From Where I'm Sitting!

F R A N K WA R W I C K

From Where I’m Sitting!

Always the thinking angler, Frank gives us his thoughts on a variety of bait- and rig-orientated subjects, including the use of oils in bait, salt, and a look at using Chod and Zig Rigs.

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or all my angling life I have pondered on various ways of swinging the odds in my favour when in pursuit of our beloved carp; nothing has been overlooked, in fact I wish I had a pound for every minute I’ve spent thinking about all things carpy – I would never have to work again, that’s for sure!

I think it might be worth detailing some of the things I’ve been experimenting with over recent years so that people can see how my mind works. It gives me quite a buzz when one of my ideas comes to fruition and works in the way I perceived, so I will detail some of these. I will also mention some things that, for sure, have made a very positive difference to my catch rates.

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Many years ago I was talking to a rather extrovert angler called Howard Barclay, who went into great detail about the work of a Dutch scientist whose interest in carp and their physiology went far beyond what most studies had previously revealed. Apparently, this scientist had painstakingly dissected carp and taken the level of his understanding way beyond what had previously been documented in studies on the subject around the world. Howard had a rare copy of a book, printed in Dutch, part of which he had translated into English, which he would carry around like a bible. It made interesting reading, I can tell you. It described exactly how, from a mouthful of silt and debris, a carp can separate and trap a single hemp-sized item of food and then in an instant expel all the other unwanted stuff whilst retaining the desired food item. Of course, we can all guess at how adept carp are at this process, but it is when it is detailed in diagrams, showing exactly how this is done, that you start to see how it all works. It makes you think how lightning-fast carp are most of the time at ejecting rigs and hookbaits without batting an eyelid.

Most of our (human) taste buds are on our tongues; carp have apparently got over 12 times more taste buds than us, but of course they go through the process of tasting in a liquid gas (water) and we in air, so perhaps the extra evolved taste buds and superefficient olfactory system are essential in the aquatic environment for finding natural food items. But is all that evolved food-finding and -tasting equipment on a carp being overloaded by the distinctly unnatural food items that we are using and feeding? Do we really have a clue?

Imagine how we react to a hair in our food? We detect it in seconds and spit it out; carp are no different when they feel a hook or the hooklink across their lips, they do a similar thing and are masters of this. To a degree, going fine with hooks and hooklinks helps, but it obviously isn’t the complete answer. So what can we do to help this situation? In my opinion, PVA bags, sticks and Method mixes containing several small food items help in this context because the carp tends to cop

From Where I’m Sitting Frank Warwick

Stimulate or Anaesthetize?

for the rig as it sucks in a volume of bait in one or two goes; it certainly helps, as I am sure you will agree.

There are other elements we can use to confuse and trip up carp, and for sure, some of the additives we are using are inadvertently helping with this.

One that has flagged up for years with me is the use of chillies. Chillies are an unusual additive inasmuch as they irritate the taste buds, or at least the capsaicin pungent element within them does, rather than excite them.

Most other substances only stimulate a certain percentage of taste buds relevant to what’s being sampled, but as I say, chillies irritate and inflame the taste buds, triggering a reaction that releases dopamines in the carp’s brain. It’s a sort of pleasure and pain thing, which is why some of we humans like red-hot curry, even though it’s burning and blowing off our heads!

I started to think about this situation and had a suspicion that a carp, with its senses fired and taste buds flared up, might not be able to feel quite so sensitively with its mouth, and as a consequence be more prone to making a mistake with a rig more easily.

Then the penny dropped that some of the other occasional bait additives that appear to be effective might have more to them than first meets the eye!

The first one I investigated was isoeugenol. Now a lot of the best carp-fishing flavours ever produced tend to have an element of this

“Is all that evolved foodfinding and -tasting equipment on a carp being overloaded by the distinctly unnatural food items that we are using and feeding? Do we really have a clue?”

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Never underestimate this stuff’s pulling power.

ABOVE LEFT

ABOVE RIGHT Carp seem to get a kick out of eating the hot stuff as much as we do!

substance in their make-up.

Eugenol is part of the phenol family and is part of and extracted from clove.

Allspice, basil, bay leaf, cinnamon, these are mostly extracted from the leaves and bark of these tropical species.

