Bait According To... Tom Maker
Tom Maker talks though his bait edges, including how you can make the Manilla Mulch
The bait that changed everything has to be the Active boilies from Sticky. No other bait concept comes close to what Tom (Anderson) created with The Krill and Manilla Active, and it’s made my go-to mix even more deadly when fishing for bites. The Active concept was all about attraction levels and leaving that scent in the area with the super-soluble outer coating and dense inner core. Therefore when I’m fishing tight on a spot and generating hits on the busy day-ticket lakes, I know that it’s going to weigh heavily in my favour for those carp to stick around. It’s also untouchable when it comes to the nutritional side of things, so not only are the carp enjoying what they’re eating, it’s benefiting them massively in the long run which should be high on everyone’s priority list too.
The game-changing baiting tweak which altered everything for me was mulching up my pre-soaked boilies. Not only did it allow me to create a very attractive and easily digestible bait mix all year round, but by soaking the boilies and softening them up, it also makes a very dense mulch which will easily—and quickly—get to the depths of the majority of lakes. This does two things: 1. It creates a carpet of crumb feed accurately around your rigs, which normal dry crumb wouldn’t be able to replicate, and 2. It allows me to fish with far smaller baits than most. I can also add extra liquids like Cloudy Manilla or any of the Pure Liquids to boost the attractiveness even further. Mulch isn’t anything new, but it’s a method which has stayed in my angling and will do for the foreseeable future.
The last bait-related item I bought and loved was a bag of worms. Pretty simple really! Either used chopped in a mix or on the hook, they’re an expensive bait item but their effectiveness cannot be ignored. When the lake’s fishing granite and all else fails, ignore them at your peril!
A bait-related item I would never part with are my trusty Krill Dumbbell Wafters. Over many years now they’ve been in the bag and been my go-to match-the-hatch hookbait on the D-Rig set-up I favour. I may add a floss of maggots or tip them with a little fake bit of corn, but the body of the bait has been this when fishing over bait. Simple? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.
On my wish list for a future bait item is something that’s already been done but hasn’t really broken into the UK market yet and that’s solubles. These really do come into their own with my style of angling and it’s a concept that’s never really appealed I guess to this market. The Active baits do it to some extent with the outer coating but the core still remains. Maybe I need to twist Tom’s arm and see if he’ll do it!
I have an excessive collection of pop-ups… like everyone, right?! It’s almost like a kid in a sweet shop with an array of colours, flavours and smells. They catch you out just as much as what they catch the carp! They all have their place to some extent but as angler we do love to hoard our hookbaits!
A bait I long to use again are the 2.3mm Royal Horizon Pellets from back in the day (not the modern ones). These used to be dripping in oil, almost leaving a residue in the bottom of the bag. Back in my Walthamstow days we loved them, and they became part of my angling for a long time! Times change though, I guess.
The best piece of bait-related advice I’ve been given in the past year? I’d say quality over quantity. It goes without saying really, but I feel like I use the very best bait I can get my hands on. It baffles me when people spend thousands of pounds on new reels, bivvies, bedchairs etc., then ignore the fundamental thing which is going to catch them the carp: the bait! If we didn’t live in such a plastic world where people are more bothered about their image, maybe it would be a different story?
What is my preferred baiting approach nowadays? It’s pretty obvious I guess! Manilla Active or Krill Active, soaked in water, matching Cloudy Liquid added for an extra soak, then mulched with hemp, corn and maybe some chopped worm depending on the lake and baiting situation.
MAKING THE MANILLA MULCH
Tom starts by soaking the Manilla Active boilies in lake water. After 24hrs he transfers the boilies into a spare bucket and then mulches them between his hands. Adding a fleck of colour to his mixes is something Tom loves to do, so in goes a good helping of the yellow stuff. Hemp follows, and then he completes the mix with his latest edge: chopped worm.
In my bait bag you will always find some 12mm Peach & Pepper pop-ups. They’re definitely my go-to hookbait for the D-Rig. Trimmed down as a wafter and used on their own, or balanced out with a bunch of maggots to sling out as a single hookbait, you’ll rarely find me using any other combination with my D-Rigs now!
My preferred hookbait colour is orange. I feel orange stands out like a sore thumb to the human eye, like a life buoy does next to a lake, so why wouldn’t it stand out to a carp? It’s the same principle in my head! I also think it’s quite an underused colour and works a treat in grabbing their attention when drifting over the spot.
My preferred free food size is the smallest I can get away with! I don’t really like presenting huge beds of big baits over an area when applying my style of angling. I feel I can be cleaned out very quickly, hence why I love the super-attractive mulch mix—it keeps them grubbing around and continuing to search out the food items. It takes them far longer to eat a bucket of hemp than the same volume of boilies you’d fit in the same bucket.
My best bait edge is being accurate. A lot of anglers are amazed at how accurate I can be at distance and I think that gives me a massive edge over others when the carp are out of the limits of many anglers’ casting range. Fishing accurately is such a huge part of my angling and it’s turned a few bites into multiple fish hits, thanks to my hookbaits lying perfectly amongst the free offerings, ready and waiting for the next carp to make its mistake.
