The power of crumb

Boilie crumb is without doubt one of the most attractive forms of loose-feed and its quite clear why: not only does it provide a bed of super-soluble attraction, but prolongs feeding responses, enticing fish to feed harder on the fine crumbed particles.

In its basic form, a boilie contains a skin that locks in attraction, relying on water to breakdown the bait thus releasing the attractors held inside. Using crumb speeds up the process of those attractors being leaked from the bait, which is one of the reasons why crumb has the great power of inducing a quick feeding response. Not only is crumb one of the most successful attractors in its own right, it can be used to good effect under certain conditions to provide neat edges in your angling armoury.

The mighty crumb

The Crumb Ball Trick

Super fine crumb is devastating at enticing fish to feed hard on the deck, grubbing around for the small particles among the silt and debris on the lakebed. The fine crumb can often drive fish into a competitive feeding response, increasing the chance of a fish making a mistake on your hookbait. Being extremely fine, crumb can often be quite difficult to get down to the deck, especially if the water is deep or turbid by any description.

By finely crumbling up your chosen amount of boilie crumb, such as the extremely-soluble Live System baits, then adding a healthy dose of liquid attractant, it will allow you to form small dense balls of crumbed boilie. The crumb in its make-up is very coarse, allowing it to be easily balled up when combined with a suitable liquid. And by using a thick, syrup type of liquid, such as Corn Sweet Syrup, it will help the coarse crumb bind effectively, allowing you to form small balls of super sweet attraction.

These fall quickly through the water column, breaking down on impact with the lakebed, creating a lovely bed of crumbed attraction packed full of food signals, ready to create an awesome feeding response.

Hook Protection

Leaf decay becomes more of a problem throughout the winter months, often rendering certain presentations such as bottom baits useless if impaled by leaf matter. A small bag of crumbed baits not only protects the hook point, but also if loosely compacted into a small mesh bag, will allow the rig to settle softly over any dying weed or silt that may litter the lakebed.

Depending on the degree the bag of crumb is compacted, this will affect the speed the rig falls through the water and settles on the bottom. If the lake is extremely silty, a soft squishy bag of crumb will help the rig settle effectively on top of the silt, enhancing the rigs effectiveness under the given conditions.

Simple but effective bags of crumb aid presentation

Small bags of crumb are ideal for protecting the hook point

Size Variation

Like any particle bait or boilie size, mixing the size of the crumbed boilie you use is an edge in itself. Mixing the sizes means the carp cannot regulate their feeding pattern on certain sized baits, which means the likeliness of a successful hookbait pick-up is much higher. There are many tools on the market now that allow such easy of creating a mixture of crumbed baits, giving the carp more to deal with in any feeding situation.

Varying the sizes of crumb is important to maintain a constant release of attraction

Liquid Attraction Carrier

Boilie crumb from baits such as the Live System baits and Pacific Tuna are very coarse in their make-up. This means that the baits are extremely thirsty and porous, making them the ideal carrier of liquid attraction. A few handfuls of boilie crumb will quickly absorb a healthy dose of a Response Booster Liquid, which will penetrate directly into the crumb over a short period of time.

This is a highly effective tactic during the colder months of the year, allowing you to introduce maximum levels of attraction into the swim without a high quantity of whole bait present.

By adding a good dose of a super attractive and cloudy liquid the night before a session, it will allow the potent goodness to fully leach into the crumbed baits. Once introduced into the water, this cloudy attraction will instantly leak off into the water column, forming a perfect halo of feed triggering signals in and around the baited area.

Crumb is a great carrier of liquid attraction, boosting with Response Cream is an effective winter tactic

Keeping it simple

In the winter months, the key is to keep things simple, soluble bait will no doubt work much more effective than a large bed of less soluble bait in any situation. A very basic but effective mixture of crumb and corn has always had a proven track record in the winter, providing a basis of easily digestible food for the carp to eat and pass through their system quickly. During the winter, the carp still need energy, but by altering the type of loose-feed you introduce will certainly help put the odds in your favour at this tricky time of year.

Boilie crumb no doubt has its advantages in the winter, but equally throughout the entirety of the carp fishing year. Crumb can be utilised in many different ways, but a lot of it is down to your own creativity and imagination.