Now here’s the interesting bit; clove and eugenol is a natural anaesthetic and is used to neutralise toothache and numb skin and nerves, as well as being an antiseptic. Bonjela for teething babies contains these ingredients.

Now, of course I am not suggesting at all that these ingredients are not attractive in their own right because I know they are, when used very moderately, but think back to what I said about the carp’s senses being massively stronger and vastly more sensitive than ours, then consider the fact that carp are tasting a bait probably well before it enters their mouth. Then let’s just try to imagine if the clove or eugenol element within the hookbait is coming into play immediately.

If it is, you can see that the nervenumbing effect may well desensitise the carp’s mouth very quickly, thereby neutralising the carp’s ability to feel and eject the hookbait quickly.

The sceptics out there will be quick to dismiss my thoughts, but I know the results from my prolonged tests suggest that I am on to something, and the depth of some of the hookholds on the carp caught defied belief. On several occasions I couldn’t even see the hookbait because it was out of sight. In fact it was close to a bite-off, particularly in winter.

From tests over several years, I have concluded that clove oil and eugenol is best used in very small dosages and in hookbaits only; they blend very well with other flavours and/or essential oils. One small but important

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From Where I’m Sitting Frank Warwick

element of their use is that they both dissolve in acetic acid (vinegar), and this helps disperse the elements into the hookbaits much better and seems to work well, at least when used at a very low inclusion rate.

Isoeugenol is an important element in vanillin, which is a vital part of chocolate production. For years I have sworn by the use of vanillin in my own special single hookbaits; it smells wonderful, the carp switch on to it, and I now think it has other benefits that I never realised before.

I have been a big fan of butyric acid in my baits since I first tried it in the mid-’80s. Of course, it is very popular now and works well in both food and single high-attract baits. It is a strange substance inasmuch as it becomes more soluble in cold water, therefore I tend to cut it with alcohol for summer use or blend it with alcohol flavours for warm water use, when I think most people would guess it’s quite the opposite. I particularly like to mix it with apricot (pentyl butrate), strawberry (ethyl butrate), or the old favourite pineapple (methyl butrate).

A good few of the carboxylic acids, such as butyric, propionic and acetic acid have a stimulatory effect on carp.

Most have a pungent blue cheesetype of smell. The key seems to be in finding the right inclusion rates for both water temperature and bait type.

Never underestimate N-Butyric for use in a bag mix, it’s deadly for quick bites, and from my own personal findings, is hard to overload.

Using Salt

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Next, I want to look at salt. You can hardly have failed to notice the recent chatter on the bank and carp forums about the use of salt, both as a bait ingredient and as a carp attractor. My thoughts on the subject are mixed, a kind of good news/bad news situation.

More than 20 years ago I wrote how I very rarely made up any kind of bait without including salt, be that boiled bait or particles. I reasoned that if your wife or mum made a Sunday dinner and forgot to season the vegetables with salt we would soon complain that the food was boring and tasteless. In the same way, animals and fish like salt in their food in some form or another, in fact it’s essential to life and their well-being.

Fish will search out natural sources of vitamins and minerals, and in times of a shortage, or where these elements hardly exist, they must be grateful to we anglers for including some of the elements within our bait.

I used to wonder what the basin-like

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holes were amongst the clay and silt on the lakebeds of various waters that I encountered on my travels all over Europe, then I saw that the common denominator was that these holes were to expose sand; and we all know where sand originated – the sea, and as a consequence it naturally has an element of salt in it that the carp needed and I guess worked to find it. Some of these holes were deep, in fact, quite often 2 or 3ft deep and quite extensive.

If you are ever able to see a lake being drained down, keep an eye out for this because it is quite interesting.

The lengths animals and fish will go to to seek salt is well-documented; I remember reading about rabbits in Australia where they got completely out of control, eating the surface of fence posts that had been

ABOVE Salt can be a great additive, but my advice would be ‘don’t overdo it’.

This lovely large common fell to a carefully baited patch of bait applied in a known ‘hole’ where they were feeding.

BELOW

treated to protect the wood, using a product that is partly made from salt, which acts as a preservative, and this is what the rabbits were after.

