One aspect of bait fishing that always seems to cause confusion is the transition from Winter to spring carp fishing. Should you put small amounts of bait in? Should you put large amounts in? On the deck or up in the water?
All these questions seem to be polarised in Spring but let me blow a hole in that. There are two essential aspects that , in my opinion, constantly don’t get referred too. They are the water temperature and the fact carp are in Pre Spawning mode. Therefore let’s look at water temperature and its relevance in 2024 …not 2004! Currently it’s 13c and therefore the carp’s metabolism is working at 100% levels. Therefore they need food and lots of it. Now that flies in the face of what you will see and read but I stand by that statement. The current water temperatures are akin to mid May and carp are feeding vociferous. So give them some bait.
I would still keep the liquid attractors going in such as the sludge , activators and boosters but in boilie-engineered form. That is a posh expression for heavily soaked boilies.
As Nutrabaits steam boilies which give the ability to use more absorbed liquids. This is a great advantage that you can easily increase the solubility of your bait application. Now the other essential aspect is that before carp spawn they are looking for saline. Now I have done to death salt and curing baits so I won’t repeat it here. However, I would now try and keep the attractors to be salt-rich such as Krill, Shrimp and any other natural ingredient that has a high salt content. The key to using high amounts of bait this time of year as opposed to later in the year in Autumn is how your baiting strategy works. In Autumn after a long season, I space the baits out whereas in Spring I try to be far more precise and accurate with loose feed and bait placement.
One final little nugget I would recommend is still to use the hookbait complexes but give them an additional attractor in the form of garlic essential oil. By simply dipping my attached hookbaits in them 10 times before I cast out, gives a great instant attraction that often leads to quick bites. Remember what you are now trying to do is transition into stimulating carps gustatory (taste) senses as opposed to their olfactory ones which are smell based. Either way if you get it right in Spring there are some great results to be had. Good luck and I’ll see you on the bank x