Crafty carp – help needed

[Santiago]

Try fried spam with a touch of spice and garlic. The change in colour and added scent might help! Don't use the fried spam until cold, then you can avoid burnt fingertips.

[Northern_Nomad]

Spam tipped with a prawn, fished over pellets?

[Fred]

Sweetcorn can be coloured and/or flavoured, as can luncheon meat, you can also fry L Meat.
Use hemp and make a hemp paste for the hook. Pellet with a pellet paste for the hook.
Chickpeas which can be bought from most supermarkets and they can be coloured and flavoured
you just have to use you imagination, Peas, baked beans, popcorn, have all caught carp for me in the past.
Good luck
Fred

[Santiago]

Strawberries!

[LuckyLuca]

Sweetcorn can be coloured and/or flavoured, as can luncheon meat, you can also fry L Meat.
Use hemp and make a hemp paste for the hook. Pellet with a pellet paste for the hook.
Chickpeas which can be bought from most supermarkets and they can be coloured and flavoured
you just have to use you imagination, Peas, baked beans, popcorn, have all caught carp for me in the past.
Good luck
Fred

I managed a cracking carp using chocolate covered raisins once upon a time. Lunch box hookbait have often worked for me when things are slow!

[Beresford]

Thank you all for the great suggestions. I didn't realise that SPAM could be coloured with powdered colouring. I'm definitely going to try that and I'll work through the other ideas here.

Using light coloured baits had an advantage in that I could see the bait. Since I usually freeline I can see a light bait and can chose my moment to strike. I'll have to work something else out for when I can't see the bait. The other day a carp angler who had been watching me came and asked how I was fishing and catching without electronics, lead etc etc. When I explained my simple method he asked me how the hook was set and seemed genuinely astonished when I told him that I had to do that critical part.

[Santiago]

When I was a teenager I use to catch all my carp using float fished spam. I used a thick tipped waggler with about an inch of the tip sticking out and set just a few inches over depth. Strike when the float completely disappears. It's a killer method in shallow water up to about 8'. Push a size 8-10 through a small cube of meat and fasten with a small piece of grass stem! This technique is in my opinion much more fun than ledgering!

[Beresford]

I agree – I much prefer float fishing but I was getting lots of foul hooked fish so I initially went over the strike indicators – the type made for fly fishing artificial nymphs. I found I could read what was going on under the surface with these much better than I could a traditional float. From there, once I found out about the Albright knot I then went onto free line fishing. You're right any sort of free-line or ledgering technique is not as much fun as float fishing but I had to eliminate the foul hooked fish as much as possible. I was getting carp feeding over hemp or pellets, the float dipping and dancing even if a big fish brushed the line and me trying to work out was that a proper dip or a line bite. A fly fishing type strike indicator shows the direction of a pull and with this type of indicator it's easy to differentiate line bites from proper takes. Without a light bait to look at it's probably what I'll go back to. However, being able to see the bait gave me so many advantages and makes me wonder just how many times fish has picked up my baits and spat them out again without giving any indication.

I know the hair-rig was invented to get around this issue but I won't use it.

[Santiago]

The way I hook spam by burying the point makes it extremely unlikely to foul hook fish. I can't remember ever doing so! The float bobs a bit when fish are close to the bait and that's why I wait for a more positive sail away dip!

[Barbulus]

Definitely Spam and prawn..........I agree with Northern Nomad on that