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Multiply your Carp Fishing Catches Using Fish Feeding Secrets!

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Written by Tim Richardson

Saturday, 10 May 2008

by TimRichardson

It will probably come as a surprise to many fishermen that fish alternate frequently between one feeding mode and another, in order to best profit from various food opportunities available in the aquatic environment even within a short time period and this can change many times even over an hour or 24 hour period. The way fish feed is key to how best to tempt them in order to get a hook in their mouth and catch them, but few anglers actually give this immensely important subject the attention it demands. But the good news is that you can induce many fish feeding modes simply and easily in order to catch more fish purely by exploiting what comes naturally to them...

Blood worms (and jokers) are notorious natural baits known for being banned owing to their extreme success at match venues. This is a good lesson to all carp anglers in how carp feed and exploit their modes of feeding. Fish like carp can feed in many ways, from dashing about after fry, to slowly sifting through silt for many hours with their heads totally buried. It makes logical sense to get to know exactly what your fish is eating at what time of day or night, where and why in order to fully exploit the form of feeding used at any point in time, or to even induce the one you wish the carp to use in order perhaps to hook them more easily by leveraging special bait formats and ingredients.

Many carp anglers do not realise carp can feed on items as small as algae and tiny zooplankton crustaceans, even under a millimetre in size and derive extremely significant nutrition from such small organisms. These are very rich foods and are often exploited when fluctuations of populations are especially favourable and in spring and summer help in the time leading up to and after spawning. The success of fine particulate feeds like fine fish meal and bread crumb ground baits in many ways echo this mode of feeding which in this case can occur at any level in the water or sediment.

Because carp gain their energy predominantly from amino acids and even their tissue lipids are composed of them primarily rather than from oils or carbohydrates, it makes great sense to leverage them in inducing filter feeding to get them in an excited state! In this way you can know the fish can truly positively assess your hook baits and free baits in advance of physically sampling them, by the particles and substances in solution and in suspension in the water columns coming from your baits. In doing filter feeding mode of feeding, carp will taste what they are filtering using taste buds in their pharyngeal cavity, and can feed like this while moving or stationary and on difficult pressured waters stationary filter feeding on bait substances in suspension etc is very common.

Filter feeding is very interesting because fish like carp can gain masses of nutrients to promote their growth in safe ways without eating your baits. But they can also derive nutrients from your baits in suspension and in solution as they leach out amino acids, nucleic acids, oils and slats for instance, without actually eating your baits. So it makes sense to drive fish into a feeding frenzy mode as far as possible by inciting this natural feeding mode.

Bass and trout and even carp, bream and fish like crappie roach and barbel all filter feed to different degrees. This finely adjusted feeding is achieved using what is called the branchial sieve structures which are adjusted in order to energy efficiently exploit more abundant nutritious food particles and natural organisms. Carp can even suction filter feed at least an equal head length away from its head which is similar in energy and movement efficiency as a sheep seen feeding on grass on its knees although fish use far less energy in general movement compared to terrestrial animals not supported in water.

Not all attention should be placed upon the chemical sensing of food items as with carp as other sense may also predominate including sight and even electrical lateral line detection of the tiny movements in the water of zooplankton! In the case of bait size, the diameter of the fish's mouth is not always the limiting factor in certain feeding details, but in fact the diameter of the throat where chewing of food takes place. Small items are more natural to feed on for carp for much of the year round except at times when larger nutritious items are abundant such as fry in spring and molluscs like larger snails in the autumn etc.

The fine filter feeding mode predominance found with carp in lakes especially is really a reflection of the most dominant abundance of smaller food items available throughout most of the year such as fluctuating populations of fly larvae, tubifex, daphnia, and other benthic organisms as well as algae etc from which carp drive essential amino acids, and pigments like cantaxanthin etc. Many anglers say smaller baits are better for catching carp even though this species and many others become conditioned to eat large boilies, pellets and particles of 20 millimetres and over. But the fact is the smaller baits are more easily consumed for less energy cost compared to many larger ones and the fact that far less anglers presently use tiny boilies on their hook rig is a bit beside the point here.

If you exploit the various filter feeding modes of fish using various grades of ingredients both soluble and insoluble in your ground baits you can certainly induce far more intense and suitable feeding for hooking wary big carp. You might recall the fact that fish are lateral lines are tuned to feel the movements of live foods like maggots and sound is important in ground bait effectiveness, but smaller hook baits are well recommended in conjunction with this. With carp one thing is for sure and that is when you leverage their mode of feeding or preferably specifically induce particular modes of intense feeding, you can vastly improve your catches all year round and all you need to know is a bit more about effective bait use and ingredients manipulation...

By Tim Richardson.

About the Author:

For the best bait secrets get these: "BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And: "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And "FLAVORS, FEEDING TRIGGERS and BAIT SECRETS!" SEE: fishing bait These guides are catching personal best fish for readers worldwide! Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.

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