Antarctica is home to vast icy navy blue seascapes not found anywhere else on earth. Active wild animals are not scared of humans and soaring icebergs can be seen everywhere. Stunning sunsets can be witnessed in the spring in Antarctica while the summer months have the sun beating down on the continent all hours of the day. An Antarctica cruise lets people in on a ton of activities they can do on top of the usual Antarctica touring. antarctica cruises

An Antarctica cruise usually offers the popular pastime of wildlife observation. With wild animals all over the place you have the choice of observing creatures like whales in the comfort of the ship deck or exploring the land to get a better look at other wildlife including penguins. Orcas along with Humpback and Minke whales frequent this area so do not be alarmed if you encounter during your cruise. Antarctica is surrounded by blue freezing waters that are made more amazing by the sight of such lovely animals.

Antarctica is home to various seal types which you will likely encounter once you go traveling on land. Some of the varieties include Leopard, Weddell and Crabeater seals. February to March is the time seals really come out as this is when there are many chicks or baby penguins to feast on. Spring is also a fun time to catch glimpses of playful penguin chicks and large Orca whales. Penguin chicks begin hatching at the same time more whales show up which is before springtime sets in so you might want to visit the place months earlier if you want to see these happen.

Your days aboard an Antarctica cruise will be filled with all sorts of activities from watching wildlife to enjoying the scenery so it definitely is not a waste of money. Many cruise ships allow passengers a few nights on land to camp out as part of the tour to get a better feel of the scraggy terrain. Keep in mind that this isn’t exactly camping in your backyard. You will have a better time on the excursion if you came prepared for all sorts of weather conditions that could occur. People brave enough to try Antarctic camping can look forward to an extraordinary adventure. antarctica cruise ships

An Antarctica cruise usually comes with a chance to look at wild animals and various scenery closely by coming down from the large ship and riding a smaller one for easier traveling. Other favorite activities aboard these cruise vacations are canoeing and kayaking. Groups of kayakers are generally accompanied by guides who assess the freezing waters and environment. Smaller vessels run by ship personnel are likewise provided to take passengers like you to the shore for a closer look at whales.

People can also engage in Antarctica scuba diving to acquaint themselves with what the continent holds underneath its cold surface. It is as easy to dive in other areas as it is here. Expert divers can go exploring Antarctica waters because they are used to the weight of the equipment and know how to use them while underwater. Get certified by enrolling in a dry suit dive course then put in the extra dive hours and you will be more ready to take on the challenges of the trip.

While the fun activities never stop in Antarctica there is also a lot of entertainment on board the ship. You have the choice of resting in fancy accommodations or visiting the fine dining room for a quick bite after a long day of exploring. Going on a cruise that is comfortable and still allows a person to get in on various amusing activities is what an Antarctica cruise is all about.

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What to Do on Your Antarctica Cruise

Antarctica boasts of a vast expanse of deep blue waters across the region. Wildlife roams freely without a care for humans watching them and icebergs are plentiful. Stunning sunsets can be witnessed in the spring in Antarctica while the summer months have the sun beating down on the continent all hours of the day. There are many activities aboard an Antarctica cruise that tourists can do besides sightseeing that will make the Antarctica trip all the more memorable.

The wildlife in the area can be readily observed while Antarctica cruise traveling. You have the option of watching penguins up close on land or observe whales nearby while on the deck of the ship the end result is the same you will not have a shortage of wildlife to look at. Orcas along with Humpback and Minke whales frequent this area so do not be alarmed if you encounter during your cruise. Antarctica icy waters become more fascinating with the addition of these wonderful creatures.

You may get a glimpse of several seals while on land that have made Antarctica their main home. Besides Crabeater there are Leopard and Weddell seals observed in this region. February to March is the time seals really come out as this is when there are many chicks or baby penguins to feast on. Springtime is likewise perfect for glimpsing huge Orcas and frolicking penguins. If you arrive there months earlier you might be able to watch the hatching of chick penguins and see more whales. If you want more comprehensive info on antarctica travel that site will help you.

With an Antarctica cruise you get all you paid for and then some since it includes wildlife observation and visiting unfamiliar territory along with other fun projects. Guests are allowed by some cruise lines to go set up camp briefly on land as a way to experience the rough terrain. Be warned though that you cannot compare this camping with the one you do behind the house. Have everything you need handy for the trip so you do not wind up unprepared for any and all climate shifts that could happen. Antarctic camping is for those who are up for a challenge and do not want to leave disappointed.

You can leave the Antarctica cruise ship and go on a smaller boat to explore more closely the wild animals and scenes unique to the area. This type of cruise likewise offers favored activities like canoeing as well as kayaking. Guides often come with kayakers and they are the ones who gauge the icy water conditions and overall surroundings. There are also smaller vessels piloted by ship staff to take you onto land and help you see the whales a whole lot better.

You can explore the deep Antarctica waters through scuba diving and get better acquainted with the aquatic life forms there too. It is as easy to dive in other areas as it is here. Only divers with enough experience are able to go diving in Antarctica because they can handle and know how to use the heavy gear involved. A way to be prepared for the activity is get certified via enrolment in a dry suit underwater swimming or diving course and put in the hours before a sail.

Even as there are plenty of ways to entertain yourself in Antarctica do not lose sight of the fact that you are still on a fun cruise ship vacation. You have fine dining plus accommodations to look forward to after a day of explorations. Antarctica cruise travel delivers a ton of activity choices while providing a comfortable cruise vacation.

