Carp Fishing in Winter?

By: Tim Richardson

Winter Homemade Carp Baits For Big Fishing Savings!

Most carp anglers consider their bait a very vital factor in their success, yet few truly understand it enough to maximise its full power and possibilities for maximum effect. Your bait is vital in manipulation of carp feeding and of other behaviours which seriously puts the odds of success in your favour so read on...

Carp live on mostly protein based foods which contain essential fats and oils which provide most of their energy; in their natural water environment carbohydrate foods are comparatively rare. In contrast to modern humans, carp do not use carbohydrates predominantly as their energy source. Humans used to be wandering hunters following game and were far more predominantly protein eaters, supplementing their needs with a wide variety of plant, marine, plant and other food sources.

When humans got to the stage of farming rice and wheat and barley for instance, they had an energy source that could be planned, planted and manipulated for cropping in future years. For this reason, accurate calendars became crucial to human survival and in schools today we are taught that carbohydrate foods and not protein foods are the major sources of nutrients essential for human survival across the globe in many varied cultures.

As the farming technology improved the need for local game for meat and its vital amino acids and nitrogen from their protein mattered far less to us humans. Many of our nutritional needs and essential energy needs were met by the farming of cereals, beans, pulses and other crops including maize and rice. But protein sources remained vital for many reasons. Cattle, sheep, goat, poultry and fish farming for instance still have huge impacts on our modern human diets today; even in modern fast foods. Consider MacDonalds meals, beef burgers, chicken burgers and milkshakes etc...

Carp of course have never farmed their foods and have always survived on their naturally available foods. Carp have especially used their natural foods oils and proteins to supply their energy requirements (as opposed to carbohydrates in humans on land,) and carp have evolved to deal with a very wide range of potential food substances. In their aquatic environment, carp feed mainly on the bottom where bottom living food item invertebrates thrive in nutrient rich conditions, although carp obviously filter feed too on plankton and suck in very nutrient rich algae and so on.

A very substantial amount of the nutritional profiles of natural carp food items are protein rich. This is highly indicative of how carp have evolved and can be very useful in helping us create new bait formulas. Carp are called slow suction feeders because they primarily feed in bottom silt using all their specialised senses for this purpose. Any more experienced angler has caught carp with very dark heads caused not from natural colouration necessarily, but from their habit of feeding most of the time with their heads buried in thick dark staining bottom silt. But in this rich environment carp are masters of detection and this is significant to any budding carp bait maker of course.

Most often carp main food sources vary from bloodworm, tubifex, and other worm or worm-like organisms, to caddis fly and other fly larvae, to leeches, and in various conditions and depths, mussels, shrimps, snails and many far less well known benthic and non-benthic organisms. These foods are rich in essential amino acids that carp need to survive. These substances are released into the water column from these foods in tiny concentrations, but which of course carp detect very easily and are stimulated by and attracted to! This is just one reason why carp are highly attracted to a wide variety of soluble proteins and proteinous food items and ingredients. Carp can digest and use proteins extremely efficiently internally, arguably better than humans by comparison, considering they are cold-blooded with restrictions upon their metabolism, including reduced enzyme activity in low temperatures such as winter.

Although carp lack a stomach in contrast to humans, their gut and digestion in general is absolutely suited to their food and environment and a certain degree of their essential nutrition can actually be absorbed into the fish directly from the surrounding water, such as certain vital minerals. Also their refined chemical detecting senses, chemoreception and olfaction and other internal responses to external water-borne stimuli mean carp are incredibly well adapted to their world, and very different to humans in our air environment.

Carp have long been extremely finely evolved to do this and the ancient group forming that of teleost fishes including carp, are a much older group than that of man and primates for example although the teleost fish are in fact our ancient ancestors. The commonalities between us and fish physiologically, biologically, chemically, and in part physically is not coincidence. When we breathe and when we taste or smell, the organs and tissue surfaces used are covered in water for instance.

On the point about how carp have evolved to best detect, graze upon, (or prey upon,) exploit, digest and internally utilise their food for growth, repair, energy, reproduction and so on, there are other just as enlightening examples. Mountain gorillas and species of bears such as the koala and giant panda thrive primarily or even exclusively on plant energy sources, such as on bamboo shoots and stems, or eucalyptus leaves.

These animals have like carp and us humans, also evolved specific digestive systems for the task of most efficiently digesting their most naturally abundant foods. This is similar to cows deriving their needs from grass (bamboo is a grass too.) I used to wonder how it was that cows survived; having been led to believe that grass was indigestible and contained very little essential nutrition. But of course, the hidden answer was evolution and bacterial enzymes, which cows, carp and humans all have in common of course and all use to digest food every day to survive...

