| OR SIGN IN USING |
|
Blogs
Tiger Nuts
Posted April 23, 2010 by Michael Innes
I am going to speak about my favourite carp bait, Tiger Nuts.
Tiger nuts and nuts in general can get a bad reputation and are often banned on many fisheries, the problem as always is not with the nut in the water but the nut putting them in the water.
Nuts should be used sparingly, like special treats that are devoured on presentation. Kids love sweets and bribing them with sweets will get them to do your bidding, but you would not feed them sweets for every meal, at least I hope you would not.
It is this over feeding of nuts that is the problem, someone may have success with tiger nuts or hear others are and so mistakenly believe that piling them in they will get more success. They use the same baiting strategies they would use with boilies or particles and this is not the correct method.
Although they may get some initial success it only short term. Once a carp get a taste for tiger nuts they want them all the time and feed on them exclusively, this is not good for their health and they often lose weight. Using the comparison with kids again, if you feed you kids only sweets they would soon become ill and you would soon be getting a visit from child welfare.
With all this in mind what is the best strategy for using tiger nuts? This can be summed up in one phrase 'Less is More'.
I have a couple of strategies I use depending on what water and session length.
A baiting campaign; with this I would use a particle based mix, a pigeon mix is good starter, and to add a few tiger nuts. A good ratio is 5/1 that is 5kg particles to 1kg tiger nuts, this is dry weight. Note these are prepared separately, will talk about this later.
With the particles prepared and tiger nuts added I would put in about 1kg per swim twice a week for 2/4 weeks. Please ensure that you do not bait up too many swims, on RedHouse a 20+ acre lake I would bait no more then 6 swims.
As you see this is not a lot, about 1kg for every 4 acres and when you take into account the tiger nuts are mixed in with particles it is even less.
What this means is that your chosen swims need to be quality swims, ones where you have seen carp activity or the features screams carp. I prefer margin fishing, either under foot or margins of opposite bank, island etc. That said a known under water feature will also work well. What you looking to do is intercept the carp NOT mass bait and hope to pull them in.
The next method is one I would use when fishing swims after baiting campaign or on its own when fishing a lake where baiting campaign is not possible. I tell a lie it is really two methods the difference being that with one i would add couple catapults of the particle tiger nut mix, the other I would just use dozen or so loose tigers.
The common denominator is how I present the end bait. For this some prepared tiger nuts are required, separate a couple dozen hand picked one for hook baits. These are added to own container, you can add some tiger nut juice that Solar sell, these can be kept for long time, in fact fermentation is good.
To prepare the rest you will need mincing machine, I picked up an old small hand one from car boot sale. Mince about a 1kg of these, you can bagged them up and keep in fridge or freeze. If they get a little dry add some tiger nut juice but not a lot as you will adding these to pva bags. By mincing them you create very small pieces that have more surface areas and so allows more of the sweet tiger nut oil and juice waft around in water.
What I do is either fire 3/4 pouches of particle mix or dozen tiger nuts into area i want to fish, over this I place the hook bait which has been placed inside a small, note small, pva bag of the minced tiger nuts.
Depending on the water you fishing, light stocked, heavy stocked you can do this procedure when required but would recommend not more then every 2hrs on heavy stocked, but as previously said less is more and have found that it is best to sit on your hands and wait. The waiting seems to produce the better quality fish.
Using the sweet analogy again, with this method you not over feeding the carp on tiger nuts but they see them as special treat and will get competitive when they know they are about, as the flavour cloud from minced tiger will signal.
The big question you are all thinking is how to present the tigers on hook? After lot of trial and error this what I use. The hook length is covered braid with about 1" striped backed after hook eye, though to do strip back more for tying to hook.
I take one of my hand selected tigers for hook bait, I then use scissors to trim top and bottom which does two things; first it releases more flavour second it is easier to mount. As I want the bait and hook to be critically balanced I take one floating artificial tiger nut and or artificial maize, thread the real tiger on first and then the rest. You will need to use trial and error and trimming to get it so bait is just floating. I then wrap piece pva nugget around hook point and place in small pva bag.
The length of hook link can be varied depending on lake bottom and how carp feeding, I have success with 8" and 2". A picture of my hook setup is at end.
So with all this information how do you prepare the tiger nuts? This not to difficult and here is how do it, what you need is big pan the wife or girlfriend want mind you using and one of those plastic cooler boxes.
Place your washed dried tiger nuts in cooler box, boil up some boiling water and cover the tiger nuts by about 2". To this add some honey, place lid on cooler box and leave over night. You can check after few hours and top with hot water if required.
In the morning you will need to transfer the tiger nuts to pan and boil for 20min, if preparing more then one pan full move to spare container first as once boiled will go back in cooler box again. Leave overnight again and they are ready for use, though leaving for few days a even a week can get them fermenting and so improve sweetness and flavour.
I use the same method for particles and with small particles you can leave out the boiling as the cooking takes place in cooler box. The cooler box keeps the the heat in and acts like slow cooker.
