Tactic of the Week Paul Garner’s bait tricks for an autumn harvest
Discover Paul Garner’s simple bait secrets and bag your biggest carp this week
TIPS & TACTICS
FOR carp anglers everywhere, excitement levels are building.
We are entering one of the most productive times of the year. This autumn bonanza is triggered in part by the fish feeding up in readiness for the cold months ahead, but also because water temperatures, dissolved oxygen levels and natural food densities come together to produce ideal conditions for feeding.
Carp can be very catchable now, and there is no need to overcomplicate matters. My bait mix is designed to attract and hold carp in the swim with the minimum of fuss, and increase the chances of them finding the hookbait. It works all year round, but is my go-to tactic right now.
The idea is to gradually increase the confidence of the carp and wean them on to boilies.
CARPET FEED
We anglers often have short memories, and baits, like all things, go in and out of fashion at an incredible rate. A good bait is always a good bait, though, so I tend to stick to the triedand-tested rather than what is fashionable. One bait I tend to shy away from is sweetcorn –not because it isn’t a brilliant carp bait, but simply because every other angler is likely to be using it.
Amazingly, I see virtually no-one using the best carp attractor of all time any more. Hempseed is incredibly reliable, easy to prepare and will kick-start a swim like no other bait. You don’t need to use lots of it, either, in fact it is best
used in moderation. A pint of hemp per spot is plenty.
Once, I would have used a lot more than this and kept it going in right through my session, but now I only use it to get the carp interested and then stop introducing it, simply because it can make the fish more difficult to catch on boilies.
That initial helping of hemp is mixed with twice the volume of flaked boilies. These crumbled-up baits release their attraction superfast and will keep carp grubbing around for a long time.
Boilie flake (or crumbled boilies) is incredibly effective, and makes the ideal stepping-stone between the tiny hempseed and big boilies.
Whether I am fishing for just a few hours or several days, as soon as I think the carp are in front of me I will switch to feeding just boilies as I want the fish to concentrate on eating these and not get picky.
This might sound like a real palaver, but is much simpler than it sounds. My initial carp mix is prepared on the bank and takes only a couple of minutes to make, after which it’s boilies straight from the bag all the way.