Hey get this; if you treat your fish like swimming tongues by exploiting what stimulates their specialised taste and smell cells in as many potent ways as possible; you will do very well indeed! This seems to be a little knew too many carp anglers who are often tunnel-visioned; just thinking of what they themselves prefer thinking as an angler, and not truly about what fish often senses prefer far more! It is obvious that what is dissolved in the water from your bait triggers responses of many kinds in fish, but how do you begin truly maximising these responses using bait; let’s see…
To begin with, I will group carp and catfish together, because many anglers catch both or target both and seek the biggest ones possible. These fish share so many dietary essential requirements that baits meant for big carp or catfish will often catch specimens from each group. Carp and catfish are like swimming tongues because they are covered in receptors cells inside and out that maximise the ability to detect potential many food substances in concentrations as low as 1 part in a million or even 3 parts in a billion!
A human smelling a bait in air is more than a little different to a fish detecting the bait in solution in water and for this reason many anglers simply choose the baits and substances they use from their personal perspective; not really appreciating how a bait and its substances impact upon fish senses directly or indirectly to various degrees between different baits and their components! Fish use cells literally outside their bodies as well as familiar nose and internal mouth and also throat cells too for instance, to detect potential substances in water. The systems fish use to detect your bait are so very impressive and sensitive that you would be a fool not to find out how to exploit them to the maximum and make catching your fish so much easier, for life!
Some specific cells and systems detect various substances like particularly essential and also very stimulatory non-essential amino acids, or mineral salts or individual vitamins etc. Many different substance-specific cells and different functional-orientated cell are found in the surface skin for example and are distributed over the body, and in particular areas like the face, fins, nose, throat and interior of the mouth etc. As a side note here; even oils are partly soluble and this is significant especially in the use of lecithins in lower temperatures, improving digestion, more effective bait substance distribution in the water etc.
The lateral line in carp and many Cyprindae fish extends from the tail to the mouth and utilises specially adapted pit cells. This line of pits and cells are obviously highly important as they extend along the entire length of the fish. In carp the lateral line is so important that through evolution, the jaw bones and head has become shaped so to accommodate this system providing vital external sensory inputs!
Over all carp possess an amazing radar array with nerves all combining in the brain for the fish to respond appropriately to, and this is where we can truly exploit all these systems together in our baits and fishing approaches and tactics etc together in our favour, to make them far easier to catch! Obviously the more you know about what you are hunting, the more you can exploit everything vital to them, and carp olfaction and chemoreception are prime examples to exploit! You might discover carp become more predictable when you think like one rather than like an angler; even sensing weather changing and air pressure changes; many top anglers develop extra sensitivity naturally by being outside so much and this can act like a sixth sense when casting into a swim, choosing swims and so on!
Your bait substances in solution (in the water) are detected by many various cells not least by the vital barbels covered in very high densities of receptor cells that help carp locate and identify potential foods (and threats too!) Your bait is very much more effective if it pumps out high concentrations of stimulatory substances that are easily dissolved or imbibed by water, and so much more easily detected by fish olfaction and chemoreception systems (and by others too!)
Fish are able to detect these solutions and home in and follow the concentrations back to where they are highest and so find your free baits and hook baits for example. This is where balanced nutritional baits and nutritionally boosted readymade baits can really do manipulate fish feeding behaviours and dominate fisheries and catches! This is especially in the case where as many essential needs are covered as possible in a bait; so giving your fish multiple essential reasons to eat your bait and all the so-called bio-active substances used in baits all add to this impact!
This kind of bait exploitation of vital fish senses approach can even give your own adapted or homemade baits greater advantages over other anglers competing baits. So as you can appreciate, it will certainly pay you to find out more!
By Tim richardson.
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