Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
PARTICLES – UNDERUSED, UNDERRATED YET DEADLY!
A good particle mix is impossible for carp to resist. Ian Russell reveals his top ingredients for putting more fish on the bank...
I’ M A massive fan of particles! Not only are they great at attracting fish into the swim in the first place they are excellent at getting the fish grubbing around and holding them in your swim for longer. This drastically increases the chances of them picking up your hookbait and why I use them to put together big hits of fish.
You can also very easily tailor your particle mix to the way you want it and it is this variety and individuality that will help you catch more.
The benefits of particles
A particle is essentially any nut, seed, pulse or bean. This offers anglers an almost endless combination of mixes. Many newcomers to the sport struggle to understand why something like a tiger nut, an object that has no real smell or discernible taste, catches so many carp.
Basically, it’s the crunch. Carp love anything crunchy and they also find things like particles and nuts difficult to resist. They’ll eat them all day given half a chance. Particles are one of those baits that keeps fish coming back.
The other beauty of particles, and especially any type of mixed particle, such as Dynamite Baits’ Mixed Particles or Pulse and Particles, is that they are cooked in the jar, so there is no need for preservatives. It also means that they are ready to use straight from the jar or tin.
Years ago, I used to spend days, soaking and cooking various mixes. These days all I have to do is open the back of the van and pull out a jar or two and I’m fishing within seconds. Plus, some venues ban home- made particles as they might not have been prepared correctly.
The Pulse and Particles range has two flavoured versions – Sweet and Milky, and Krill. Again, these flavourings are food- based, so as well as being 100 per cent water soluble, there are no ‘ nasties’ to be found anywhere. This gives me total confidence because everything is completely natural.
They are also fantastic for clearing weedy areas. If you feed them over a few days or weeks carp and other species will rip up the bottom to find every last seed, clearing the weed for you.
My favourites...
The number one particle, for me and countless other anglers, is undoubtedly hemp. It draws and catches everything that swims – I’ve even caught pike over beds of hemp! It is one of those baits that seems to wield an almost magical pulling power over fish.
If I was to make up a spod mix of particles, hemp would always be the first ingredient added to the bucket.
The next one you’ll never see me without is sweetcorn. This has probably caught more fish than most other baits, with boilies and pellets maybe the only ones to topple its bait ‘ crown’. Put out 5kg of corn, on the right venue, and you can empty waters! If I was only allowed one particle for the rest of my life, corn would be it.
The other ones I love are Mixed Particles and Pulse and Particles. The first one does what it says on the tin – a blend of many small particles, from hemp to wheat. Pulse and Particles are more of a chunky mix, offering a
unique combination of loosefeed and hookbaits, all in one jar. This enables you to create loads of confusion in the swim as the carp don’t know what is ‘ safe’ to eat and what isn’t. I’m yet to find a venue where this approach won’t work.
With all of Dynamite’s particles containing no preservatives, what’s left, I take home and freeze, so it’s ready for the next trip.
Rig them up
I prefer to fish my hookbaits either hard on the deck or critically balanced. This is so when a carp sucks up the bait, the rig will enter the mouth faster, resulting in a more efficient hook- hold.
In really deep silt, I may slightly balance them to avoid the bait sinking too far into the silt, but I also swap my lead from the usual 4oz to 1oz. What I definitely won’t do is fish a pop- up.
Experience has taught me that on silty lakes, particles will sink in and that the fish will bury their heads to get to them. Fish could easily miss a pop- up or, worse still, be foul- hooked.
I keep rigs simple, with a big lead on a safety clip set- up with a 4in hooklink of 25lb Carp Spirit Combi Soft to a CS Razor Point Medium Curve hook. I use a very short hooklink over particles as I’m fishing over a tight bed of loosefeed, so the fish aren’t moving far.
Hookbait options
Where do it start! The choice is incredibly varied and only harnessed by your imagination.
My first choice is a Monster Tiger Nut Wafter. These blend in well and have that all- important critical balance I’m looking for. When it comes to hooking tiger nuts, I hair rig them with a baiting needle then back it with an artificial tiger nut. It’s a lot less fuss to hair rig real and false nuts on the same hair and then trim the false nut so that it’s slightly heavier than a critically- balanced bait. With maize or corn I again use a false kernel. This is sandwiched between two real grains, so that it not only sinks well but the buoyancy of the false grain will make the bait sit up like a small tower on the bottom of the lake. This has two advantages. First, it’s very visible to any cruising/ feeding carp and secondly, the real grains provide smell to entice the carp to take the bait.
Maize doesn’t smell to us, although I’m sure that it has to a carp. That’s the reason that I always fish a real grain with a false grain. I will then fish two or three rods over a large bed of particles with 12- 15 Spombs to kick things off, feeding another five or six after every fish landed. With temperatures crashing, the fish are still up for a feed and in a few hours I’ve landed three carp and a big bream. That’s the power of particles.