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When i first started out carp fishing i met a bloke on a lake i fished in the Colne valley. If I recall, it was before the hi viz hookbaits were all the rage was about but they were starting to appear more and more in the shops. Anyway, this bloke was a margin fisher, made his own bait but all in pellet shape. His hookbait though was always a hi viz pellet so he could see it better in the margin. He'd catch a few fish but he saw that the hi viz hookbait would be ignored mostly when one or two carp were on his spot but readily taken when 3 or more were feeding. I think most would agree that carp are easier to catch when they are competing with each other. He wanted to catch though when they weren't competing. One day i watched him bait a spot with his homemade pellet and slip in a hi viz one as well, the difference being the hi viz one was a freebie and his hookbait was a match the hatch (clever angling I thought to myself). His catch rate more or less trebled by making that change. When he couldn't get a margin swim he'd fish pva bags in open water and fill the bag with his pellet and one "decoy " hi viz pellet and he caught plenty. On a side note, I read in this thread about yellows for commons. Well, I nearly always fished yellows as my hi viz hookbait and nearly always caught mirrors.