GIVE YOUR BAITS THE ‘HEAT TREATMENT’
BEN HAMILTON has always been a highly successful short-session angler. This month he reveals a great ‘confidence trick’ for fooling pressured carp into thinking your baits are safe to eat
ALL my fishing starts with preparing my bait before I actually even set foot on the bank.
This was something I started doing around 12 or 13 years ago, when a lot of my fishing was quick overnighters in between work. The ide, after getting my baits out of the freezer, was to thaw them out, and I used a little trick I called ‘the heat treatment’.
This involves taking a kettle of boiling water and covering the baits with it. After a minute, I tip the water away and repeat the process. What this does is give the baits both the look and texture of being ‘washed out’.
I did this primarily because a lot of the guys on the lake that I was fishing had more bank time than I did, and would often catch on the second or third night of their stay. By giving my baits the heat treatment, I figured that they took on the same look and texture as theirs, and were not only easy to digest (after all, carp love an ‘easy’ meal), but were also viewed by the carp with less suspicion than fresh baits straight out of the freezer would have been.
Replacing what’s lost
The downside of the heat treatment is that it can sap a lot of the attraction out of the bait, so in order to replace what’s lost, I always add a few ‘extras’ prior to introducing it to my spots.
I’ve always been a fan of powders, in particular Green Lipped Mussel (GLM) and Liver. The former gives the bait a
wonderful fishy aroma, and the latter a real meaty kick. While the baits are still warm, I dose them with a good helping of both before mixing so that the powders cling to the damp outer surface and absorb into the soft bait.
I then add Pure Tuna Liquid, as this will enhance the bait even more and is a natural carp attractor. Residue from these powders and liquids will also hug the lakebed once the bait has been eaten, seeping into the silt and under stones, and the fish will continue to come back looking for food as they can detect even the smallest particles of attraction.
The heat treatment works really well in autumn and early winter, as you are essentially creating easily digestible and highly attractive bait. Once the mercury really plummets, you can switch from fishmeal to birdfood-based boilies if you
“BOILIES AND PARTICLES BOTH TAKE ON FLAVOURS BETTER WHEN WARM”
like, making them even more digestible, and use sweet liquids and powders to get the same leaching effect with the attraction.
Particle power
The heat treatment process can also be used for preparing particles, which are far more attractive when warm than they are when cold. As with the boilies, particles also take on flavours much better when warm, and when they cool down, any liquids will absorb into them, particularly particles like maple peas and pigeon conditioner.
A particularly effective additive to warm hemp is Krill Clusters. These soft little pellets soon soften up and release their incredibly rich Krill oil, which turns the hemp juice red and cloudy, sending off huge food signals from the spot.
When I know that I’m going fishing, I take a block of pre-cooked particles out of the freezer and put them into my Burco boilier, reheat them, then add my attractors. If you haven’t got the time for all of this, then even dropping a few handfuls of boilies into the warm water you’ve just boiled hemp in can be a real edge, especially in autumn and winter!