food dips. Sweetcorn extract is a favourite of mine, but Betalin also works very well, having a sweet candy-floss type flavour, as does Scopex Squid bait soak. Use a sharp boilie needle to make a few pin-pricks in the skin of the plastic bait to help the flavour become absorbed.
Catching carp is so often about doing something a little different from the norm, but for a good reason. The logic of using corn on the hook and not just in your feed is something that makes so much sense when you think about it. All those anglers introducing thousands of tins of corn over the years have made it a safe food for the carp. Isn’t it about time you capitalised on everyone else’s hard work?