So you don’t have to be a genius to realise that should there be a shortage of natural sources of salt in your chosen water, particularly at times of need, such as at spawning time, and in spring after a long lean spell, when carp are looking to replenish reserves, that if you fulfil that requirement in some form or another then you may

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From Where I’m Sitting Frank Warwick

well reap some serious rewards! The question is, where do some people draw the line? There is no real scientific data or information on carp’s tolerance to salt, apart from their ability to be able to briefly venture into the brackish water of river estuaries where they meet the sea.

The carp’s osmosis prevents them being able to live for long in saltwater, unlike the fascinating salmon, sea trout and mysterious eels. But what I am referring to is what might the long-term effect be if we all start piling salt into the bait, or indeed the swim, or both.

More than 10 years ago, I found myself on Tim Paisley’s Birch Grove winter syndicate. Those were happy times, and with the venue being relatively small and inhabited by some

TOP I had success at Birch by fishing a high-attract wafter hookbait with a golf ballsized PVA bag of sea salt.

ABOVE The stunning Birch Grove in Shropshire.

A Birch Grove common that fell to my salty PVA bag tactics.

TOP RIGHT

very wily old carp, it kind of became my own personal game of chess with those fish. I quite often had the lake to myself for a few days, so I would take full advantage and put all my experiments with rigs and bait into full test mode.

One rather amazing test I embarked on was to use my tried-and-tested single high-attract wafter hookbait, and I would use one rod with a golf ball-sized PVA bag of sea salt attached, and one rod with a sugar lump in the PVA fished in a similar fashion; the other two rods would be fished without any additions as a kind of controlled experiment so I that could see if the sugar or salt showed any kind of benefit.

Well, after the usual mind games, where I had to make sure that I rotated each rod to give each bait a fair crack in each chosen spot, I quickly saw that the rod with a bag of fine sea salt next to the hookbait was disproportionately better than the bait with sugar lumps in the bag fished next to it, and certainly better than singles fished in isolation.

I then started to soak the sugar in various elements such as Minamino, Marmite, Bovril and Corn Steep Liquor. This had various degrees of success and the Minamino stood out, but was still not as prolific as salt.

My next test was a solution of Minamino heavily dosed with salt, which was exceptional for quick bites once carp were located by deliberately fishing for line bites.

This was so encouraging that I even used it as a liquid soak! I marinated my free offerings for 24 hours in the liquid prior to introduction. This gave some real eye-opening results, far better than

“I marinated my free offerings for 24 hours in the liquid prior to introduction. This gave some real eye-opening results, far better than I could have imagined...”

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I could have imagined, culminating in one crazy 36-hour spell where I had 13 runs and landed 12 carp.

I have mixed feelings about the current craze for salt in bait, or as an element introduced individually into the swim, inasmuch as I think that in moderation, its use can be rewarding and worthwhile, but, abused by the ‘sod the consequences, let’s stove it in’ brigade, I shudder to think what might manifest over a period of time. So if in doubt, go gently.

Bait Quantity

Is it me, or have we seen a serious reduction in the amount of bait some of our well-known sponsored anglers are saying they introduce?

I remember a couple of years ago being both sceptical and disillusioned when I saw reports of how ‘so-andso’ introduced 30kg of boilies over a three-day session…’ Now I know in certain situations putting in loads of bait on a regular basis can do very well, but come on, 10kg a day or more!

To a normal working person that’s probably the best part of 100 quid a day, and as an aside, how many people have tried putting in 10kg of boilies in a day with a throwing stick should extra range be the requirement?

I guess most people could see through this kind of thoughtless boast and see it as a kind of brainwashing tactic – ‘if you put out 30kg of bait on a three-day session you too might catch like me’!

There was a sort of backlash against that kind of thing, so I guess that explains the relative lack of those kind of boasts just recently.

From a personal point of view, I think realistically the only time big quantities of bait might be called for is if you want to really go for it should the fish be feeding well on one of the heavily-stocked waters, like

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From Where I’m Sitting Frank Warwick

Horseshoe Lake was in its prime, lakes where a vast shoal of decent-sized carp could breeze through and clean you out of bait in a couple of hours.

