General
The future looks attractive By Mick Brown
Well here I am, the new kid on the block! On August 4th, I signed up as a consultant for Dynamite Baits as they have exciting plans to fill an important gap in their product range that will cater for the predator angler. Surveys show that interest in predator fishing is as strong as ever, and with zander and catfish now becoming well established, the modern scene is about much more than just pike. I am more excited about the present day possibilities than I was when I started out predator fishing as a teenager.
My first impressions of the Dynamite set up were extremely positive and I saw great potential in developing my own interests by working with them on new predator products. My outlook has always been that a predator will take the bait eventually with location being the prime factor. The nearer you can get the bait to the predator, the better the chance of it being taken. That’s why lures and mobile bait fishing techniques are so effective because you show the bait to a lot of fish. Fish being what they are though, don’t always take it. It may be that it’s too hot, too cold or that they simply are not that desperate for a meal. This is where static baits come in and this is why deadbaiting is so devastatingly effective. The pike or any other predator has time to inspect, consider and then, hopefully, take the bait. This is a vital aspect when fishing for cold water pike or any well fed predator.
Earlier on, I mentioned the word ‘eventually’ when related to when the pike takes the bait. My philosophy nowadays is to make ‘eventually’ as short a time as possible, and this is my target at Dynamite baits – to produce products that will improve your catch rate because of their attractive nature which will enable the predators to find them more quickly.
If we consider pike for the moment, for much of the time they are roaming around and looking for a meal with varying degrees of urgency, dependent upon just how hungry they are. They will detect prey by sight but smell is a vital and powerful weapon in their armoury.
Why do pike need this amazing sense of smell? It’s my view that they are designed to detect their natural prey by smell, often before they see it and I’m now talking about live fish. Imagine the smell trail from a shoal of bream, the food goes in at one end and the ........, well you get the idea! They obviously leave a huge scent trail behind them which pike can follow and lead them to the shoal. In other words, pike must be continually sniffing around as well as looking around.
I hope you see where this is leading to – flavours and attractors! In all other branches of the carp and specialist world, they of prime importance but I think that the predator angler has gone nowhere near far enough to capitalise on this.
Experiments in recent years have seen me move on from being a sceptic with regard to attractors, to becoming highly motivated into trying to find out how I can use them to improve my catch rate. This has to some extent, come about through using various oils and additives but has been reinforced with my extensive experimentation with prebaiting and ground baiting. More about that in future features.
I would just like to digress now and talk about the way in which the scent of baits and attractors travels through the water. In a river, it’s pretty obvious that the current will greatly assist the speed in which the scent travels away from the bait, the faster the current, the quicker and further it will travel. What’s more, the direction that it will travel is fairly predictable. But what of still waters? Well, in my experience, there are tremendous undercurrents taking place, often associated with strong winds causing water movement and undertows. Try wading out on a gravel bar on a windy day and stirring up the bottom. You might be amazed at the speed that the mud slick you have created, travels out into the lake and even more amazed at just how far it travels. Now imagine that that was the scent from your bait! Water movement in still waters is very complex, but take heart in the fact that much of the time this natural phenomenon is there to be used for your benefit if you make good use of it.
One event stands out in my mind, which always reminds me of how this natural scent trail works and just how important it is. During my prebaiting experiments, I had left two whole herring baits out overnight, tied to thin cotton lines and with polystyrene markers on the surface. The next morning, one marker was next to the bank, the pike had already pulled the bait off the cotton line. The other marker was well out into the lake just out of casting range. I cast a deadbait as close as I could to it but I was a good twenty yards short. Nothing happened on that rod for over two hours.
It was a fairly calm day with just a very light breeze and I wouldn’t have expected a lot of underwater flow movement. Then, out of the blue, the marker moved towards my float doing so quickly and in a straight line. It picked up my bait and carried on and a double figure pike was banked. 
Despite the lack of water movement, that pike had detected the scent from the bait which was over twenty yards away. In my view, the limited water movement meant that it had taken quite a long time for the pike to detect the scent trail. As soon as it did though, it followed it positively and decisively. Now that was with a natural bait. I believe that an enhanced bait would have drawn it much more quickly.
I’ll never forget that event and its implications. By enhancing the attraction of my deadbaits, I am convinced that I can speed up the time it takes for pike in the vicinity to become aware of them. Location still remains a prime factor. After all, putting a bait as close as you can to pike is a major benefit. For now I’ll leave it there, but you can be sure that, for me and other open minded predator anglers, prepared to experiment with bait enhancement, the future is looking very ATTRACTIVE!