Choosing the right bait color
The correct choice of bait color can greatly help both the floater and the bottom fish both in attracting fish and in keeping them on point during the fishing process. Famous manufacturers of bait mixtures produce bait of various colors and shades; in sport fishing there are active experiments with “multi-colored” food. So maybe color matters? This topic is very interesting and worth talking about in detail.
At one time I was firmly convinced that the color of bait depended only on the color of the components of the mixture. At the same time, mixing and moistening traditional ingredients (crusks, ground sunflower seeds, bran, cereal flour, etc.), as a rule, resulted in a mixture of various shades of brown. That is, a normal neutral color, in many ways similar to the tone of the bottom soil of most reservoirs, and I considered the brown color of complementary food to be universal, working well for any fish. However, over time he changed his views, often moving from a “black and white” mixture to a brighter one. During the experiments with forage flowers, I simultaneously communicated a lot with experienced beavers and floaters, comparing their observations with my own, and, in the end, came to certain conclusions, which I will share. I agree that the topic is “slippery”, but you should not ignore it if you want to take advantage of all the opportunities that good bait has.
Features of fish vision
First of all, considering that it is wrong to base our experiments on sheer enthusiasm, let’s get acquainted with ichthyological works related to the vision of fish. I see no reason not to believe scientists, and I learned the following important details:
- Most fish have color vision, and within very wide limits (no worse than that of humans), and are able to distinguish between primary colors and their shades.
- Despite the fact that most of our rivers and lakes do not have high water transparency, fish vision is well adapted to both turbid water conditions and low light conditions, and fish actively use their eyes to navigate at close range.
- Most fish see contrasting colors best.
- Large fish distinguish objects and their colors at a greater distance than small fish.
- Green shades are perceived by fish differently: at significant depths they appear light, in sandy shallow water they appear dark.
- Red shades are seen differently by fish: at depths over 4 m as dark, and in shallow waters, on the contrary, as light.
- The visual features of fish allow them (unlike humans) to examine in all detail objects located literally a few centimeters away (and distinguish their tones); in other words, the fish distinguishes colors directly while feeding.
- The vision of fish is largely determined by their habitat, and fish living in the same conditions see approximately the same.
Getting acquainted with the scientific literature, I learned that the vision of these underwater inhabitants has not yet been fully studied. (the vision of a fish, as it sees, a meek excursion -) Well, okay, the more interesting it is to conduct fishing experiments, the more valuable the results will be. I think that frequent questions that arise in the process of choosing the color of bait are related to the fact that there seem to be many exceptions to the clear rules, which are important to know about.
Every color has its time and place
The temperature of the water and the degree of its transparency are the main criteria when choosing the color of bait. Often these things are interconnected, because the colder the water, the more transparent it is, which is usually for the cold season, when dark mixtures, and not contrasting with the bottom, are more effective. Conversely, in summer, when the water is warm and turbid, bright, light-colored bait often works perfectly, and an increased effect from the spot of bait is observed when it contrasts with the bottom. But this is, so to speak, a bare theory, because in practice you encounter completely different situations.
It is quite useful to observe the behavior of a carefree little thing. Small fish can be shy and reckless, but usually small fish always respond well to bright colors, very quickly approaching colored bait. For example, bleak - a cheerful, brave fish - loves bright baits (yellow, white, red), and even those that produce abundant dregs of the same shades. In addition, bleak not only reacts well to bright colors in the water column, but also fearlessly feeds from the bottom on a contrasting spot of complementary food, despite the fact that it itself becomes clearly visible to predatory fish. I repeatedly observed how pike grabbed a bleak on a light spot of food, the rest of the flock brothers instantly scattered, but very soon returned to the food. Both small roach and small crucian carp fearlessly enter a bright spot that contrasts with the bottom, especially if the reservoir is crucian carp and is overpopulated with small spots. Loves bright colors and other little things.
Attractants for carp bait
Flavorings for carp, as well as for other types of cold-blooded inhabitants, depending on the form and purpose, can be divided into:
Photo 3. Sunflower oil is the favorite smell of carp fish.
As already noted, this classification is conditional, and the names of flavors have a general meaning.
Constant experiments allow you to choose the ideal attractant for a specific situation - a reservoir, time of year, fish.
We confidently recommend it and, in fact, sour pear is not only a favorite of this season, but also a favorite as an addition to any sinking boilie. It has high buoyancy, bright color and does not lose its taste for a long time!
Favorite #1 – Acid Pear
Our very favorite sour pear. We have a lot of happy moments associated with this pop-up. We always combine floating and sinking boilies because it makes it easier for the bait to get into the fish's mouth. Orange color is one of the priorities for the reservoirs of our country, and CCMoore Acid Pear is simply the TOP attachment for carp fishing for us.
