Do certain fish prefer a certain bait?

For me, finding out what bait a certain fish favours is of major importance.

We’ve all heard the stories that say The Black Mirror liked Isotonic pop-ups and that Bazil would only fall to a Robin Red fishmeal. I’ve also heard that ‘you won’t catch them out of here on a red bait’ and ‘they won’t take a floater,’ etc., etc. Well, some of this I’ll agree with and some of it I’ll just put down to folklore.

Quickly going back to The Black Mirror’s liking for an Isotonic pop-up, I’d disagree with that, as I know how that little story came about and really it’s not my story to tell. What I will say on the matter is that at the time those pop-ups did have their day on The Mere and it was probably down to the fact that way back then they were some of the best commercially made pop-ups on the market. If my memory serves me well, those particular pop-ups did account for several fish during a mad week when The Mere carp were well up for it but I know for a fact Terry banked The Black Mirror on a good old redfish meal pop-up glugged in salmon oil. Being as I took the pictures of that mind-blowing fish and knew from the moment he opened that sack I’d want one day to fish for it, I stored that information. The full story is well documented in Terry’s first book so I’ll not go on about it too much. Anyway, the buzz word back then was Isotonic pop-ups but the important part was what the big ‘un fell to, so again, that in-depth research came into it for those that wanted to know. I know in time the great fish fell to similar approaches so I wasn’t the only one that took note of Terry’s capture of the great fish.

Burghfield’s Cut Tail couldn’t resist a pile of bait bless her

Another fish that was known to like a red fishmeal pop-up was the mighty Bazil. Now I know Bazil did occasionally get caught on something slightly different to the norm but I’d have a bet if you did a survey of the captures you’d probably find out that at least 75% of them would have been on fishmeals that contained Robin Red. You only had to look at the colour of Bazil to see that he was nigh-on stained by the bait that he ate. Luckily for me this bit of work had already been done by anglers that had fished Yateley’s North Lake before my time so the information was handed down to me before I had to do too much digging. Just to give you an example of how good that info was, it took me just 26 nights to catch Bazil. I know it was spring and things can be a little easier than other times of year but some anglers that were on there at the same time as me, had already been there a while and were still there waiting a fair while later. Maybe some hadn’t picked up on the Robin Red tip or they were just plain unlucky, I don’t know, but the importance of what a carp’s preference to bait is, in my mind, plays a majorly important role, as it did with my capture of Bazil.

Maybe we should blame Robin for getting Heather hooked on Scopex and tigers?

In my time I’ve seen the same thing happen time and time again and like Bazil’s preference to Robin Red boilies, Heather The Leather had a similar liking to Scopex-flavoured baits. Luckily for me, I too had a liking for using Scopex-flavoured baits so again, bait-wise, I was on a shortcut to quick success with The Car Park Lake’s most famous resident. Strangely enough though, Heather didn’t seem to mind whether her beloved Scopex was in a red, brown, yellow or natural coloured boilie, she just simply loved it and that goes historically right back to when Robin Dix landed her in the mid 80’s. Maybe we should blame Robin for getting her hooked on the stuff, eh?!

I’m sure there will be a few people reading this that’ll be thinking so and so caught her on a nut and I’ll not argue with that, as I know she and her mates did like a tiger at certain times of the year and again, if you read Robin’s story that addiction might well have been part of why he did so well.

Anyway, so the Royal likes a white one, Pingewood’s Pecs likes a yellow one, Charlies Mate and Nige’s Fish like maggots and the list goes on. There is the other end of the scale when you find out, like I did, that The Road Lake’s fish did like red boilies after I was told they didn’t, so we do learn as we go and sometimes, something completely different will out-fish the norm.