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Rod Hutchinson often explained something similar about the carp using gravel bars as the routes across gravel pits, and the silt in between being the feeding areas. Day time may be the time to fish on gravel and night the time to fish off them. The day is an 'inquisitive' take, night is a feeding take. RH also mentioned that the carp may hide in lily beds and weed in the day, occasionally picking up a bait, and again coming out of the weed to feed properly at night.

Maybe it’s time to retire the blue cheese flavour then? Lol! Ah yes, the premier range is awesome, yet I’ve been using premier base mixes, oils and additives since 1997 so I would say that! Aminos, Aminos 2000 and matrix bases are my favourites, with added robin red, the cream stimulant and betaine. I’ve a marked preference for meat/fish flavours over fruit flavours with these bases, although premier peach melba on the aminos base is a sure fire classic. I roll all my own bait, pop ups, bottom baits, dumbbells, chops etc, I haven’t used a shop brought bait in god knows when.

We as anglers put our bait on clear spots primarily, for rig efficiency and in our minds thinking that's where the fish need it to be to feed on it. Carp are masters of their own environment though and can feed where they like, when they like. So from clean gravel, clay spots, silt in varying depths , in the weed and of course in the water column itself. By watercraft and observation of any food being excreted by a carp that you catch you can get an idea on where they are feeding predominantly. In my opinion there are definitely times when fish prefer to feed on gravel, on/in silt etc. If you can work this out on your lake then it makes the puzzle easier to fit together. I've fished a couple of lakes in the past that were full of gravel bars/plateaus, silt gulleys and weedy areas. Without doubt in my own fishing the gravel spots in these lakes or the weed were the places to fish in the warmer months. Though at night time better results were achieved by fishing where the gravel met the silt. Autumn time was definitely the silty areas/clay spots that done the majority of the fish for me.

That’s the question isn’t it? How much food can a carp expect to find in gravel as opposed to silt or weed or to a lesser extent clay? How much is fishing on gravel because it’s actually better than the other substrates? Or is it because it’s “convenient” for the angler? You get exact rig presentation, the “donk” feels awesome, the tap of gravel is addictive... yet are we as anglers more reliant on creating a feature on a gravel spot through the application of bait, how much have anglers educated carp over the years to feed on gravel by processions of anglers baiting up known gravel patches? Gravel obviously produces many takes, so that would suggest that carp must be finding some types of foodstuffs, natural and bait in the gravel to be aware of this surface being a potential food source.

That’s what it’s all about mate

I think this is a great starting point for discussion (if a little off topic!). We read so much about finding the hardest/cleanest/smoothest ‘spots within spots’ but I tend to agree with Yonny. Certainly this last year on St Ives’ Shallow Pit, the very cleanest areas never produced one bite for me. All my bites came from firm/hard spots that I could still feel the odd bit of weed or silt on. It got to the point that I would avoid really clear spots and actively seek out what I imagined to be ‘new’ spots being created.

He also said if you’re too drunk to cast, chuck them in the edge! Lol! The man was a legend, RIP the late great Rod Hutchinson

They are good. He knows his stuff and has been around for a long time.

In my opinion there was only one smoked ham flavour and that was the original premier baits smoked ham. Awesome flavour. As for flavour shelf lives, watch john bakers latest videos on YouTube and he explains a lot about flavours etc. I'm pretty sure he said they don't have a long shelf life.

I like your theory about the day/night time being different, I remember Simon Scott talking about something similar in a podcast he was suggesting that in the day time the bloodworm could stay hidden in the silt but as it gets to night time and the oxygen levels decrease, the bloodworm have to come to the top of the silt to get enough oxygen,so that also makes them easier to eat, that may help explain your theory a little

Probably because some of the ingredients become too expensive to formulate it, especially if they are from the EU etc. A lot of the well known flavours are no longer the same as they were years ago due to this.