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We confidently recommend it and, in fact, sour pear is not only a favorite of this season, but also a favorite as an addition to any sinking boilie. It has high buoyancy, bright color and does not lose its taste for a long time!
Favorite #2 – Citrus Zest
You could say this is a new item in our arsenal. The structure is in no way inferior to sour pear, since this is one of the Elite Range series from CCMoore. They have a light yellow tint and go well with boilies such as Richwroth Tutti Frutti, CCMoore Tangerine Juice, Starbaits Hot Demon. You can use them in any combination, we just listed those that we tried and the result was always very good.
Favorite #3 – Hot Demon Fluoro
The jar contains white and pink boilies. It was white 10mm pop-ups that worked perfectly for us, the halves of which we attached to sinking boilies. It's worth noting that we prefer to use small nozzles. 12-14mm. We connect it to the pop-up and cut it off. It turns out to be a kind of “dumbell”. On one of our fishing trips, Hot Demon simply blew up his swim, and we used it with a variety of fruit recipes.
White works very well at night because it is more visible to fish when there is a lack of natural light. Although pink pop-ups cannot be written off. But according to the stories of some of our familiar fishermen, in their practice the pink color often works, even on fairly large fish.
Favorite #4 – CCMoore Mini Bitez
Small floating boilies Mini Bitez, of which there are a huge number of different colors. Their peculiarity is that they have no taste. You can dip them with whatever flavor you need. In order for it to dissipate, just leave the jar open for a couple of days. We have already written an article about using Mini Bitez. It tells many of the subtleties about catching large carp with small baits. Read here.
These little pop-ups expand the range of your attachments with just one purchased jar. This will be especially good for beginners. You immediately buy all the necessary colors, including black (!). By sorting through them in the bait, you can always see how many fish were biting the most on one color or another. And in the future you will have a clear idea of what exactly the carp likes.
Let's try to understand the aromas for carp fishing that keep up with the times and list the main “folk” ones, i.e. "carp" smells.
Let's try to understand the aromas for carp fishing that keep up with the times and list the main “folk” ones, i.e. "carp" smells.
Group of fruit aromas
.
The main ones for carp: strawberry, peach, pineapple, banana, plum, we will include here tutti-frutti
, and all sorts of mixtures between them. There are also fruity scents that are completely exotic for us, but those listed are completely sufficient in our opinion. Moreover, by mixing them together, you can also get an additional interesting smell.
Honey.
Another main smell for warm water.
Drops, sprays and dips based on the aroma of honey can be used virtually all year round, both independently and in combination with other aromas. Caramel.
Used less frequently, but not rarely indicates extremely superior effectiveness. Caramel is often used to flavor baits.
Hemp.
Without this aroma, almost everyone thinks, the carp “does not want to eat.” Both hemp grains and extracts are used. For most fishermen, this smell is the main one in both the bait and the bait. It is advisable to use it all year round.
Garlic.
Works great when combined with other scents. There are no limits to imagination with all this. Garlic + peach? – please; Garlic + honey + vanilla, also excellent. Here is experience and more experience.
This is definitely not the case with many scents that are used when fishing for carp, but this is the base. Using only them, you can significantly increase your chances of catching carp. Odors for carp in cool water (temperature less than 10 degrees).
Garlic.
Works great when combined with other scents. There are no limits to imagination with all this. Garlic + peach? – please; Garlic + honey + vanilla, also excellent. Here is experience and more experience.
Behavior of large fish
With large roach and respectable crucian carp it is a completely different story. Roaches weighing 300-400 g and above can be very wary of light-colored bait, and for this fish I use mixtures of dark red and brown colors. Various shades of red bait have worked well when catching active, large roach, but the color should not be bright, but closer to crimson. I consider crimson-colored complementary food to be universal for large trophy roach, not only in summer, but also in spring, autumn and even winter.
Large crucian carp is a completely different story: I don’t know of any other fish that would have such a negative attitude towards bright colors of complementary food. Of course, a large crucian carp approaches and eats up the light bait, but does not enter the spot itself, but eats particles from the edges. This fastidious fish enters a dark bait spot completely fearlessly. Over the past couple of years, I have stopped experimenting with light, bright mixtures when catching decent-sized crucian carp. And personally, I am perplexed by the light industrial baits with the inscriptions “Carp, crucian carp”!
Of course, crucian carp can drive you crazy with its whims (especially in summer), and I won’t be surprised by any of the most incredible bait information, but I’ll still risk giving advice: try it, color traditional snow-white pearl barley or bright yellow millet with at least coastal mud and feed the crucian carp dark food, he will most likely like it.