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An Antarctica Cruise is Teeming with Activities

A question often asked by visitors is which Anglesey beach would a local person recommend to make their stay on the island one to remember. There are in fact many outstanding beaches on this island in the Irish Sea off North Wales, boasting over 125 miles of exquisite coastline. And significantly many of them regularly win European Blue Flag and Resort Seaside Awards as well as Green Coast Beaches for water quality.

The most popular beaches of Anglesey are not necessarily the easiest to reach, yet the struggle to get there is well worth the effort. Take Llanddona beach on the east coast, a soft sandy expanse which sweeps in a north easterly arc and surrounded by high lush green hills and trees, yet the road is a narrow one and a challenge for the driver. A large quantity of silver coins was recently discovered on this beach, and more may be hidden, while there is a tale of the Witches of Llanddona which has fascinated people over the years.

Llanddwyn is an Anglesey beach situated on the south east corner of the island, approached through Newborough Forest, an impressive collection of conifers where some red squirrels still survive. When you reach the beach the vast expanse is breathtaking, whether you arrive here on a blustery winter day or in the heat of the mid summer sun. A nearby rocky island is home to an old white lighthouse and derelict church, where Demi Moore filmed scenes from her paranormal Half Light movie.

A visitor on an island beach may notice bright orange life rings placed at strategic points which are there to ensure that in an emergency someone in danger of drowning in the sea can be assisted. Anyone seeing a life ring damaged needs to call the local council immediately. Just think that in 2008, thirty eight people lost their lives off the island coast when in difficulty.

If you travel to the west of Anglesey at Church Bay there is an interesting Green flag beach, where the coastal path runs along high cliffs which surround this narrow cove popular with swimmers. Often you will see some kayaks gathering at the beach ready to begin a coastal exploration, or perhaps go further to the Skerries Rock lighthouse. On your way to Church Bay you will drive along a narrow country lane, decked with flowers, and on arrival you cant miss the Lobster Pot restaurant.

In the south west is Holy Island where you find the Port of Holyhead and two Blue Flag beaches at Porth Dafarch and Trearddur Bay. To celebrate the Millennium, a Celtic cross was erected in the marram grass at Trearddur. These two beach locations also have dog free zones operating between May and September, which is a facility asked for by a number of people.

Some thoughts about what to do and not to do when you are on an Anglesey beach: it is not advisable to go out to sea in an inflatable dinghy, especially if the wind is offshore. Eating a large meal before swimming is not a good idea, and remember beach wardens are on hand to answer your questions. Do drink plenty of non-alcoholic fluids in hot, sunny weather to avoid dehydration, and dont leave pets in parked cars in hot weather.

Some folks look forward to leisurely walks along the coastal path, and watching beautiful sunsets, while others are keen to test their skills in various adventure sports like sailing, diving, coasteering, surfing and kayaking. For everyone, however, it is likely that you will always treasure something special about your time on an Anglesey beach.

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Find an Anglesey Beach, Indulge Yourself this Summer

Explore Wisconsin: Have your friends chosen wherethey want to go on your Wisconsin summer vacation? You are not alone, most families have not yet decided where they want to go. It can be a quite time consuming process to discover that ideal vacation getaway, so explore the choices for your Wisconsin Tourism. You will discover lots of alternatives and it may not be a simple choice!

Experience Lake Michigan Tributarys. However, if you are careful and take the time to do some planning, it should make your summer vacation fun and one of those family memories that you will treasure forever. The most common mistake people make is first choosing a destination. The perfect vacations begin when you first choose what you want to do! Do you want to go camping, surfing on a beach, playing and relaxing at a park, or touring cultural or heritage locations? By deciding what you want to do to start with, you are off to the best start of choosing that perfect Wisconsin family tourism destination!

Once you know what you want to do – you can think through the various Wisconsin tourism destination areas and discover those appealing attractions that you hope to go see or do. By spending a short time planning, you can also discover those destinations that have a variety of attractions that are interesting to both you and your entire family. Online travel guides are invaluable that can help you choose detailed information about events that are more comprehensive than a simple attraction name and address. Now that you know what you want to do and where you want to go, a professional high quality online Wisconsin destination guide will provide you a comprehensive article describing each attraction to help you make an educated decision about what you want to do and where you want to go.

Here are three Wisconsin vacations alternatives that you may want to consider:

Idea #1: Steelhead Fishing – Algoma, Wisconsin. If you are looking for one of the most exciting types of fishing available for you it may well be steelhead fishing in the Lake Michigan tributary streams. Here you will find the steelheads (rainbow trout) that have come in from the open waters of the lake to the tributaries to spawn. While they are there, for the short period of time they are there, they are in range of the fly or spinning rod.

Idea #2: Spend a Beautiful Day at Peck’s Wildwood Wildlife Park. When traveling through the beautiful north woods of Wisconsin, you will find a wonderful place to visit. Peck’s Wildwood Wildlife Park is located very close to the town of Minocqua, and makes a wonderful place for the whole family to get away and have a fun day. People love that they can get very close to the animals here – it makes for a great experience and great photos.

Idea #3: Cave of the Mounds – near Blue Mounds and Mount Horeb, WI. This National Natural Landmark is an excellent way to get introduced to caving in the Midwest. The cave is recognized by the Chicago Academy of Sciences as “the significant cave of the upper Midwest.” Here you will be able to view a wide array of colorful stalactites, stalagmites, columns and other formations. Since the cavern began forming over a million years ago it has some of the stunning beauty that only such limestone caves can hold.

