Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
What a washout – Jake Lund
Soaking your boilies in water for a few days before a session will increase your chances of action. Dynamite Baits’ Jake Lund reveals all...
TO THE untrained eye, taking perfectly good boilies and soaking them in water for three or four days might seem like an act of sheer madness. But washed out baits are a brilliant edge when tackling a range of carp waters. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, on tricky waters where the fish have ‘seen it all’, washed out offerings will resemble older baits that have been on the lakebed for longer and are therefore ‘safer’ to eat. Secondly, especially with nut-based boilies, by washing them out, you start the fermentation process, which in turn makes the baits even more attractive! The final advantage is that it softens the boilies. Softer baits are easier for carp to eat and digest, particularly at this time of year when the water is still pretty cold. I have even had fish excreting my bait while lying on the unhooking mat – it has passed through them that quickly!
Washed in, washed out
One trick in preparing my washed out baits is what I call, Washed In Baits. This involves adding a flavoured liquid to the water to boost the food signal during the soaking period. The baits are still nice and soft, but are oozing with attractors. This is not something that I tend to do on tricky lakes though, because I want the bait to look old. An added advantage of washed out baits is because they are so soft you can squash them with your hands and make loads of boilie crumb in seconds. This makes them ideal for adding to spod mixes because you don’t have to spend ages crushing hard baits. The only disadvantage of them is that their texture means they are too soft to be fed through a throwing stick. They are fine for catapulting medium distances, but if you want to fish at long distances you’ll need to put them in a spod. You can of course wash them out and then freeze them. You could then feed them via a throwing stick while they are still solid. Just remember that after a few hours on the bank the remaining baits will start to thaw out and soften again!
Doing the washing
To wash out my baits, I pour the quantity of feed needed for the session into a bucket. I then completely cover the baits with hot water – hot water helps to speed up the process. I then place the lid on and leave them to soak for at least three days. I have friends that change the water during the washing out process, but I much prefer to leave it to help with the overall fermentation process. After the three days, the baits will have lost half of their colour and appear much older than a new boilie fresh from the bag. Due to them being so soft, you do need to use a hard hookbait. My first choice is one of Dynamite Baits’ new Wafters. They act much more naturally in the water as their innate lightness negates the weight of the hook. As I mentioned before, ‘washing in’ is a cracking edge. If I was fishing a 48-hour session, I would take a 5kg bag of boilies – even though I’m unlikely to use that much – and fill the bag with warm water. I then add half a bottle of Dynamites’ Sweet Tiger Liquid Carp Food. As the water has been added first, this highly water-soluble liquid will then permeate the baits better than it would if I were to use it neat straight out of the bottle. Once again, it is simply a case of leaving the whole lot to soak for a minimum of three days. The reason I do the baits in five kilo batches is that I can use one or two kilos in the session, but then still have a load left for the following week. The liquid also aids the fermentation process, helping to release all of the bait’s natural sugars. At the end of the session, as water goes off quite quickly, I freeze the remaining bait, placing it in fresh water again when taken from the freezer. This prevents the baits from becoming tainted.
Not just boilies
Washing out isn’t just limited to boilies. I have enjoyed great success washing out other baits such as halibut pellets. Again, they go really soft, making them much easier to eat and digest. But you can also ball them up and thrown balls of mushy pellet in the margins. Plus, being full of water, it makes the pellets much heavier, which is ideal for spodding, because it enables you to be much more accurate. The other point is that in the summer particularly, I like to add oils to my boilies to boost them. So, washing out my baits with pellets, enables the natural oils from the pellet to permeate the boilies. This works particularly well with fishmeal-based baits such as Complex-T or The Source. It also means you can feed a little more without risking overfeeding because they are easier to eat. In carp fishing, it is these little one per cent gains, this attention to detail that brings results. To wash out boilies with pellets, I use a 50:50 combination. It is important to use a pellet and boilie that are of a similar size – for example a 12mm boilie with a 10mm pellet. Once the pellet takes on water, it will expand to around 12mm anyway. It also prevent the fish from becoming preoccupied on one type of bait. All in all, washing out your baits with water may on the face of things look barmy, but as I’ve outlined, it can improve your results, especially on hard lakes where the fish know they are being fished for and have seen it all before. Give it a go. It’s easy to undertake and you may be delighted by the results…