Possibly the most overlooked secret to winning the fishing game comes from saving money on bait; but how, do you ask?! Many anglers miss-out on fantastic catches even though the baits they use are popular big fish catchers seen in the press and so on! But you can save yourself a fortune in wasted bait and improve your catches drastically!
Anglers who fish for big carp or big catfish use a range of bought baits from pellets and boilies, to maize, hemp, meats, fish, maize and many proprietary ground baits etc, to bait their swim, which all cost a lot of money through the year. Much of this bait gets eaten with no benefit to the angler at all while he sits fishless! This phenomenon occurs very frequently and anglers would be shocked at their money going literally to waste as a result of missing something which can convert this bait into fish.
If you are consistently feeding your swim each time you fish and this does not consistently equate to better catches, then you are simply feeding the fish, going through the motions and expecting miracles to occur as doing the same thing repeatedly and keeping expecting results to be different is simply a definition of insanity!
Even hard-fished for big catfish as well as carp can become particularly unresponsive to popular baits and techniques even though they may have been so successful previously! So how do you save all this wasted money on bait used in free baiting and actually improve your catches by converting your baiting into more fish, consistently; because that is the big issue here! You see it is not just bait costs which mount up through the year, but all the associated but increasing costs of fishing; like time not earning, travelling costs, food and drink money, fishing memberships or tickets, the huge regular costs of replacing all those fishing tackle bits etc!
In economically uncertain times, making the most of your money in terms of leveraging your fishing bait costs best, is generally far more important to everyone, (except the more fortunate minority.) This is maybe less of a problem where fishing is very easy and everyone seems to catch no matter what the level of their angling ability, experience or bait quality and so on but this refers to waters where fish react far more cautiously towards to fishing baits, rigs and so on. It seems to me that judging your results success by the average catches on such a water is not accurate at all; after all, how does any individual know what is truly able to be achieved?
Many wary fish on pressured waters will not feed on fresh baits put out as free baits, and those that do may even feed in far more alert modes of behaviour in order to detect dangerous hook baits more easily. If you got hooked each time you ate something your confidence and behaviour in eating something you desire is obviously going to change because such food is potentially it is a threat to your survival, despite when baits being designed to promote fish's survival and you might wait 3 days or more before eating the leached-out baits! (It is a well-known fact that fish will feed far more confidently on bait that has been washed out as few anglers hook fish on such baits and so the associated danger of such baits is drastically reduced!)
Thinking about the bigger picture on a very pressured water, Mr average angler turns up, baits-up, fishes 48 hours and leaves fishless, and then most usually the next angler turns up in the swim and does the same things: with similar poor average results. This kind of pattern happens all year round on so many carp waters these days. Now and again, the angler who happens to time it lucky catches fish over all the old bait left by other anglers, but is mostly oblivious to this artificially built-up phenomenon. An anglers luck may be as bad as the old gone-off bait that fish have left uneaten; oblivious that the foul bait has killed-of the popular swim!
Our angling behaviours can become simply habitual processes, where the thought of what has worked in the past must still work today dominates. But I tend to find each day is a different day and fish behaviour is dynamic constantly changing and adapting and what worked so well yesterday is the very thing the fish are so keenly wary of today!
I am lucky enough to have caught a rare very pale white 38 pound carp that had not been caught in over 7 years, from one UK water. In this instance it took the regular very unusually light style and frequency of baiting a swim, with a totally new bait to that water and for a week long period, that scored (and this big fish was followed by many more as a result.)
It took new bait attractors and rarely used feeding triggers in (new concentrations and combinations,) plus new baiting approaches, methods and applications to catch that very special fish which was followed by numbers of other good fish proving the effort of though even more worth-while. But there is something on every water to exploit that defeats the natural and angler-trained conditioning of fish responses and reactions to what you do in order to catch them. Being different even in one single way or combining new, adapted or new combinations of old ways etc can all achieve what just going through the motions cannot!
If you take the time to analyse the short-term and long-term impacts of what other anglers are doing on your water and link that to the negative (or positive) impacts on fish behaviours over any time period, you may begin to see how to exploit both fish and angler behaviour creatively. This thought is unique to your fishing situation at any point in time so will most likely produced the most accurately tuned possible actions, processes, thoughts and actions to solve the particular fishing challenges present. By analysing your fishing challenges and fishing situation in regards impacts of your fishing (and of other anglers) upon fish really can means you can save a fortune in wasted bait; as what you do use is leveraged with far greater results in catches in relation to money spent on bait achieving these!
Your effort is never waster when it comes to making differences that can catch you more fish and save you a fortune in bait that simply does not translate into fish. Imagine the next occasion you arrive at a water and start automatically going through the motions; perhaps you will stop and think what this truly costs you, and how to make your bait really pay! Many great solutions thinking anglers will think up in 10 years may become apparent to you personally (right now) with a little extra thought... If you have been stimulated by this article then this bait and fishing secrets ebook author can help you in many other ways!
By Tim Richardson.