How much bait do carp consume?

Duncan Maclean

“I’ve found the amount and speed at which carp consume bait varies dramatically between venues. The most impressive (and infuriating) I’ve ever witnessed was when fishing a relatively un-fished 40-acre pit which holds a small head of carp. I was baiting a margin spot regularly and in the morning I would put in a large bucket of pellet and 3 or 4kg of boilies, so probably at least 10kg bait in total and if the main group of bigger fish were in the area (around a dozen or so carp) the bait would often be completely gone by mid-afternoon! This proved extremely problematic, as trying to hold the carp in an area became near impossible given their ferocious appetite and nomadic tendencies.”

Shaun Harrison

“Although I have been in the fortunate position of watching groups of carp feed on many occasions I have never been able to hold back to see how much they can actually get through and have invariably ended up dropping a rig in amongst them. There are so many things to consider, such as the amount of readily available food in the water as the carp will not go hungry so won’t need to gorge themselves in the same way as the fish on a very hungry water will. Also, we need to consider the amount of fish in a shoal and the type of food being eaten. Sweetcorn for instance has a high percentage of water and vast amounts can be consumed weight-wise compared to boilies for instance. Sorry, not much help on this one.”

Julian Cundiff

“When I returned to Drax in the late eighties, the standard tactic was half-a-pound of 10mm hi-protein boilies and gently, gently tactics which meant most lads were happy to catch maybe a dozen, at the most, carp a year. From standing and watching the carp tell me where they were and what they were doing, I thought those fish were hungry shoal fish, maybe in groups of 6-10 fish at times and the delicate approach was not going to hold them. So straight in with Nutrabaits Enervite and Bergomot Oil and Sweet Cajouser which I rolled thousands, and I mean thousands of 18mm baits of. I remember clearly finding what I thought was an interception point about 60yds out in front of Peg 36 and before I even cast out, I fired out 3 x 12 egg mixes of it. That was approximately 900 x 18mm boilies and halfway through the baiting, the carp were rolling over the marker. That night I had six to 20lb 12oz and in six weeks of just the odd overnighters I had 63 carp. The fish went pink due to the nature of the bait and I can honestly say I have never seen carp so turned on by a bait and eat so much – and so quickly. I would bet the fish were eating 10-15lb of bait in the evening!”

Rob Hughes

“I’ve seen carp eat an awful lot of bait and I think most anglers would be quite surprised with how much they can actually get through. When we used to fish Raduta for a weeklong session, the first job was to sound out the swim with the fish finder then dump in a 10kg bag for starters. It was spread out over a fairly wide area but we would get bites straightaway and then go through 50kg of boilies for the rest of the week. In the UK, I have literally turned a 10kg bucket of pellet/particle upside down to create a big carpet. I have then caught on it and have gone back out to find nothing left. 10kg of particle is nothing for a group of fish to get through.”

Dave Magalhaes

“If I’m honest, I’ve never actually witnessed fish eating large amounts of bait, but then that’s probably down to the fact that I’m rarely a heavy baiter. Over the period of a few hours, I’ve sat up a tree and watched half-a-dozen commons between 25lb and 35lb, continually clear a re-baited spot in the edge. They did a 5kg bucket of hemp and corn. The most memorable though were the fish in Bushey Park. They used to absolutely love pellets and you could get them troughing on them in the edge. We used to literally cut a bag of pellets and just tip it in at arm’s length. I’ve watched a mid-thirty mirror clear a whole kilo bag of halibut pellets in a little over five minutes, then just waddle off down the margins and start feeding again.”

Gary Bayes

“The guinea pigs in my pond regularly eat 200 grams each in an hour or so. I doubt any of them are doubles yet although they are getting there so 400 grams for a 20 would be easy and I have seen 20 pound-ish fish eat that much. I fed three-kilo of Soluballs on a spot on my stock pond and about 20 carp came and took them within minutes, even I was shocked how fast they ate them and the roach looked really miffed but still managed to mug some crumbs as the carp spilt bait out of their gills. I love watching fish eat, it’s simply epic and surprising how much they can eat in one go when they want to.”

Matt Eaton

“The most profound example I can recall of carp consuming large amounts of bait was when I fished Horton. This was back when there used to be a big autumn feed up around the country. I was concentrating on one particular swim that I fished a few times one year in late September/early October. Each day I was introducing ten kilos of 14mm Grange on one spot. The first shows would be seen around 11:30 as the fish turned up to feed and would continue until around 1:30. If I hadn’t had any action before that, the chance was over and they were gone having cleaned me out.

“They were clearing that amount of boilies in two hours which, on the face of it, sounds a lot. Considering there were probably 30 fish present, many of which were over 30lb, it breaks down to less than twelve ounces for each fish.”

Ian Poole

“An easy one this and quite recent too, being something I witnessed down at top Oxfordshire day ticket water Orchid Lake back in the summer. I was on my first visit to Orchid for several years and so I could get re-acquainted with the lake’s impressive stock, owner Marsh kindly showed me a marginal spot he’d been recently baiting up with some corn. It wasn’t long before a few of the Orchid residents turned up and despite seeing numerous marginal feeding carp in the past, I looked on in disbelief as an upper-twenty mirror cruised in and within a matter of seconds hoovered up the best part of half a tin of corn. It was a good reminder of just how greedy our quarry can actually be.”

John Elmer

“Back in 2008 when I was fishing The Road Lake, there was a certain area that I was lucky enough to get a lot of bites from. This area of the lake was a margin spot (no surprise there). Now, on one occasion that springs to mind was when I caught a fish called C Scale and back then she weighed 28lbs. I managed to introduce 2kgs of Scattered Baits Garlic And Black Pepper onto this spot. 2kgs doesn’t sound like a lot of bait, but for a margin spot, it is over the top I think. The rig was in position and as I sat and watched, C Scale and another fish demolished this bait in about five minutes! Three years on and C Scale is in excess of 40lbs – that’s one greedy fish.”

Jason Hayward

“Carp that are feeding hard is a great spectacle to watch. I think we completely underestimate the amount of bait a large (30lb+) fish can consume. On a number of occasions I have seen individual carp eat 30 to 40 14mm boilies in a matter of minutes. A few years ago, I fed a group of six fish from low-thirty to around mid-forty approximately 2.5kg of boilies in about 30 minutes. The conditions were in early summer, with a big southwesterly blowing and the barometer was at 996, which is good! My baits were 14mm in diameter, so 2.5kg constitutes roughly about 1000 individual food items, so in half-an-hour, that is proper troughing!”

Adam Penning

“I think it can be astonishing just how much bait carp will eat in certain situations. I can think of several occasions when I have seen small numbers or even individual carp plough through seemingly large qualities of boilies. There was a snag that King Fungus used to live in on Ant Island at Wraysbury and I used to feed him there most days. Over the course of the summer this one fish consumed over 70kg of boilies by which point I was virtually feeding him by hand.”