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What good is that when we're fishing for carp lol?

I used to think this way and i'm sure some people/companies do it better than others but there are some scary baits appearing on the market that are not much more than a lump of cereal meals and being preserved using preservatives that are no better than the ones from yester year. As with tackle there are money men floating round in the bait industry for a fast buck.

Been there, got the t shirt lol. I guess if you have dirty, clumsy fingers you're better off with forceps bud. Each to their own and all that. I know I can remove a hook significantly more cleanly with my jim dandys than I can with the pliers.

Same.

Wow...... what a fish 🎣😎😲😲😲

Enjoy eating it then mate. No offence taken, I've got my views and you have yours...… I'm careful not to mention names of people or companies on this subject.... All I care about is nature, the fish, the lakes etc.. I find it a bit hypocritical for some anglers to turn up with a load of fish care equipment and then chuck preservatives into a lake.... Just my op'.

hmm, tight fitting socks will slow down your circulation thereby depriving your feet of warm blood, defeets the object methinks

I disagree bud. IMO it is far more precise using your hands. With your hands you can apply pressure to the eye with your thumb and just roll the hook out with little or no damage,. With forceps you're ripping the barb through the flesh imo. When using forceps the slightest movement of the hand can result in significant movement of the forcep tips, which in turn means significant movement of the embedded hook and barb. I only use them when I'm really, really struggling by hand.

Sodium Benzoate, or salts derived from benzoic acid (an old school nasty preservative) are what some firms are using as their "human grade" preservative...….. Not good for Cyprinids…..( This I picked up on from elsewhere0 A lot of big names in bait making were quoted by another member on a different post and used as a reason to trust bait firms..... But to be honest, some of those names don't trust the bait firms and have moved on to other companies in the past...… Once a bait has been tinkered with to get through the machines quicker and chopped about a bit by the money men to make more profit, it's likely, that the bait that ends up in a bag on the shelves, is a shadow of the original bait, designed by said name.... Hence, imo, the honest guys amongst them moving on. Some won't , but lets be honest, some of the worlds best chefs, will still be seen on the packaging of ready meals in order to sell rubbish to the unsuspecting public..... £££££££££££££££

Good old ABS. Well done on the capture,amazing fish. 🎣😎

Ici to B Pit, to Suffolk Water Park, to River Gipping by a committee member, from one side of the weir to the other and then onto Snake. Wandering mirror, it had human movement, none of the moves were by itself!

There’s all sorts in there, many years ago I saw a few fish in there that would be classed as very big even nowadays. We had a couple of secret places to fish, including somebody’s garden but, lost permission because of other people’s selfishness. Lot’s of anticipation with rivers though 👍🏻

I don’t doubt that for a second mate. 😉

If it is a Dinton original it will be the second one in a week to break 50 after Tripple Row was caught ounces over by long-term member, ‘Hutch’😎👍👏

50+! One helleur of a fish...😖😅😉

Shelf life baits have moved on from the high preservatives used in most years ago. Most shelf life baits are now preserved with a glycerol sugar syrup rather than 'unnatural' preservatives. It is finding the companies that do use the same bait frozen as shelf life. Freezer baits boiled, dried then frozen, the same base mix as shelf life which are dried, dipped in the glycerol sugar syrup then dried. However not every company does this. I know Crafty Catcher, Rod Hutchinson are treated in this way, and I think Nash does, however I do try to avoid Nash baits, (personally, the less money I put in his pocket the better). Some shelf lifes are even dried totally with no preservatives, but they are lighter and rock hard. Rock hard baits are not all a bad thing!