Over the years, I have heard all manner of exotic claims and assumptions about the quantity of bait a decent carp can eat in one go. You just think about it; how many 18mm baits do you think a 25lb carp could eat in an hour? Some comments I’ve heard have put a smile on my face – for instance, one optimist said to me that a carp is well capable of ‘doing 2kg of boiled food in an hour’. Wow! Now call me oldfashioned, but have you ever counted how many individual baits there are in a kilo at 18mm? It’s a lot! Now double that amount and you soon begin to realise that the carp would need to be like some kind of aquatic super-Dyson going like the clappers! Perhaps some of the experts or students at Sparsholt, etc. have done studies on this kind of thing? It would make most interesting reading to hear about any such studies.

How to Use PVA Bags with a Chod Rig!

The good old ever-so-popular Chod Rig is still going strong, but one of its limitations is that by its very nature it doesn’t lend itself to any kind of use with a PVA bag, but then again, it was never meant for bag work in the first place. However, I have a variant that can be used in thick weed or deep silt with a bag/stick mix and, if you wish, a bottom bait and supple hooklink.

If you look at the construction of my rig you will see that it’s not a Chod Rig at all, but it achieves good presentation in similar situations as you might use a Chod but perhaps want some food around your hookbait, or

where you might want to present the hookbait on the bottom with food.

(You can, if you wish, use this with a short hooklink and a pop-up Chodstyle with bait with the hookbait.)

There are loads of small tweaks you might want to develop for your own situations, but I thought it might be worth showing the basic principle.

The other nice little touch with this rig is that it will show pickups quickly because it is in direct contact with the indicator when the rig is moved.

As you can see from the pics, the fish won’t have to move the lead before you get indication. Obviously, with a supple hooklink being used with this presentation it can only be used with a quick-change link being threaded through a PVA stick or bag to protect the hooklink from tangles. You might be thinking, ‘Why not just use a solid bag with the lead inside, or the standard PVA mesh bag nicked on the hook

TOP PVA bag and rig ready to be inserted. You can, if fishing in heavy weed, put a small amount of ground-up Chum Mixers in the bag with your food, this gives a controlled sink rate.

ABOVE Loaded and ready to go.

“With a supple hooklink being used with this presentation it can only be used with a quick-change link being threaded through a PVA stick or bag to protect the hooklink from tangles”

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on a safety clip setup?’ Well, this rig avoids the lead being in the immediate proximity of the hookbait and it also offers the obvious benefits when fishing on thick weed where a standard setup may well be unsuitable, plus the element of surprise is always beneficial. With this particular presentation I prefer to use a substantial, sensible breaking strain of main line (usually 14lb), because of the pressure that is put on the main line during the cast and when playing fish. But if you do use a shockleader with this rig you will notice from the photos that this running rig is ultrasafe should you suffer a crack-off or breakage. I also always feather the cast just before it impacts upon the

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LEFT Close-up of how to construct the perfect dropoff system.

BELOW RIGHT The much in-vogue black baits, and with good reason, but don’t forget to try them at night.

dissolving PVA nugget will be placed in the lead loop – or, on my good friend Phil Davey’s recommendation, I now use his brilliant system for using the drop-off lead rig! He says he uses a CSL pellet instead of a PVA nugget, which will withstand a massive cast and breaks down in a matter of minutes in winter. It’s awesome! It allows both the lead to be retrieved if a take does not materialise or you want a recast, but should a fish bury itself in weed the lead will dump, so giving you more direct contact with the carp where they usually come out of the weed easier.

Study carefully how Phil constructs the drop-off system and I suggest you incorporate it in your carp-angling armoury. So a big thanks to Phil for this neat little arrangement.

From Where I’m Sitting Frank Warwick

Here you can see more clearly the mechanics of my ‘not a Chod’ Chod Rig. ABOVE

fair crack, it suddenly opens up a whole new world of possibilities. On waters where, if we were not getting action, it was just the old “they’re not feeding” excuse, the use of Zig Rigs has well and truly shattered that illusion. You only have to look at carp in ornamental pools or in aquariums to see how they feed. They always take all the food in suspension first, before moving on to sifting the bottom debris for the food remnants last – and why shouldn’t they?

It’s an easy, clean meal while it’s up in the water and far less effort, plus they don’t have to go through the process of separating the food items from a load of crap and silt, leaf mould and weed, etc., as they do when feeding on the bottom. Then think of how, over the years, we have conditioned the carp to be wary of all food items sitting on the lakebed; by comparison, anything in the other layers of water is considered a real safe meal. You only have to see how waters shut up shop for bottom fishing when big fly hatches are occurring.