As you can see, you have a wide choice of alternatives available to your family when it is time to select that ideal family vacation escape. Take advantage of your time to plan carefully what you want to do and where you want to go. Use a quality travel guide to help you find those perfect Wisconsin vacation spots. And you will find that you will experience a family vacation with a lifetime of stories.

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Explore Cave of the Mounds – on of the Top 3 Family Wisconsin Tourism Ideas

However, if you are careful and take the time to do some planning, it should make your summer vacation easy and one of those “family stories” that you will cherish forever. The most simple mistake people make is first choosing a “destination.” The perfect vacations start when you first select “what you want to do”! Do you want to go camping, tanning on a beach, playing and relaxing at a pool, or touring cultural or heritage attractions? By deciding “what you want to do” to start with, you are off to the best start of choosing that perfect family vacation destination!

Now that you know “what you want to do” – you can think through the various tourism destination regions and find those perfect attractions that you want to go see or do. By spending a little time planning, you can also select those destinations that have a number of attractions that are interesting to both you and your whole family. Online travel guides are useful that can help you choose comprehensive information about destinations that are more detailed than a vauge attraction name and address. Since you know “what” you want to do and “where” you want to go, a real high quality online Ohio destination guide will provide you a comprehensive article describing each attraction to assist you making an educated decision about what you want to do and where you want to go.

Here are 3 Ohio vacation alternatives that you might want to consider:

Idea #1: Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum – Pickerington, Ohio. Stop in and visit the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum to see the 11 custom motorcycles built by Arlen Ness. If you are a motorcycle devotee you know that Mr. Ness was “the king of choppers” so seeing 11 of his bikes will be a real thrill.

Idea #2: On your next visit to Ohio, spend a day at Historic Roscoe Village in Coshocton. There are a variety of attractions at Roscoe Village including living history tours, Canal cruises, exceptional shopping, gardens, a museum and more. Roscoe Village was once a vibrant port town along the Ohio and Erie Canal system. Today, its charm and attractions have been restored in a recreated 1800s village atmosphere.

Idea #3: The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium – Powell, Ohio (Central Ohio). The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Powell, Ohio is a world famous zoo, with a world famous curator, Jack Hanna, located along the O’Shaughnessy Reservoir on the Scioto River just a few minutes north of Columbus, Ohio. The zoo owns 580 acres of land in all, which includes the Safari Golf Course, Zoombezi Bay Water Park, and Jungle Jack’s Landing.

As you have discovered, you have a wide variety of alternatives available to your family when it is time to select that ideal family vacation escape. Enjoy your time to plan carefully what you want to do and where you want to go. Select a professional travel guide to help you discover those perfect Ohio destination guide. And you will know that you will experience a family vacation with a lifetime of stories.

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Discover the Top 3 Summer Ohio Tourism Escapes

If you are looking for versatility and durability in an boat inflatable then the Sea Eagle line of boat inflatable is just what you are looking for. The Sea Eagle rafts often do a threefold job serving as a fly fishing boat, whitewater rafting, and lake fishing boat. What is often over looked is it can be used if you just want to spend a lazy day just floating down the river or touring a river either by yourself or with a small group of people. By small group, two to three people besides yourself. There are several different types and styles available, below are just a few that are offered.

The first boat that you may find interesting as well as highly inflatable is the Sea Eagle 6. It can hold two people so long as they dont amount to over six hundred and fifty pounds, and may be equipped with a light motor. The boat itself weighs just twenty five pounds and is great for long camping trips in which you really dont want to carry any heavy equipment.

Then theres the Sea Eagle 8. This boat is extremely popular, though it should not be confused with the r(8). This boat is made for a single person and can be used for either fishing, boating, or random floating if you just want to get away for a while. After all, what better place to get away than the middle of a lake where there is no cell phone reception?

The Sea Eagle r(8) has a set of oars, rowing seat, foot pump, FHS fisherman seat, repair kit, and a set of instructions for those who will actually read them. This raft is built with a two compartment floor which can be inflated, and there is a safety chamber of the main chamber. This really is a great piece of equipment, and it can hold three adults or roughly nine hundred and fifty pounds. Deflated the raft measures 24x21x8, and inflated it can take a 3 horsepower gas engine. This really is a great boat as far as inflatable rafts go, and if you are into some heavy duty lake-faring adventures, then you should definitely look into this one as it w ill not disappoint.

Next of course there is the Sea Eagle 9 raft. It is like the r(8) in that it is everyone’s favorite for river floating or even fly fishing, but it is very different in that it’s rated for Class III whitewater rafting. The biggest difference between this boat and other boats of it’s type is that it is capable of holding up to 1200 lbs. This means that it can carry up to five adults, which is a considerable improvement over many other inflatable rafts. The boat itself is composed of Polykrylar, and the time to pump is 10 to 15 minutes with a manual pump This boat can also be equipped with a motor of up to four horsepower.

Other options available for this inflatable raft are a sun canopy, windshield, bench seats and floor boards.

There are number of different accessories that you can purchase for this raft which include a sun canopy, windshield, floor boards, and a number of other things. What is added on is entirely up to you.

If an inflatable boat is what you seek, then you may feel free to stop seeking, because the sea eagle as everything that you could possibly want. Whether you want to fish, soar across the white waters, or aimlessly float down the river, there is some boat somewhere that will have everything that you need.

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Sea Eagle Inflatable Rafts

If there is one thing to consider when buying your next sleeping bag, I say its all about temperature. Get the right range! If the forecast says its going to be warm during the day and then cool off overnight, find out how cold cool off really is, then buy the sleeping bag that is good to 20 degrees below that!