Don't apologise Finchey, it's not a stupid question mate...…… It's a good subject this with a few angles to consider imo…. Here's a few of my views, and they are just opinions based on a bit of reading, a bit of fishing and various comments from different people...… Glad you mentioned digestion. btw. Imo ( I will keep saying "imo", so as not to offend anyone)… The ability of a bait to be easily broken down, not just crushed, but dismantled , a molecule at a time, by natural enzymes, is everything imo. It not only allows the bait ingredients to by utilised by the fish,( As once broken down by enzymes into, amino acids,simple sugars and fatty acids, to name a few, these can be absorbed through the lining of the fishes digestive tract, and on into it's circulatory system and delivered to wherever they are needed, within the body, to promote, muscle growth, tissue repair, plain old energy, etc etc..) but it will also attract naturals onto the baits/baited area too, for the same reasons. Ie, the naturals, snails, bugs etc , will be looking for the same nourishment. So a good bait, imo, will be attracting naturals from the off, onto your baits and providing a veritable banquet for any fish, this, imo gives the added attraction of lots of tiny movement over the spot, which fish will home in on, imo, with their ability to detect such things , through "electro sensory" detection... So these, easily digestible baits, promote a whole cycle of events, a life cycle if you will. And even if you are fishing a vast water and have put some bait in a spot where they are difficult to find by the fish (carp)… They will still attract naturals and in turn silvers etc and be devoured by the lakes inhabitants...Worst scenario, because the enzyme activity produces gas, primarily CO2, if the baits are not completely eaten, they will gas up and float to the surface after about 3 days and be picked off by the bird life or blown into the edge where the birds, rats etc will get them...……… Basically, they will not be sitting on the bottom and rotting for weeks...…. The only time that could happen with a good bait, is when temperatures are at their very lowest, this will slow down the enzyme activity and therefore slow down a whole chain of events. So in cold conditions, it's very important to put any bait in the right place, where a degree or two of warmer temperature can make a huge difference, to the life cycle..... So there you go, a brief description of what a good food source can bring to water, plenty of life in a cycle that benefits everything that lives in it...….. Right, now shelfies, how can I put this?...……. " NONE OF THAT HAPPENS"........ They should be banned imo..... It's most likely some very clever attractor packages used in them, as to why they catch fish.. But the fact that they are stuffed with preservatives to stop the enzymes doing their thing, means they add nothing to the environment they are chucked into, with some reports suggesting that the preservatives leaking out, can actually be quite harmful to small creatures and actually kill off fish eggs...... Add to that, that the preservatives will also hinder the gut flora (enzymes found naturally in the gut) in our fish, so they cannot possibly break these baits down and utilise anything that is in them... You may as well be feeding them cardboard...... Bleached cardboard with a sugar coating imo......... When you catch a fish that is Emptying out loads of a particular bait, imo, it's a stinky winky bait that can't be digested and is just passed through, so please don't think they are thriving on it........ Right, getting back to the OP, soft baits, hard baits etc (again, just my op'). I'm going to dismiss hook baits, as I will always use a hard hook bait to get round the smaller species pecking at it , or coots etc picking up and dropping it......... That just leaves "feed baits", mine are always soft, boiled for about 20 seconds just to form a light skin that stops them sticking together in the bag. The plus side of this , is that very few of the goodies, liquids and soluble ingredients are boiled out of the baits and once they have been in the lake for a couple of hours, they will break apart when the coots try to pick them up, mostly............ And having done a few pint glass tests on them, they will literally disintergrate , after about 10hrs, if you touch one...... Whether the softness of a bit is more attractive to a carp, who knows, they pick up snails, mussels etc which are hard, but they also feed on, bloodworm etc, that are soft..... Being omnivorous scavangers I would think that the hardness/softness issue wouldn't really come into it, as long as the right food signals/attractors are being picked up on... Nuts are hard, worms are soft, they love both.... The problem I have with harder baits (boilies), it just says to me that there are fewer soluble ingredients in them and imo, will be mostly cheap ingredients held together with something like whey gel or egg albumin, and give me the feeling that they are slightly "locked up", which may take longer for any attractors to do their thing, not great if you are on a shorter sesh imo...... If I had some baits like this, I would probably try to boost them and soften them at the same time, by first air drying for 24hrs and then rehydrating them/soaking them, in something with a bit of pulling power, liver hydro, fish hydro, that sort of thing....... Even some plain old liquidised live, a quids worth of liver, liquidised and diluted with some lake water is all you will need for a few kg of bait.......