Now back to fishing. I find that the largest carp I have caught were during the Spring time, specifically in May. I plan on (hopefully) putting countless hours on finding a 27 lb or larger carp, but a 30 lb'er would be better. I still can't believe that I haven't caught a Mirror Carp yet, it would be really nice.
What I've been doing lately is experimenting more with different carp baits.
One of the baits I made, I used 12 slices of white bread, squirted 18 five inch circles of strawberry syrup, put in 10 oz of baking powder, all on a pan and kneaded it together using my hands until it became a dough. Honestly I didn't catch any carp, BUT I did manage to catch a crap load of catfish on it. I used one of my white bread hair rigs below, and wrapped some of that strawberry dough bait around the hook. So basically it looked like a pink ball connected to a white ball:
Another bait I made was a recipe from this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MatC5dYGTCo
Honestly though, my usual white bread hair rig worked better for me than both the recipes:
One might wonder why I'm trying to find new baits when the ones I've been using have been pretty successful. The reason is because I have a few spots during the Summer where I could walk around the place and literally see about 50 carp and whenever I cast corn or white bread, they just don't eat. What bursts my bubble is sometimes I could see a few eating, but they never manage to strike the bait.
Lastly, I got asked a few questions that I thought I might share on here.
First question was where and how do I use my fishing bells?
I usually get my fishing bells at Wal-Mart, the ones that clip on to the tip of the fishing pole. There is a trick to them though if there is current. If the current is strong, the water might bend the pole periodically, which will make the bell ring if it is on the tip of the pole. So if that is happening, put the bell a little lower, until the bell will be ring-less for 10 seconds. Now any fish that would bite, would ring the bell, not the current!
Another question was how does the hair rig work?
Basically the fish sips the bait, including the hook into its mouth, then it rejects the bait, causing the hook to get caught on the lips of the mouth. Now the hook could get "set" in two ways, one being the lead weight is heavy enough to cause strong tension when the line gets taut, another is when the line gets taut also causes a bend in the rod.
Last question was why use a hair rig over a treble hook?
I use a hair rig over a treble hook mostly because it catches more fish. I did a test a while back which basically I had a hair rig go against a treble hook being fished at the same time. Surprisingly, the hair rig caught more fish by a landslide.
