Natural Carp Foods vs Carp Baits

This article will give a view on man made baits and natural baits, I will put them head to head and see which bait comes out trumps. I will give my view of when you should use which type of bait and why.

Good quality boilies for fill all the dietary needs for carp.

A man made bait is any bait that has been manufactured, whether specifically as a fishing bait or not. Man made baits include processed meats, dog/cat foods, pellets, pastes and probably the most well known carp bait – boilies. Baits manufactured for fishing are designed to for fill all the dietary needs of carp but some of the cheaper ones and baits not designed for fish don't. Most ingredients used in carp baits are from the food industry. The dietary needs of a carp are 60% protein, 30% carbohydrates, and 10% fat. It needs to eat the mixture to keep fit and healthy, just like humans really. Each type of manufactured baits has a certain size and shape this makes them easy to present.

Baits designed for fishing are made so that they last up to 12 hours submerged in water. Some man made baits can be made easily at home, like boilies, this allows the angler to make his own bait to his own specifications. However 90% of anglers don't make their bait, this is because there are so many on the market now that there is little advantage of making your own and they just don't have the time. Man made baits are very convenient for the angler as they need little or no preparation, the fact that they have a long life is very handy, especially for the angler that only goes ‘now and then'. There are only a few problems with man made baits. Price is one of the main problems. Because of the convenience of man made baits the prices are usually very high – usually around £10 per kg of boilies. Carp seem to wise up to man made baits a lot quicker than natural baits meaning they can blow fast. Carp who have never seen these baits before can take a while to recognise these as a valuable food source.

Prepared Dynamite Tiger Nuts are one of the best carp baits though they lack vitamins and minerals.

Natural baits fall into two categories - particles and grubs. Particles are the seed/nut/pulse type baits, these include baits like hempseed, tares, corn, maize and nuts. Particles don't satisfy a carp's dietary need and most of the time they only eat them because of their smell, taste and crunch a bit like sweets for a human, we eat them even if they don't fill us up. Another thing about particles is they can be flavoured or coloured this gives the angler a chance to modify their bait.

Grubs are maggots, slugs, snails, worms and almost any other bug you can think of. Natural baits are generally cheap to buy as you can get most from animal feed merchants or out of your back garden! There are a few down sides to natural baits.

These mainly involve the size of the bait. Putting small baits out at long range requires a spod and the disturbance of this can make the fish very wary. Presenting natural baits can be hard too because the baits that are alive can work their way into slit and weed. The baits that are not alive are still hard to present because they don't have uniform shape or weight and some are too small to hair rig or side hook with a carp hook. A way around this is to glue the bait to cork balls or matchsticks, however this can make the presentation unnatural. Smaller natural baits are more vulnerable to being picked up by nuisance fish. The big natural baits like tiger nuts are hard to present as they don't have a uniform shape or size so you have to keep changing rig to get the presentation right, you also have to drill them so you can hair rig them. Particles need to be prepared this is messy and time consuming but must be done otherwise they are not safe for the fish, as they swell up inside their gut and can lead to the death of the fish.

These are based on 1 kg of the particle. During the soaking you can add colour or flavour.

It really does depend on a number of things, time of year, natural food in the lake for example swan mussels and blood worms, number of small fish present and what other people are using. Let's take a carp lake of 10 acres 5-7ft deep and very weedy with very few little fish. Now on this kind of lake I would use natural baits like tiger nuts, this is because there will be a lot of natural food in the weed for the carp and they will be used to eating water snails, worms and such like. The fact that there are very few little fish would mean you don't have to worry about them stealing your bait. If we took that lake but it had no weed and lots of little fish. I would use a man made bait like boilies, this is because the little fish wouldn't be able to take them so easily, and the carp wouldn't just be feeding on naturals. However later in the year say around August I would change to naturals as the carp will have wised up to boilies and will ignore them but come winter I would re-introduce them because of the appetite stimulators which should be in any quality bait. However if everyone or most of the other anglers were using one type of bait I would use the opposite, this is because being different pays off and the bigger fish normally get caught on something different to the norm.

There are times when you need to switch between natural baits and man made baits but generally there is little between them. The key is to use them at the right time, in the right situation. Many big fish have fallen to both types of bait. You should learn to use both types of bait and how to present them in the best possible way. This will help you catch throughout the year on any water.

Chris Payne