PLASTIC HOOK BAITS

I well remember the first ever World Carp Classic match at Madine in France in 1998. Afterwards there was an award ceremony where every competitor was given a packet of this brand new product plastic sweetcorn from a company called Enterprise Tackle.

I can still remember the comments and scorn those products got many thought it was a joke at the time and many discarded their samples onto the floor, I had no such reservations and knew it was exactly what I had been looking for, so I happily picked up all of those dozens of discarded samples.

I recently tried the Fox Armamesh to great effect for chopped worm mesh bags on a water where small fish were stripping the hook bait of worms in seconds. I last used the same tactic about 12 years ago on another problem venue and just as it did back then it worked very well, I must say the phenomenal pulling power of these worms never ceases to amaze me.

At the time all were unflavoured I simply could hardly wait to try them as well as experiment with flavouring the golden grains.

I was not to be disappointed as we all know there is not a carp that swims that does not love sweetcorn. So at last I had a viable useable perfect hook bait for the job. Until that point I had had to use maize buoyed up with pieces of yellow rig foam that would lose buoyancy as they soaked up water and quite often the maize would stain black with use over the silty meres where I was predominantly fishing and take on the foul smelling scent of the lake bed - hardly what I needed.

The new plastic corn was a revelation right from the off and ticked all of the boxes and to my delight took on the smell of my chosen flavours beautifully.

A great many anglers even to this day cannot get their head around carp picking up fake baits and will avoid using them, as we know carp have no other way of testing baits other than by taking them into their mouth to sample them so the con trick works every time,

I have caught on both the flavoured and unflavoured corn but I much prefer the flavoured variety, these are certainly better for night time bites as you might expect and I found in winter the glow in the dark yellow maize has been nothing short of sensational. So there’s a good edge for you.

I think, if the truth was known, many of the captures credited to various companies’ boilies have in fact fell to plastic corn. I cannot imagine how many carp this simple but amazing bait has caught. Sadly there are some cheap plastic imitation baits appearing on the market which often smell very strange. I would certainly avoid using them and stick with the known brand names like the ones from Enterprise.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading some of my Eureka moments and find them useful in your own fishing. Perhaps they will also help you discover your own Eureka moments but make sure you don’t run down the bank naked when you have one.