Historically, the largest animals ever to live on the surface of the earth have been not protein or meat eaters, but vegetarian dinosaurs... Considering that algae is the basis of the food chain for millions of creatures, it's worth bringing these into focus and include spirulina and other lesser known but probably even more effective species for use in carp baits at this point. Krill has one of the most significant biomasses of any creature on the planet, adding up to a total well above the total of that of man.

This small prawn-like crustacean feeds on plankton (including species of algae) and is the prime food that supports our current largest creature on earth before it goes extinct that is; the blue whale. (The quickly rising demand for and harvesting of krill from the Antarctic ocean natural niche krill fishery is now more than likely going to kill off the blue whale forever...)

Making carp baits using protein ingredients for carp in particular is beneficial from a dietary needs perspective. Protein ingredients and oils are obviously highly stimulatory for feeding and carp top primary needs are for the nitrogen and amino acids found in proteins. New cheaper and more sustainable protein sources are being sought by both the food industry, for fertilisers and also for use in bait making as the marine fisheries become more depleted.

The use of poultry bye-products such as protein rich chicken waste like feather meal and keratin are obvious examples which are very effective in carp baits and chicken per se seems to be highly fashionable among contemporary commercial bait makers.

Now as carp bodies are the product of their most abundant foods presence and impacts over the long course of evolution, then it makes logical sense to apply these or their examples in successful carp bait design. For instance, if you apply the specific substances (or similar ones) found in natural carp foods which enable them to identify them and which stimulate feeding, then good result will follow naturally although many facsimiles of these substances will often suffice too as well as many completely artificial ones, such as certain growth promoters, and taste enhancers etc!

Betaine is one obvious example of one such natural substance, and it is found in many natural carp foods including crustaceans, molluscs and fish etc, but in varying levels of concentrations. (Betaine is also found in us humans and has vital roles and functions in the body such as protecting the liver, like it does in carp; this is highly significant...)

This variety of concentration also applies to other carp essential substances, such as amino acids, and obviously certain natural carp foods will contain more of those vitally important substances. But there are certain differences between some of the amino acids that most turn carp onto feeding most intensively, and those which are most essential to sustaining their essential dietary needs. A balanced nutritional bait covers many carp dietary needs of course, but a bait designed specifically to contain high levels of specific feeding stimuli (or other physiological stimulators and bioactive substances of other kinds,) can also be exploited...

Crucially, you are at complete liberty to include as many of these vitally important substances, (and as much of them as you like,) into your homemade baits and ground baits formats and recipes. You can guarantee your personal secret carp baits are very different to any your carp have been experiencing at your waters. This can very seriously give you many edges and keep you consistently ahead of the game.

With readymade baits, unless you had it tailor-made to your exact formula, you are often unsure exactly what is in there, how fresh it is, what ratios or levels were used, or even how the bait might work, (or not work!) This is just one reason I have more confidence in what I make homemade for myself knowing what I know today, after over 30 years of carp fishing and making homemade baits.

But bait is not merely about using true fish feeding triggers and any of a massive variety of attractors, enhancers and so on, it is about actually conditioning the bodies of fish to your baits and manipulating their brain chemistry, moods and modes of behaviours and even their actual locations...

This is a great motive for making your own baits apart from the financial one of being able to save yourself lots of very good money. Plus the massive sense of satisfaction you get from catching personal best fish on your own homemade baits is something that must be personally experienced to be fully appreciated! But even if you only want to use readymade baits and ignore all of the massive advantages and obvious benefits of making your own unique baits, it is a fact that the more you know about how and why your baits truly work, then the better you will be positioned to leverage them to your own unique advantage in this increasingly very competitive sport!

Having an improved deeper practical appreciation and understanding of bait has been repeatedly proven in reality to produce far better results for those in the know, than of those competing anglers who are mostly ignorant of this extremely powerful knowledge. Of course not all carp anglers have the same amount of skills, experience, time, finances or knowledge with which to compete against those with more of any of these things. Ideally you need short-cuts to help you compete and often these arrive in the form of an insight or snippet of information from a well informed fellow angler.

Inevitably the most truly powerful bait secrets are the ones that can make the most difference in results for any angler regardless of fishing ability, skill levels or experience. Such secrets are usually the very hardest earned and are not given away for free. Probably the biggest reason for this is that many things that can make all the difference are a little ahead of most carp anglers level of practical appreciation when it comes to application of scientific information, but help is available.

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