Two years ago, my husband and I decided to get a bigger boat (a common problem with boaters) and we found one in late October that was perfect. It was kept at a marina a few hours West of where we live, so we decided to bring it home by driving it down river, more cost effective than having it trailered. However, the boat had no heater.

It was time to get a new sleeping bag. So off to the Internet I raced. After checking 2 or 3 weather reports, I searched for info on sleeping bags that were good down to around 45F. Of course, I ended up with information overload – everything from synthetic versus down filled, to size & color & length & shape & blah blah blah.

Overloaded with information, I ended up choosing a pretty blue sleeping bag which matched the color of our new boat. It was made by Mountain Hardwear, was good to 50F and was in my price range. Too bad I didn’t look around a little more, I would have noticed other sleeping bags in the same price range which were good to lower temperatures.

But no, I went with color and completely regretted the decision that night. Arriving at the marina to pick up our boat in the early morning, the temperature was in the mid 60s and we enjoyed a lovely day cruise down river. We ended up on one of our favorite islands near Brockville, Ontario and had a nice meal just as the sun was setting.

Darkness came early and we knew we’d have an early start, so after a quick tour of the island to let our dog do his business, we made our beds in the aft cabin and were asleep by 10:00 p.m. A few hours after midnight, our dog woke me up and when my feet touched the floor, it felt like there was ice in the cabin!

I quickly ushered the dog into the cabin then dove back into my sleeping bag, but I swear my feet didn’t warm up all night – it was miserable. I didn’t even have the benefit of my husbands warmth, because he was all bound up in his own misery right next to me.

After a long and miserable sleep, we woke early and dressed quickly. We heard on the radio that the temperature had dropped to 25 degrees overnight! I discovered the hard way that there is nothing worse than being cold on a boat. And weather forecasts are often wrong! So, when buying your next sleeping bag, get one that says it works to temperatures 20 degrees lower than you think you might need – you won’t regret it!

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Don’t Forget Temperature When You Buy Your Next Sleeping Bag

In fact when you have made your homemade baits despite any mistakes you might make, well over 80 percent of your recipes will catch fish and equal results on readymades with ease. The fact they will be fresh and new is a giant factor in this too. New baits will arouse far less care and suspicion for most fish as they have never even been hooked on your new bait before. One of the great things about homemade baits is that they can keep you well ahead of the fish and fellow anglers who always follow the crowd using readymades, giving you even better consistent catches and more big fish!

Now I’m not saying that you will produce a wonder bait which fish simply jump straight into your net and beg for! Even with the very best baits, all the usual skills of fish location, bait application and skilfully playing your big fish are still required. But on your own homemade baits, the rewards and joys of catching your personal life time best fish on your personal secret bait formula is just incredible. This is why it is so important to exploit the massive fish catching factor of making your baits very unique.

This is a point lost on most readymade bait users! The great edge of bait is being different to ones fish wary of already as a result of previous hooking and captures on it. So make your baits as unique as possible as frequently as you think your results indicate you may need to.

Homemade baits often succeed far longer than many readymade baits purely because you are the only one using that particular bait! Baits for carp are often termed attractor baits or food baits depending on their nutritional value to the fish biologically speaking. High flavour levels and high concentrations if used are sometimes an indicator of a bait being more of an instant attractor type of bait much more than a food or nutritionally stimulating oriented bait.

It might sound hard, but making baits that really work effectively is easy, and your baits do not need to be perfect like commercially produced machine rolled round or barrel shaped boilies or pellets shapes etc. There are obviously very many methods of making baits and you do not need to follow conventional steps at all, in fact there are many steps you can leave out completely. This makes things very much easier, saves hours of time and take the least effort possible!

You do not have to make individual baits in round shapes. Why not roll out a bait paste made of eggs, liquid additives and dry powders made into a dough and simply cut this into little odd shaped pieces? You could pop these into a pan of boiling water for about a minute or so to make boilies.

Making homemade bait is as hard as finding a bowl a mixing spoon or knife, a few eggs and some flours or other dry ingredients. Many flours about the house will bind to form a bait, from semolina and soya to maize and corn flour, and dried rice flour. For example, crack 5 or 6 eggs into a bowl and whisk them adding any flavouring or liquids additives you might choose, like ketchup or a flavoring from the baking aisle of your local store. Take 8 ounces of semolina and the same of soya flour and slowly add to your eggs until a dough the feel of putty is made. It is very easy and quick and with practice you can do this at lightening speed!

When your dough is ready you can use it immediately, or put it labelled plastic bags for later use. Store baits in the fridge or freeze them. It is best to make a note of the ingredients and levels in each individual bait mix. To make around a kilogram of bait it takes about 6 eggs with your dry powders. But this is a very rough guide and every mix can vary widely depending on ingredients, their solubility etc.

I understand value like anyone else so making homemade bait for 3 pounds as opposed to buying it for 12 pounds makes great economic sense. This is startling especially when you think of the saving on 10 or 20 kilograms of homemade baits compared to commercially produced readymade ones. The saving can be in the region of 80 or 90 pounds for just 10 kilograms of bait. You will have been using many kilograms in a season so figure your savings on homemade bait, it could easily total you not hundreds but thousands of pounds so easily saved!

If having a different bait can produce such a difference in results you may as well have the goal of being as innovative as possible with yours as you create new versions for those big fish you dream of catching. The spooky thing about new baits on a water is that they very often produce the biggest most sought after fish within a short space of fishing time because they are fresh and new. Now this is as great a motive as anyone needs to take up bait making and is the icing on the cake. You can use simple forms of bait mentioned here, but you will discover that with successful baits comes the excitement of making more creative ones, and bait making can be extremely exciting, even an integral addictive part of your fishing, as you thirst for more information!