Surface types of bait for fishing
A feature of surface baits is their “ability” to remain in the upper layers of water as long as possible, that is, to form a dark or light food suspension that is far visible to the fish. These baits are available in ready-made form in all fishing stores, where the bags simply depict bleak or small roach. Such simple markings will immediately make it clear what the bait is intended for. But ready-made baits are too fragrant, so they need to be mixed with some kind of filler, but without going overboard with the ingredients, otherwise all the fragrant smell of the finished mixture will be lost and you will have to add it again.
So what kind of fishing do you need this kind of bait for? Typically, surface baits are used when you are going to catch fish such as bleak and roach. In lake fishing and reservoirs, this bait often gives good results when catching rudd, and sometimes also silver bream. Occasionally, bream comes out on a fragrant suspension, especially when it stays in the middle layers of water, and this more often happens when the weather changes, at night and early in the morning. These baits are mostly used in shallow water areas.
Such baits are also widely used in shallow ponds when fishing for crucian carp. Even small carp willingly come to the thrown bait, but these are usually kilogram specimens, rarely more.
How to deliver such bait. Yes, simply - in bulk, if your floats are no further than six to seven meters. But bait balls fly better and more accurately if they are not molded tightly or sticky. When they hit the surface, they should not gurgle, falling straight to the bottom, but crumble with a dull thud on the water. And after this comes the most important moment, on which fishing success often depends - the very effect of the bait hanging in the upper and middle layers of the water.
Surface baits must be crushed through a sieve to make them crumbly. Their composition depends on what kind of fish you are going to catch, but universal ingredients include: finely pureed bread, soy flour, corn flour, pudding powders, biscuits for flavor. For a clearly visible food mixture, milk powder and even cocoa are used. Water is added slowly as it is absorbed and ready. The main thing is that the balls of bait do not look like plasticine, but scatter easily on the water and in the upper layer of water no deeper than thirty centimeters.
In addition to worms and maggots, you can use the crust of white or rye bread as bait. This is also a surface attachment, since the bread always floats to the top. The crust, as a bait, despite its simplicity, is very attractive to white fish. The only drawback of such a nozzle is that it is quickly washed away by currents and just water. The crust of the bread is cut into cubes and placed on a hook, first sticking the sting into the hard part of the cube, and then, turning it in the pulp, withdrawing the sting back under the hard part of the crust, but without piercing it through.
You can read more about surface baits in the article - “Surface baits”.
Bream loves bright colors
But bream, unlike the fastidious crucian carp, is unlikely to be frightened by bright bait. When fishing in a river when the water is cloudy; with high activity (good bite) of bream of all sizes and in water of any transparency and temperature, I use bright food; yellow, white, orange. With bream, I never darken the same millet, pearl barley, pasta with mud or special dyes - only a natural bright color. But variegated baits, which contain yellow, white, red, and brown shades, work especially well for bream. Moreover, when wetted and actively mixed, the colors can “smear”, giving complex shades that are effective for fishing. However, when the bream becomes capricious, which often happens when the weather changes or in cold water, I use dark brown bait. It is quite difficult to stir up a sluggish, apathetic bream with bright colors, but it can unduly alert the fish.
However, I think that large bream (over 2 kg) are almost always confident in themselves both in the river and in the lake, and they almost always react normally to a bright spot of food. If it doesn’t react, then I think that for other reasons not related to bait - you never know for what reasons the bream has no appetite today.
Responsive carp
Carp is a fish that responds superbly to bright bait. I think that it is no wonder that many imported boilies are so bright, and often disapproving reviews of branded boilies from anglers are associated with the quality of the baits themselves, and not with their bright colors. Many times I was convinced that in the summer the carp completely fearlessly stands on any spot of bait that is the brightest, most contrasting with the bottom, and the larger the carp, the bolder it becomes.
Some experienced carp anglers claim that a bright bait mixture often stimulates the carp's appetite. It is quite possible that this is so, but then it is logical to assume that bright, light-colored bait can stimulate the appetite of other fish (the same bream). However, it is important to note that with carp, not everything is so simple and unambiguous. For example, when catching this fish in clear water of lakes (with water visibility over one meter), the best result was shown by dark bait, not contrasting with the bottom, but with bright individual components. For example, granulated feed with a small amount of bright yellow canned corn or ground sunflower cake with a small amount of steamed peas. Such colorful baits often turned out to be the best when fishing for carp in cold water in early spring and late autumn.
Bait for fishing. Compound.
Take two tablespoons of flour. Then add two tablespoons of starch to the flour. But that is not all. This mixture cannot “work” by itself. At the moment this is just the base of the bait itself. And the most important secret lies in an additive called MUSK.
It can be in either liquid or dry form. For a given amount of flour and starch, literally 4-5 drops are required.
