Last Week’s Winner
The lucky winner of last week’s Mistral Boilie Giveaway is Scott Colman from Barnstone, Nottingham. Scott will shortly be receiving a bag of Crab Creme boilies and a bag of Peach & Black Pepper boilies. Please allow up to 28 days for delivery.
We have 14 fine winter catches for you this week. They come from all over the country,
from excellent carp for experienced anglers to youngsters landing their first carp.
If you would like to submit a catch report for either Carp-Talk or Carp-Talk Xtra
simply click the following link and follow the simple step-by-step procedure. www.carptalk-online.co.uk
Quest Baits Chilli Chocolate
Having pestered Shaun Harrison at Quest Baits for information on new products the
company may have in the pipeline for 2010, Carp-Talk can reveal a little information
about the new Chilli Chocolate boilies.
Shaun told Carp-Talk: “As you know, I am constantly playing around with different
ingredients; it’s very much a hobby as well as a job. Every once in a while I put
a few things together in the right order and the carp go silly for them. The Chilli
Chocolate seems to have just ‘happened’. I never set out to produce a bait anything
like this, but a string of circumstances has seen me semi-abandon the bait I had
in my mind for this totally different change in route. It’s funny how things go.
I had been sourcing totally different ingredients when I stumbled across two of the
items in Chilli Chocolate, which I really liked straight away and early trials indicated
the carp definitely did, too. The ingredients weren’t particularly suitable for what
I was working on at the time, but I had another project on the go, talking to a flavour
company about producing something utilising a couple of ‘special ingredients’ I had
requested. Suddenly everything married up and, before I knew it, we had Chilli Chocolate
boilies. Open the bag and you get that lovely rich chocolate smell. Bite into the
bait and a distinct chocolate taste starts to mingle with the subtle fish base, followed
by a slight chilli bite which the carp simply love. The tank fish loved them, the
garden fish loved them and not surprisingly the wild fish have, too. So far they
have produced from the off everywhere they have been used. We are really excited
about this bait.”
Chilli Chocolate boilies are red/brown and contain no bulk oils, so they will not
suffer with the problem of oils congealing and trapping in the other attractors during
the cold months. Most importantly, this leaves the baits in an easy-to-digest form.
Release is Monday 1st March 2010, along with the usual pop-ups, dips, glugs, pellets,
paste and feeds to match. Prices: £4.29 for 350g, £8.99 for 1kg, £39.99 for 5kg.
Shaun told Carp-Talk he has a few more things in the pipeline, but this is all he
is telling us about for now!
Dateline:__June 2000
Anglers:> Martin Clarke
Weight:>>>45½lb & 46lb 2oz Venue:@@Summerleaze lake
A kiss on the cheek... Martin Clarke with his 46lb 2oz mirror
Martin Clarke has landed many fine carp from a variety of difficult waters over the years - a real dedicated big carp angler who puts a great deal into his fishing. He knew of
Summerleaze, it being in the vicinity of his old stamping ground and another gravel pit of note - the famous Taplow lake in Berkshire. The stock of carp in Summerleaze was low compared to the 60-odd acres of water, however a few had grown into very big fish.
Being primarily a boating lake, Summerleaze anglers at one stage were restricted to a mere few hundred yards of bank, but then the opportunity to fish from an island was made available to syndicate members. It was from the this island that Martin made a historic catch of mirrors weighing 45½lb and 46lb 2oz in June 2000.
The dramatic nature of these captures was heightened by a series of mobile telephone calls by Martin to Simon Crow at the Carp-Talk offices. When he landed the first mirror, a fantastically long and beautifully proportioned 45½lb
fish, he rang Simon at our office. Within minutes Simon rang me to ask whether I could drive to Summerleaze to take some photos and get the story.
The lake was 45 minutes to an hour away, so I made haste and within five minutes or so was in the car and heading for Berkshire. The traffic was bad and I seemed to get held up at every junction or set of traffic lights.
About half way into the journey my mobile phone rang and a now slightly high-pitched excited voice of Simon Crow blurted out the following. “Chris, Chris, you’ll never believe this, but I’ve got Martin Clarke on the other phone here and he’s looking down on another fish in his landing net which looks as big as the first one!”
I pulled over quickly, raising a couple of angry beeps from the disgruntled driver behind, “What,” I exclaimed. Simon continued, “It’s true, Martin’s telling me he’s got the big fully scaled in the net as we speak and it’s massive… what a catch, two whackers like this inside an hour.”
I restarted my journey, still thwarted by heavy traffic, which I took little notice of with my mind being full of enormous carp.
It was sometime later that I eventually made it to Summerleaze. Once inside the gate I met syndicate leader Richard and together we walked around to the furthest point where we waited for Martin to come across in the boat.
Sure enough within minutes he appeared from a distant island. We scrabbled aboard. “Well done mate… what are these fish like?” I asked, “I still can’t quite believe it Chris, two fish like that, both of them lake records - wait till you see them,” Martin excitedly told me as the boat chugged off towards the island.
Soon we were again on dry land and once everything was prepared the moment came to see the beasties - first the 45½lb mirror. It was a totally classic big carp, and I’ve been lucky to be in the presence of a few such carp over the years, this one was up with the best of them. But I guess the star of the show had to be the heavily scaled 46lb 2oz mirror. Through not as perfectly shaped as the other mirror, because of the scaling it was without doubt far more striking.
For more information visit www.questbaits.com.
If you’d like to get your hands on a bag of Quest Baits Chilli Chocolate boilies,
simply send an email to competitions@carptalk-online.co.uk marking the subject line
“Quest Chilli boilies Giveaway”. One lucky winner will be chosen at random from entries
received and the closing date for entries is Tuesday 2nd march. The winner will be
announced in the next issue of Carp-Talk Xtra. Please don’t forget to add your contact
details, name, address, etc.