Don’t forget, a lot of fly hatches can occur at night, so this might explain why fishing Zigs and black baits at night is proving an excellent option.

One thing I must say is that I’ve seen loads of anglers using Zigs in the daytime but hardly any give them a go in the dark! It seems to be a confidence thing, I suspect.

Personally, I find them super-effective at night and I am far from being

Zig Rig Thoughts

Has the carp world gone mad on Zig Rig fishing over the last few years, or what?

Once you get your head around the fact that carp are not entirely bottom feeders, as we all used to think, and you give the technique a

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water to make sure it lands neatly.

I am not a big fan of dumping leads into lakes willy-nilly but sometimes, when fishing into very weedy areas, I will set up the lead end of the rig so the lead will discharge if necessary. For this, I use a loop system (see shots) where a

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From Where I’m Sitting Frank Warwick

alone in thinking this; most of my angling friends in the know swear by Zigs in the night, especially in winter.

One bit of advice I can offer is that you can catch on plain black bits of foam at night but the addition of an element of smell does seem to swing the odds even more in our favour. I like some of the old classics, such as Scopex, Shellfish, Condensed Milk and Squid. Again, I always go for an inclusion of N-Butyric acid to the blend. (10 drops to 20ml of flavour in a pot with your chosen Zig baits does the job well.) Choosing the depth at which to fish the Zig baits seems to be a problem area for some anglers, but it’s like anything, you learn from experience, and the more you try it and experiment, the more you learn.

I can only relate to you what I have found over the years; in general, a great starting point is three-quarters of the depth of the swim, i.e. 7.5ft in 10ft, etc. Sometimes a bait fished just inches under the surface is very productive, especially in red-hot weather when the carp are on top but slightly wary

of surface baits. One other winner is to fish the Zig overdepth by 2ft and spod mixers out in the dark, this has caught me loads of bonus fish at times.

Incidentally, my favourite hookbait for this scenario is an Enterprise plastic floating pop-up tiger nut that I shape with a pair of scissors to match the size and shape of mixers in use. I find by fishing the hookbait 2ft overdepth that it imparts a little bit of movement to the bait, especially when there’s a ripple on the water both day and night.

From my own findings I have not done especially well fishing Zigs a couple of feet off the bottom unless I’m on a shallower venue, such as Cuttle Mill, where I guess the average depth is 5ft.

I don’t particularly like checking the depth in my swim in the conventional way. When Zig fishing I find it slightly inaccurate, particularly if I want to present a bait literally inches under the surface with pinpoint accuracy.

Using the feature-finding marker float in the conventional way is reasonable, especially if you have a measuring

ABOVE My favourite Enterprise floating plastic tiger nut trimmed down and ready to rumble. Note I still go to the trouble of line-aligning the hook on a Zig so the bait sits perfectly.

LEFT I don’t use tail rubbers when fishing Zigs, I prefer to PVA-tape the arm like this.

Most people guesstimate the depth of their zigs. Accurate depth measuring is the key to success.

RIGHT

A recentlycaught fish that fell to my alternative PVA Chod-style Rig.

BELOW

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mark whipped or marked on your feature-finding rod of either 6 or 12ins increments. Many people (amazingly) guess at this and I see all kinds of dodgy measuring of the swim going on. That’s when it starts to get a bit random.

I much prefer my own depth-finding floats that work like a Polaris selflocking system, which has been around for decades, but for some reason seems to be overlooked. Basically, I cast my self-locking float into the chosen area, open the bail arm and let the float pop up to the surface, and as soon as it shows I put the line in the clip on the reel whilst at the same time making careful note of the features on the far bank at which I will be aiming. I then retrieve the float, which will have locked at the exact depth of the swim to the inch. I lay this out on the bank and set my Zig hooklink exactly at my chosen depth.

As you can imagine, this system is so accurate it removes any inaccuracies from depth-finding, crucially when fishing a bait inches under the surface.

Once again, I cannot emphasise enough that on Zigs it’s best to use as light a lead as you can get away with and make it your business to trim down safety clips. Oh, and a final tip, don’t use a safety clip tail rubber; I recommend a wrap of PVA tape for the cast. This way, you dump the lead if you hit trouble, but get it back if you don’t hit a snag.

Until next time, tight lines. CW

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