One of the essential items in my bait bag is boilie paste. This method is extremely effective at any time of the year but becomes even more important as temperatures fall and the fish become less inclined to feed. Anything I can do to attract carp and stimulate a feeding response has got to be done. Paste is an ideal medium under these conditions. It has all the attraction of your hookbait but dissolves and diffuses over a larger area and amplifies what your hookbait is achieving. The beauty of this is that you are attracting but not feeding, the only food available is your hookbait.
Initially I used a paste wrap around the boilies. Apple coring the boilie by nibbling the skin from its sides improves the adhesion of the paste to the boilie. Later I started to use gripper leads as an additional method of carrying the paste. The rough coated flat pear leads with a hole in the centre are my favourites. You can rub the paste into the textured surface and mould paste around the lead and into the hole. Quest Baits pastes are ideal for this being just the right consistency for moulding and having a fairly slow dissolve rate. The paste can be lost from the lead on impact with the water but always remains in the hole dissolving more slowly than the wrap on your hookbait. The particles of paste lost on impact are all located around your hookbait and that has got to be a good thing. This is a method that requires you to cast more often to replenish the paste as it dissolves.
I fish on a water where lead size is limited to three ounces. This can be a real problem when the fish are showing at range. My solution was to wrap a three ounce gripper with paste moulded into an aerodynamic shape. The three ounce weight becomes a four and a half ounce weight and is capable of being cast far greater distances. Again the paste explodes from the lead on impact; but provides that much needed attraction when you are fishing at ranges where normally you would be relying on the attraction of a single hookbait.
It’s a method that has certainly put extra fish on the bank for me. Give it a try, you won’t be dissappointed.
Cheers
Ron Key
Nice posting Ron. I have used paste successfully myself on a number of occassions in the winter when things have got a bit tough. It’s certainly a little edge that a lot of anglers dont use.
I like your idea of adding a piece of paste around a gripper lead for distance fishing – will give that a go myself in the future!
Hi Ron
This method caught me my only carp at Old Oaks in September this year. I used the gripper lead, and filled in the hole with paste and cast to the far margin. I only had the one gripper lead with me and this dropped off in the fight.
Paul
Hi Ron,
This is something I use a lot and I think its a good idea as it gets a lot of scent into the water around your bait and I also believe it attracts the smaller fish that in turn get the bigger ones to come in and have a look.
John