By Tim Richardson.

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How To Make Carp Fishing Baits And Save Money With Homemade Bait

For the more technically minded fisherman, carp do not get their energy needs from carbohydrates but mostly protein and also fats and oils in their natural diet. Being aquatic they are extremely well adapted to extract far more energy from protein foods than humans on land. The very basic protein requirements of carp are extremely significant in terms of making effective baits because these are composed of basic building blocks called amino acids, some of which carp essentially need to consume in order to survive.

There are around 10 basic essential amino acids that carp need although there are a few others, but let’s keep things as simple as possible for now. These include: lysine, methionine, arginine, phenylalanine, valine, tryptophan, leucine, isoleucine, histidine and threonine. Carp eat foods containing these amino acids because they are essential. Using almost anything that a fish basically needs to survive can give you the edge you need to get bites although exploiting fish nutritional needs are not the only way to get bites; in fact, far from it!

Our bodies and carp bodies have evolved and adapted to extract energy in the most efficient ways from food found in our natural environments. With carp we can simulate or even boost the natural attraction and stimulation of substances found in their natural foods in our baits. The range of ingredients, extracts, liquid attractors, flavors etc we can use to exploit carp natural food detection senses is phenomenal and ensures we can always make unique homemade baits!

The fuss made about protein carp baits is fair because exploiting dietary essential, particularly highly stimulatory ones such as amino acids is very significant for good results. But just because amino acids are popularly exploited by using protein ingredients does not mean you have to use protein ingredients at all in our baits, and there are very many other angles and approaches to take which are very economical indeed and even wheat, rice or corn flour based baits made with some know-how work a treat! All you need to do is manipulate and exploit any of a range of attractor and stimulator substances, many of which you can add by way of proprietary liquid dips and soaks etc.

But protein based baits are not strictly necessary to get bites of course and a multitude of baits including those based on carbohydrates like wheat flour or corn flour will still catch very well indeed providing they are altered to keep them in effect new and different to previous baits. Many of the most economical bait recipes based on carbohydrate ingredients have consistently caught big fish for decades despite arguments raging over quality food versus crap baits and other theories. If you keep changing your attractors even just by using alternative proprietary flavor dips you can always keep ahead of your fish on any particular fishery; just remember to exploit what stimulates fish naturally and avoid over-dosing with solvent based flavours unless you are fishing single bait style.

So many carp fisheries are over-stocked that the fish need to eat your bait and treat it as natural food. As many carp anglers know well, possibly the greatest edge is to be different and so you can fish with confidence against any well-used readymade commercial bait knowing your unique bait has a great edge of being different and unique. This is one great motivator for me to make my own extremely economical and productive homemade carp baits rather than spend 10 pounds or 20 Dollars on a bag of readymade bait that others are already using!

You might wish to use things like bird foods which can be used both as binders and cheap but nutritional ingredients and just add eggs for example to help bind and can boost your bait protein and nutrition considerably despite carp digestion limiting effects in low temperatures especially. Bait making does not need to be rocket science and the simplest and cheapest of bait recipes catch big fish regularly for decades if fished well. Although carp love proteins for there amino acids particularly, stimulatory and attractive substances are so varied that you will never be short of a new effective homemade bait or alternative potent and unique readymade bait dip; all you need is quality know-how…

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Make Carp fishing Bait And Save Money And Catch Better Fish!

You pay a fortune on bait hoping to catch lots of big fish and yet the average carp angler is just that – average, because he catches no more fish than the rest. This literally means something he is doing or thinking approach just is not working. Most anglers simply throw money in the bin in bait costs etc because they have missed something so very vital to success!

Most often carp and catfish anglers use boilies, pellets and hemp, maize and sweetcorn and prepared commercial ground baits, as free baits to attract and hold fish in their swim. And these are obviously consistent baits for fish like carp and catfish. But often the hidden (or obvious) problem, is that you end up with many fish gorging upon your free ground baits and not getting hooked at all, or comparatively little, compared to the feeding activity going on in your swim. This happens far more than anyone is really accurately aware of and is a more truly shocking thing when you calculate just how much of your bait is consistently going to waste…

There is no point spending money to feed fish unless perhaps you are a fish farmer! If you keep on doing what is not working most efficiently and expecting different results, this is akin to the common definition of insanity. Carp and catfish are living dynamically reactive creatures and really do remember and associate with dangerous baits, rigs, spots in swims, tackle detected and so on.

Even hard-fished for big catfish as well as carp can become particularly unresponsive to popular baits and techniques even though they may have been so successful previously! So how do you save all this wasted money on bait used in free baiting and actually improve your catches by converting your baiting into more fish, consistently; because that is the big issue here! You see it is not just bait costs which mount up through the year, but all the associated but increasing costs of fishing; like time not earning, travelling costs, food and drink money, fishing memberships or tickets, the huge regular costs of replacing all those fishing tackle bits etc!

Making your bait money equal more consistent catches in the short and long-term will certainly save you money in results terms per pound or dollar spent as less is actually wasted. Yes there are fisheries which are so easy a bare hook catches fish, but I’m referring here more to fishing hard syndicate waters, or the popular fishing pressured and over-crowded day-ticket waters where fish respond negatively to anglers baits and fishing pressure. How do you know what you are missing if all you do is measure your results compared to the average catches for a water, when the reality is that the average catches on a water may be very different indeed from what is truly possible for any individual angler?

