Stay confident this winter
Pursuit Baits carper, Oli Howles reveals a great tactic for taking your summer flavour into winter…
When the temperatures drop in winter I see a great many anglers start to change their carping approach, tactics and bait. In some cases this is good practice, as most waters in the UK will see their carp slow down in their feeding style and habits. I don’t see this as cause to completely turn away from what is already working for me.
After using a boilie bait through the warmer months, sometimes in larger quantities, I just don’t want to put all that time, money and effort to waste. What I mean is, why change from a bait when your level of confidence within that bait is at it’s highest, and not just your own confidence, but that of the carp as well?
It makes little sense to me especially if you’re using modern, highly digestible baits, such as my favoured MnM boilies, which are therefore suitable for safe application the whole year through. Yes, I agree, you can’t ignore other winter methods such as Zigs or maggots, but we all fish more than one rod, a total of three in most cases, so there’s plenty of scope to keep going with the boilies. And besides what I’m really trying to get across here is how important it is to keep going with the flavour and taste of your boilie.
One of my favourite ways of doing this is to break the boilies down to just these elements of taste and flavour - then enhance them with liquid and concentrate them into that deadly method of PVA Sticks. It’s really easy to do as well, all you need are some of your boilies and the matching flavour. The result of doing this means you can fish your normal boilie approach on one rod and with no extras needed try this ‘high-attract’ version on another. Right, here’s how it’s done - now do it and bag up!
How to make a hi-attact boilie Stick mix...
1 Crush some MnM boilies down to a fine crumb like so.
2 Then add some of the matching MnM liquid glug next.
3 Now mix everything together for an even consistency.
4 Tie-up a PVA Stick of your chosen size like this next.
5 Thread the bait Stick onto your rig and it’s ready to go!
6 Critical ‘wafting’ hookbaits are great for these tactics!