Hope you like this, here is image of rig, don't forget with tiger nuts 'Less is More'.
Larger image
Tiger nuts and nuts in general can get a bad reputation and are often banned on many fisheries, the problem as always is not with the nut in the water but the nut putting them in the water.
Nuts should be used sparingly, like special treats that are devoured on presentation. Kids love sweets and bribing them with sweets will get them to do your bidding, but you would not feed them sweets for every meal, at least I hope you would not.
It is this over feeding of nuts that is the problem, someone may have success with tiger nuts or hear others are and so mistakenly believe that piling them in they will get more success. They use the same baiting strategies they would use with boilies or particles and this is not the correct method.
Although they may get some initial success it only short term. Once a carp get a taste for tiger nuts they want them all the time and feed on them exclusively, this is not good for their health and they often lose weight. Using the comparison with kids again, if you feed you kids only sweets they would soon become ill and you would soon be getting a visit from child welfare.
With all this in mind what is the best strategy for using tiger nuts? This can be summed up in one phrase 'Less is More'.
I have a couple of strategies I use depending on what water and session length.
A baiting campaign; with this I would use a particle based mix, a pigeon mix is good starter, and to add a few tiger nuts. A good ratio is 5/1 that is 5kg particles to 1kg tiger nuts, this is dry weight. Note these are prepared separately, will talk about this later.
With the particles prepared and tiger nuts added I would put in about 1kg per swim twice a week for 2/4 weeks. Please ensure that you do not bait up too many swims, on RedHouse a 20+ acre lake I would bait no more then 6 swims.
As you see this is not a lot, about 1kg for every 4 acres and when you take into account the tiger nuts are mixed in with particles it is even less.
What this means is that your chosen swims need to be quality swims, ones where you have seen carp activity or the features screams carp. I prefer margin fishing, either under foot or margins of opposite bank, island etc. That said a known under water feature will also work well. What you looking to do is intercept the carp NOT mass bait and hope to pull them in.
The next method is one I would use when fishing swims after baiting campaign or on its own when fishing a lake where baiting campaign is not possible. I tell a lie it is really two methods the difference being that with one i would add couple catapults of the particle tiger nut mix, the other I would just use dozen or so loose tigers.
The common denominator is how I present the end bait. For this some prepared tiger nuts are required, separate a couple dozen hand picked one for hook baits. These are added to own container, you can add some tiger nut juice that Solar sell, these can be kept for long time, in fact fermentation is good.
To prepare the rest you will need mincing machine, I picked up an old small hand one from car boot sale. Mince about a 1kg of these, you can bagged them up and keep in fridge or freeze. If they get a little dry add some tiger nut juice but not a lot as you will adding these to pva bags. By mincing them you create very small pieces that have more surface areas and so allows more of the sweet tiger nut oil and juice waft around in water.
What I do is either fire 3/4 pouches of particle mix or dozen tiger nuts into area i want to fish, over this I place the hook bait which has been placed inside a small, note small, pva bag of the minced tiger nuts.
Depending on the water you fishing, light stocked, heavy stocked you can do this procedure when required but would recommend not more then every 2hrs on heavy stocked, but as previously said less is more and have found that it is best to sit on your hands and wait. The waiting seems to produce the better quality fish.
Using the sweet analogy again, with this method you not over feeding the carp on tiger nuts but they see them as special treat and will get competitive when they know they are about, as the flavour cloud from minced tiger will signal.
The big question you are all thinking is how to present the tigers on hook? After lot of trial and error this what I use. The hook length is covered braid with about 1" striped backed after hook eye, though to do strip back more for tying to hook.
I take one of my hand selected tigers for hook bait, I then use scissors to trim top and bottom which does two things; first it releases more flavour second it is easier to mount. As I want the bait and hook to be critically balanced I take one floating artificial tiger nut and or artificial maize, thread the real tiger on first and then the rest. You will need to use trial and error and trimming to get it so bait is just floating. I then wrap piece pva nugget around hook point and place in small pva bag.
The length of hook link can be varied depending on lake bottom and how carp feeding, I have success with 8" and 2". A picture of my hook setup is at end.
So with all this information how do you prepare the tiger nuts? This not to difficult and here is how do it, what you need is big pan the wife or girlfriend want mind you using and one of those plastic cooler boxes.
Place your washed dried tiger nuts in cooler box, boil up some boiling water and cover the tiger nuts by about 2". To this add some honey, place lid on cooler box and leave over night. You can check after few hours and top with hot water if required.
In the morning you will need to transfer the tiger nuts to pan and boil for 20min, if preparing more then one pan full move to spare container first as once boiled will go back in cooler box again. Leave overnight again and they are ready for use, though leaving for few days a even a week can get them fermenting and so improve sweetness and flavour.
I use the same method for particles and with small particles you can leave out the boiling as the cooking takes place in cooler box. The cooler box keeps the the heat in and acts like slow cooker.
Hope you like this, here is image of rig, don't forget with tiger nuts 'Less is More'.
Larger image
Tags:
tiger nuts, bait, rig