Many wary fish on pressured waters will not feed on fresh baits put out as free baits, and those that do may even feed in far more alert modes of behaviour in order to detect dangerous hook baits more easily. If you got hooked each time you ate something your confidence and behaviour in eating something you desire is obviously going to change because such food is potentially it is a threat to your survival, despite when baits being designed to promote fish’s survival and you might wait 3 days or more before eating the leached-out baits! (It is a well-known fact that fish will feed far more confidently on bait that has been washed out as few anglers hook fish on such baits and so the associated danger of such baits is drastically reduced!)

Many anglers on pressured waters introduce their free baits into a swim upon arrival and then after leaving fishless perhaps after 48 hours, another angler comes along and again introduces fresh bait in the same swim; mostly with the same fishless result! Looking at the bigger picture, this kind of thing must go on constantly all over the world on pressured carp waters. Of course over time the fish might eat the old baits gathering in the swim with more confidence and Mr average angler times it lucky and gets a surprise fish result while being oblivious that he’s fishing over other anglers build-up baits. But sometimes the gathered bait can all go off and kill the swim completely (again, this is something Mr average angler may be completely unaware of as he proceeds to bait up, again…)

When carp fishing becomes an automatic function of relatively thoughtless actions, the results become mediocre and this is no surprise as so many anglers simply underestimate the sensitivity of carp to angling baits, tackle, and all the kinds of active and inactive presences of anglers they detect so easily; what worked previously is not guaranteed to work today! On pressured waters each day can find the fish acting differently as you might do in order to consistently stay one step ahead of a predator, (and sometimes this is one example of why man evolved being able to be self-aware, rationalise problems and think of solutions, but this is vastly under-used in fishing!)

I am lucky enough to have caught a rare very pale white 38 pound carp that had not been caught in over 7 years, from one UK water. In this instance it took the regular very unusually light style and frequency of baiting a swim, with a totally new bait to that water and for a week long period, that scored (and this big fish was followed by many more as a result.)

It took new bait attractors and rarely used feeding triggers in (new concentrations and combinations,) plus new baiting approaches, methods and applications to catch that very special fish which was followed by numbers of other good fish proving the effort of though even more worth-while. But there is something on every water to exploit that defeats the natural and angler-trained conditioning of fish responses and reactions to what you do in order to catch them. Being different even in one single way or combining new, adapted or new combinations of old ways etc can all achieve what just going through the motions cannot!

If you take the time to analyse the short-term and long-term impacts of what other anglers are doing on your water and link that to the negative (or positive) impacts on fish behaviours over any time period, you may begin to see how to exploit both fish and angler behaviour creatively. This thought is unique to your fishing situation at any point in time so will most likely produced the most accurately tuned possible actions, processes, thoughts and actions to solve the particular fishing challenges present. By analysing your fishing challenges and fishing situation in regards impacts of your fishing (and of other anglers) upon fish really can means you can save a fortune in wasted bait; as what you do use is leveraged with far greater results in catches in relation to money spent on bait achieving these!

To leverage the true power of your baits does take a little extra effort on your part but that effort is never wasted! But I hope this article makes you think a little more of further possibilities the next time you bait-up, as usual… This bait secrets ebooks author has many more fishing secrets insights and bait edges available and just one could impact very significantly on your big fish catches!

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Powerful Carp Bait Secrets That Saves You Money And Catches Fish!

Most anglers use readymade carp baits because they have become conditioned to because of easy availability, but confidence form slick advertising and advertorials etc are most often the bait that hooks such anglers and certainly not first-hand experience. Often the catches on new baits are made by the best, sharpest and most aware anglers using the edge of a new bait, and most anglers over-look this. If you have not used a bait before and not only do not know what it is made with nor how it works in detail, then my friend, you are fishing on blind faith not confidence.

But why would you need to know anything about bait; maybe you catch your share, maybe you know a range of baits that have worked on your waters previously that you can turn to. Well if you know little about carp vital senses and how to manipulate them to induce more takes you are missing out; big-time and it’s like using putting back on the shelf a flavour with 10 times the potency of anther because the packaging is less flashy, and choosing another flavour that you like the smell of, never realising how much it lacks compared to the other flavour… For instance, many anglers just think flavours are solvent based or natural, or nature-identical and pretty much all the same, but the actual definition of flavours in fishing are extremely diverse and some flavours like chilli compounds even stimulate carp senses more powerfully than usual pulling fish to your swim from ranges many other flavours fail to.

Many secrets are hidden from our senses but uncovered very easily by a little messing about with baits and some very elementary science, for instance, many carp bait substances change when in water into different ones to those we experience as humans in air… Garlic releases that pungent smell when broken in air and we are all familiar with similar compounds from onions and chives for example. But the smells from garlic we associate with its success are not strictly accurate, as certain of the key chemicals do not get produced in water the same as in air, and this might suggest to some thinking anglers that far more is going on, perhaps on a more deeper level to do with the biology of the fish in response to bioactive garlic substances rather than just a smell or taste.

Carp are turned-on by far more than a vanilla or strawberry flavour combination and in fact often these will provide no response at all as they are not true feeding triggers as such, but some bait substances compensate for this by affecting carp in far more profound ways internally! Science is hard right; well I did an easy test on carp baits today by eating wheat-free biscuits and a wheat free doughnut; all done in interests of science and in the best possible taste! Sometimes there are substances used in foods and baits which are naturally there or added deliberately which induce you brain create the sensation of pleasure so you enjoy them more…

On eating the wheat-free foods I did not want to keep eating them and certainly Homer Simpson would have a shock if his doughnuts were wheat-free as there is something internally potent missing in them! Beyond all the flavours, sweeteners, enhancers and other goodies already added to those biscuits and doughnut (I say doughnut as I could only eat one,) something vital was missing. That missing substance that in wheat for example causes the release of feel-good hormones in the wheat-free foods was gone, and I really missed it!