Again at Taverham, I spent a lot of time out in the boat or wading. The most productive spots tended to be small gravel patches, even harder margins, not the biggest bars or plateaus. These gravel patches were not true bars, often being no more than the size of a dinner plate. One of my favourite swims was a tight corner swim looking to an overhanging tree with gravel under it. The productive spot was not the gravel, where carp would often pick up every free bait, leaving the hookbait, but a grubby patch next to a fallen branchless tree stump. It was the route into or out of one of the back channels. Brackens on Nazeing was a lake where for some reason you had to fish on the gravel if you weren't fishing the margins. If anyone has ever seen the lake empty, the gravel bars often rise vertically from the lakebed, no slope. You simply could not get a take from the deeper silty areas. I think that some gravel bars are 'roadways' rather than actual feeding areas. If there is bait on it, you may get a pick-up, but carp are more wary and inspect everything, whereas in the silt adjacent to it is where the food is.

The real eye opener of course is using a boat to look at spots and features. I had a session a few years back which proved to be very interesting. I’d arrived late one Friday evening in early Summer after a particularly gruelling motorway journey. My chosen swim certainly contained fish but also lots of weed. Boats were allowed for dropping markers and baiting up but rigs had to be cast. Out in the boat with the H blocks I set about finding some spots near where the fish had been showing, around 110 yds. It was a jungle with only the tiniest (dinner plate sized) true clear spots. I dropped the blocks in those areas where the weed was shortest and scattered bait widely around each one. I’d been intending to fish my preferred lead clip set-up with a simple coated braid pop up but had to quickly re-tackle and use long running chods to sit over the weed. In truth I was not particularly happy doing so but it was by now nearly dark and it had taken the best part of 2 hours to get sorted. After casting each rod to their respective block, I quickly paddled out to check the presentation. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t find the right hand or middle rod for love nor money. But, purely by chance the left hand chod was sitting pretty on a hand sized sandy patch-you couldn’t have placed it better by hand! I paddled back secure in the knowledge that at least 1 rod was fishing for the night and in with a chance. In the next 24hrs I had 3 low 20’s from the right hand and middle rods. The ‘banker’ left hand rod didn’t produce a bite and when I paddled out at the end of the session to check, it was still in ‘perfect’ position and all the surrounding bait (pellets, chops, corn) had gone! Had I been able to present a bottom bait or wafter on that spot it just might have stood a chance, the chod was too blatant but the chances of hitting the spot again at that range was minimal.

Does anyone remember a time when you just walked into a swim and thought “I’ll cast one over there, one to the far margin and one under that bush” (or similar) and “fish the swim” as opposed to finding “the spot” as such? on my local water, I can stand in a swim and the other anglers will say “9 wraps casting toward the left hand side of the dam” or “18 wraps toward the water tower” or “cast on the bank and place the rig 12” from the 3rd set of rushes from the dam wall” and everyone drops into the swim and casts to exactly those spots. A procession of anglers all placing their rigs in the same place. I’ve always thought that if you fish the same spots you can only catch the same as everyone else. when I stand in a given swim, i know that at “9 wraps (or whatever) cast at the dam is “the” spot, yet I can’t ignore the snaggy margins either side of me, plus there’s a lot of unfished water that’s being ignored by 90% of other anglers. on my second water, it’s a small intimate place with (admittedly very inviting) far margins that are an easy cast, nice overhanging trees and bushes. Everyone casts tight to the far bank, yet I get more takes fishing right under my rod tips. One night I had 13 carp under my rod tips, yet the one rod fished to the far margin (just in case) only produced one carp at dawn - which was a repeat capture - I had caught it 8hrs before... under the left hand rod tip! whilst fishing the known spots can and obviously do produce fish, I think that doing things differently suits me better.

This👆 The way I see it rock hard clean spots have already been harvested, there's no grub there other than what you put out. In the softer areas around the clean stuff, or spots that are just beginning to be harvested, there's natural food so they'll be more inclined to feed there. Supplement that with bait and whallop, party time. Of course, thousand and thousands of carp have been caught off clean gravel and some of the best anglers I know of still target rock hard clean stuff, but for me I find dirtier areas are more productive.