Well oiled machine...

Well, that put the cat amongst the pigeons! After my last article I received a disgruntled phone call virtually begging that the ‘rig that bites back’ I was intending to write about this time wasn’t put into print. Now I’m a man of my word, so instead I’m going to lift the lid on something that will be coming into its own as the water warms up.

Ian Russell swears by sunflower oil. His ultimate liquid, in fact

Quite recently we were at The Big One Show in Farnborough. It was busy, as usual, and as part of the entertainment the evergreen Ian Russell gave a talk about bait. As part of this, there was a small Q&A session and he was asked what his number one favourite carp attractor was. What liquid, above all the others, had made the most difference in his fishing? As he told us the story about this, I’ve never seen so many grown men all stop what they were doing quite so quickly. We have an awesome team at the shows, all good anglers in their own right, but every last one of us listened intently about his reply to the attractor question.

Of course, Ian being Ian, has replied in his broad ‘suvvern’ accent, “Sunflower oil”. Apparently, the collective smashing of jaws in the crowd was deafening. So much so, that an Essex wide boy stood up in disgust, shouted, “That’s only 99p in Sainsbury’s” and proceeded to leave the crowd. Bamboozled, Ian continued with his explanation and reeled of a list of big fish captures that most could only dream of. Of course he did, he’s Ian Russell!

An oil-tricked common from Baden Hall. I wanted to pull the fish down to the top of the weed from the upper-layers

Now between us, as Team Avid listened collectively on the stand, we were equally interested in the reply. Some of us have more insight, as we’ve fished with Ian enough times to know the bloke carries more oil around than most chip shops! Not quite as much oil as Frank Warwick, mind. It’s interesting, speaking about Frank, because he always used sunflower oil from tins of tuna, either to pep up hookbaits, floaters, pellets, spod mixes – you name it.

Ian referenced this too – the fact that sunflower oil was a great carrier for other flavours – almost an enhancer for them. Take your chosen boilie and pop them in sunflower oil in a pop-up tub and give them a whiff after a few hours, it’s always at a whole new level!

Literally swimming in oil. The smell of the boilies is increased

Something else I remembered Ian mentioning about sunflower oil was on an old Thinking Tackle programme. He was fishing with a then much chubbier Ali Hamidi at Chigborough and was lacing his spod mix with sunflower oil. There were a couple of reasons, both of which I believe are really valid and worth thinking about.

Firstly, it was simply that unlike salmon oil or cod liver oil or any of the other flavoured oils, sunflower oil didn’t really smell of much. Secondly, it turned his spod mix into something that was PVA-friendly. Why use a bag mix different to your spod mix? Match it up and get bites quicker.

The creamy, caramel smell of 24/7 is outrageous and the carp absolutely love it.

That’s what I love about Ian, he is the personification of the Occam’s Razor philosophy: where if there exist two explanations, the simpler one is usually better. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is. In other words, keep it simple!

In my own fishing I make complicated conclusions sometimes, but my fishing is actually relatively simple. Which is why I love the ‘sunflower oil story’ so much. As Ian rightly pointed out at the time, it’s not a statement his bait sponsor would thank him for, but don’t forget that Ian ran his own bait company, Heathrow Bait Services, for many years. He will have put every liquid going to the test and after all that, he’s found standard sunflower oil to be a real winner.

Some anglers I know are making their own oil boosters by adding flavours and attractors to these 1Cal sunflower oil sprays. Edge!

Speaking to Ian more on the subject, it was more the case that oil generally had done him more good than most other liquids. I know from my Oxford fishing a few years ago that every time I went into Ian’s swim it absolutely reeked of garlic. It was like a Frenchman’s jockstrap in his bivvy, as he was using loads of the Sonu Hemp & Cheesy Garlic liquid, which is really oily.

More recently, Ian’s swim smells like a bakery, as he had worked extremely closely with the guys to formulate the 24/7 Oil. It’s like a buttery, creamy smell and going on his recent results on a wide variety of venues, it’s doing the business.

An oil that I like for my own fishing is Chilli Oil, although none of them are actually the oil directly extracted from a chilli are they? Let’s be honest! In fact, after actually reading the bottle of my favourite variety, it’s on a Rapeseed Oil base. Probably means nothing, really, it’s more about the spice, but after speaking with Ian again recently, maybe I ought to try a Sunflower based one, or even create my own?

I have some of the new test bait in sunflower oil, as it goes. Ian threw them at me and didn’t say, “Try those,” he said, “You will catch a carp on every bait in that pot.” The smell is incredible!

That’s the great thing about oils. There are loads available and some smell of nothing but can enhance the smell of an existing attractor, whilst others pack a real punch right away. The other great thing? It’s like the bloke said, it’s only 99p in Sainsbury’s…