If you ate food frequently that tasted and smelled good but had no further incentive to keep you eating more of it, you will more than likely eat something else in preference if that food does has an extra feel-good brain chemical releasing impact. The bait or food which creates more pleasure is preferential in humans and it is the same in fish! You brain chemicals are directing your actions on a basic level and when it comes to the impact of a key part of wheat, your actions as a result of eating it can very easily be to eat more; more cake, toast, biscuits, doughnuts etc, this is one vital reason people so easily over-eat these foods and create behavioural cyclic eating problems!

Many foods are made with substances that further impact on the brain to eat you to eat it more because it means the producers make more money and you actually get into a habit of eating it, and finding foods without such habit-inducing chemicals can be quite a hard thing to do if you try to rid your diet, body and brain to become free from their influence! Think tiger nuts or peanuts, now these are not exactly the most packed nutritional foods on the planet, but even though hemp is a super food in its own right, it too has substances with brain influencing impacts and practical consideration these aspects of bait ingredients, flavours etc can really get you the edge over fish, and other competing baits. You can term it using habit-forming or addictive substances to manipulate fish behaviours or just call it good use of what a bait should really be – i.e. addictive! The bait secrets ebooks author offering this has much more to reveal to those wanting better baits and bigger catches but this will certainly help you!

Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Making Home made Carp Baits Addictive To Fish!

If you ever fished a match using tiny hooks for bloodworm or jokers as bait, you will know how powerful these fish catching baits are. One of the best feeding triggers for carp and one of the most abundant amino acids found in mature carp tissues is alanine which also happens to be found in abundance in blood worms and jokers. Fish instinctively feed in the most energy efficient way depending on the food supply available and how and where it is located and how spread out or dense or large or small the food items are.

Many carp anglers do not realise carp can feed on items as small as algae and tiny zooplankton crustaceans, even under a millimetre in size and derive extremely significant nutrition from such small organisms. These are very rich foods and are often exploited when fluctuations of populations are especially favourable and in spring and summer help in the time leading up to and after spawning. The success of fine particulate feeds like fine fish meal and bread crumb ground baits in many ways echo this mode of feeding which in this case can occur at any level in the water or sediment.

This kind of feeding or similar can be used to further explore the potential of your hook baits and free baits as food items even before your bait is actually touched by a fish. You might have seen a fish suddenly dart towards a bait after having started gulping in water first to taste your bait more efficiently using taste buds in the pharyngeal cavity in the gill area. Fish also use gulping in a snapping motion in a mobile pump feeding) or static position to filter feed and particulate feed and carp and bream do this much of the time in turbid lakes; lazy of what!

Filter feeding is very interesting because fish like carp can gain masses of nutrients to promote their growth in safe ways without eating your baits. But they can also derive nutrients from your baits in suspension and in solution as they leach out amino acids, nucleic acids, oils and slats for instance, without actually eating your baits. So it makes sense to drive fish into a feeding frenzy mode as far as possible by inciting this natural feeding mode.

It is natural for fish like bream, roach, carp, tench, barbel, and even bass and trout, to filter feed at times by capturing various sized food particles within their branchial sieves. However there this sieving can be adjusted in order to capture patches of fine particles or to capture larger single items and the characteristic speed of this feeding can vary between species. In the case of carp which are termed slow suction feeders, although they can suck up finer particles from one head length away from it at surprisingly high velocities indeed.

It often seems to be the case that carp fishing baits focus goes on chemical smells for instance which are very obvious to our senses, but it needs to be remembered that fish have extremely fine tuned lateral line cells which use electrochemical impulses in the detection of food items even by the tiny movements of zooplankton only 1 millimetre in diameter. The gape size of a fish’s mouth is normally not a limiting factor in efficient feeding, but the diameter of the area where the food is chewed is and it is often far less than the gape of the mouth. Therefore its makes sense to exploit this and use smaller baits than often recommended. In fact carp in turbid lakes predominantly depend on food which is in particle size, so why not go with this approach not against it!

Smaller food items can naturally be passed to the throat teeth in mouthfuls without any problem and of course the more energy efficient the food delivery system is the better. It can often be the case that small baits are the preferred choice of more experienced big fish anglers because they can see the benefits of smaller food items in regards how fish feed on such baits and also their more natural weight, size and movement in water when combined with a correctly balanced hook rig. I find boilies in the 6 to 8 millimetre size excellent for bigger more wary fish even with huge mouths!

If you exploit the various filter feeding modes of fish using various grades of ingredients both soluble and insoluble in your ground baits you can certainly induce far more intense and suitable feeding for hooking wary big carp. You might recall the fact that fish are lateral lines are tuned to feel the movements of live foods like maggots and sound is important in ground bait effectiveness, but smaller hook baits are well recommended in conjunction with this. With carp one thing is for sure and that is when you leverage their mode of feeding or preferably specifically induce particular modes of intense feeding, you can vastly improve your catches all year round and all you need to know is a bit more about effective bait use and ingredients manipulation…

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Big Carp Fishing Baits And Vital Fish Feeding Secrets!