Gives off a very strong smell!
After you have added a few drops. Add water and knead like regular dough. This bait is not noticeable and only reveals itself through its smell. Which, by the way, not many people know about. When bait gets into the water, this strong smell acts as a bite activator. In a short time, fish are collected in large quantities. From my own experience I can say that this bait is VERY good to use when fishing for carp. I also recommend using it in “wild” reservoirs. Where there is quite a lot of food and the fish bite very poorly. In this case, it is musk that will help you “stir up the fish.”
But I want to repeat myself! Please do not use this bait for poaching purposes! Take care of our nature! And take only as much fish as you need for your meal.
Black complementary food
The black color of the bait is also very good when fishing for crucian carp, tench, chub, ide, large roach, especially when fishing in fairly clear water. At the same time, the black color of the bait is not at all “camouflage”, as it might seem; on the contrary, it is a contrasting color both on a light sandy, pebble, and on a dark muddy bottom, and the black spot of food is clearly visible to fish. However, black bait is dark bait, and wary fish fearlessly enter the dark spot.
There are different ways to get colored bait for yourself: there are branded, ready-made dry mixtures that you can buy in the store; there are natural bright products that can be used in bait; There are also special food dyes that you can use to color your bait mixture.
Summer
In the summer, for fishing on a feeder and float tackle, light-colored coarse commercial baits are used, as well as homemade porridges from peas, corn, and grains. Dark-colored bait is used for targeted fishing with small fish - roach, silver bream, bream, roach. To give the bait a smell in the summer, I use fruit flavors, as well as honey, garlic, hemp, chocolate, and molasses. Animal components are added to bait mixtures extremely rarely in the summer, when fishing in heavily pressed reservoirs, as well as during a sudden change in weather.
Autumn
In the fall, bait is prepared by mixing a dark roach mixture with light crucian carp or carp in a 1:1 ratio. At the beginning of autumn, a handful of pastochino or grain croutons are added to the resulting mixture; in the middle and end of autumn, any additives from the bait are excluded. Also, animal components are introduced into the bait - bloodworms, maggots, chopped worms. To add flavor to the bait, flavorings such as coriander, garlic, hemp, shrimp, and fish oil are added to it.
Contrast between bait and bait
I will note one more important point - the relationship between groundbait and bait, because we fish with bait. Pay attention to which “sandwiches” work best - in most cases, those that are contrasting in color. For example: white maggot plus red bloodworm, yellow maggot plus white maggot. But very often, the maximum effect is achieved by baits and baits that contrast with each other. For example, a fish may best catch bloodworms on a yellow bait spot, and this will be the best color combination. As for the universal, win-win color scheme for the bait-bait tandem, I think it is as follows: the bait is contrasting in color with the bait, but the latter is “variegated” and contains particles similar to the color of the bait.
For example, we go out with an eye on crucian carp, we have white maggots, red worms and bloodworms - a universal set of natural baits for all occasions. At the same time, the complementary food is black, but it must contain white and red particles, even in small quantities.
Aromas for warm water
To catch carp at water temperatures above +14 0 (May - August) use the following scents:
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In addition, for the preparation of bait in carp fishing, such a popular flavor as corn molasses with betaine is used. Flavors with such odors are added to bait mixtures, they are used to treat baited boilies and canned corn attached to a hook.
Cold water scents
In early spring and late autumn, when the water temperature drops below +140 C, flavors with such odors as:
- garlic;
- anise;
- hemp;
- cinnamon;
- honey;
- shrimp;
- shells;
- bloodworm;
- maggot;
- crabs.
Since odors spread worse in cold water than in warm water, flavorings are used in small quantities - a large amount of flavoring added to the bait or applied to the bait creates a concentrated fragrant spot near them, which will not attract, but repel the carp.
Aromas for winter fishing
For winter fishing, the following flavorings are added to the bait:
- bloodworm extract;
- maggot;
- garlic;
- shrimp;
- hemp.
Add flavorings to the bait in an amount of 20-30% of the dose recommended by the manufacturer.
But again, this division is rather arbitrary. Fishermen often follow not instructions, but their own experience and vision of the “correct” smell for carp or other fish. They use not only different aromas and their concentrations, but also make all kinds of mixtures from additives, combining aromas.
Is bait color the basis of success?
Of course, the color of bait is not at all the basis of success, because taste, nutritional value, and its smell are much more important. But the correctly selected color of the mixture can play a significant role - in successful fishing, as we all know, a lot depends on “a little bit”. It’s like a mosaic, everything seems to be assembled, but some important little detail is missing, causing the whole structure to fall apart.
Duck hunting is a joy for the soul
Winter fishing in reservoirs
Do you know how to fish for carp?