The growing numbers of anglers in the UK and all around the world reflect a movement towards the desire of anglers to take back control over every aspect of their fishing and the desire to understand more complete details about bait and actually how it works in relation to carp diet and senses etc that in the past has been largely ignored by the majority who have been dependant upon readymade baits! When I began carp fishing in the nineteen-seventies everyone made their own baits out of necessity and it really was a challenge to find appropriate and accurate information about what exactly made carp feed and what fulfilled their essential nutritional requirements that you could actually get hold of and use in homemade baits, but all this experience and knowledge has meant our homemade baits can hold their own and even out-fish popular brand readymade boilies. Homemade baits have always if so desired been a tremendously effective economical and unique edge in carp fishing, (being different is vital to constant success of course,) it is very easy to forget that the relatively few truly knowledgeable bait designers with the big bait companies all started out at home in their own kitchens or garden sheds!

Having banked twenty forty pound carp from UK lakes I realise many things have changed about carp fishing in the past 40 years and especially the size of carp now available, but it is very obvious you need to fish the waters with fish of the size you wish to catch ” I know anglers who have very few twenties under their belts because of the limited lakes they fish within a particular region of the country. Your fishing goals are very personal and weight of fish is very irrelevant in many aspects; your personal success can be measured in many ways beyond fish weights and any sponsored angler can sit full-time on any water until they catch all the fish in the lake (i.e. big deal!) It is best to measure your success by setting your own goals and exactly how you aim to achieve them and fulfilling those goals than by comparing just how many thirties or whatever you have caught in a year and catching them on your own homemade unique baits makes all the difference to and gives a far deeper meaning to catch results in my opinion!

Most of us have to compete with bait and tackle-sponsored anglers and having the ability to either top their baits or make your own is a very potent edge in such circumstances! Also the willingness to constantly adapt your thinking and develop your personal fishing skills and take risks with your fishing styles and approaches provides endless competitive edges that stuck in a rut carp anglers who follow fashions and the crowd miss all the time. The obvious answer to how to beat the herd is to be the first to do something different in terms of baits and methods; in making your own baits and developing your own approaches you always improve your chances ” permanently and you will be a true thinking angler and a genuine sharper carper!

Many anglers are concerned about making their own baits with no reason whatsoever; over the years I have caught big fish on well over 90 percent of my own experimental homemade baits and even the mistake ones always turn out to be excellent solutions for different fishing situations and challenges and when fished against competing ready made baits too! Mistakes in bait making are simply where the bait or results did not turn out as expected but the nature of such baits and there impacts on fish are priceless feedback that lead directly and very fast straight to awesome homemade baits for many more fishing situations and solve many problems many readymades do not address at all and the cost homemade baits always means you can over-boost with natural carp feeding triggers – which is a gigantic edge (see my unique bait making and bait design books at Baitbigfish for details and much more!)

The average carp angler has been conditioned by appearances to associate carp baits with flavours; many are still on the basic level of asking other anglers what flavour they are using and this is a great shame as these anglers are missing out on tremendously better catches if they knew more! The real key to long-term success for average-skilled anglers is the use of nutritionally stimulating baits seriously packed with optimum levels of nutritional substances carp need in order to survive. Many versions of food style baits are being offered commercially by countless companies, but the large majority of these baits are in effect wasted by the fish due to being indigestible to varying degrees ” but make no mistake, they still catch carp on many carp waters.

Of course flavours are such a popular subject for carp anglers, but most realise that the majority of flavours are just average or worse while a relative few are very potent by comparison to others and really do work, if not directly in effecting feeding responses, then indirectly helping enhance and improve ionising effects of other bait substances such as betaine and amino acids and so on etc! Some very most effective flavours are the type that by methodically testing against standard baits you can overdose and top standard baits so they catch far more fish at almost any water you visit than the very same standard bait from the same bag but with no extra added flavour, but please be aware that anything has a flavours of some sort even plastic and rubber baits, and carp can detect some substances to a few parts in a billion (this is fact.) Although chilli extracts are very popular few anglers rally appreciate the many aspects of their impacts upon fish senses, digestion and metabolism, long range chemoreception and lateral line sensitivities and mode of feeding they can induce and so on; it may come as a big surprise that carp actually enjoy the pleasure from the pain response initiated by the hot peppers ” just as we enjoy hot curries and spicy foods for the same reason (see my flavours and feeding triggers ebooks for more!)

In my opinion the best starting point in making homemade baits, is to get to really become familiar with many of the natural feeding triggers carp are most sensitive to, from monophosphates, amino acids, (and other amines) similes and analogues of natural substances etc; then seek out the very highest quality products available that contain these for bait use at a reasonable price. There are many hidden factors in sourcing ingredients, such as taste enhancers or squid extracts that have been cut with cheaper products and constant experimentation is the key to outstanding results; but this is the learning curve that literally everyone that makes new baits is on. It is very possible for the beginner to boost a simple homemade 50:50 soya and semolina boilie base mix by the addition of high levels of a additives or ingredients that will supply many potent feeding triggers; such as fermented shrimp powder, de-fatted green-lipped mussel extract, enzyme-treated liver powder, abalone powder, Ccmoore Feedstim XP powder etc; these will make all the difference, so do yourself a big favour and find out more ” and my unique bait secrets ebooks (at Baitbigfish) make very stimulating reading!

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Cheap Homemade Carp Fishing Baits for Big Fish!

These days looking for cheap but well proven alternative big fish protein baits is very important and homemade sausage meat baits and ground baits are brilliant baits for so many reasons. Luncheon meats and Pepperoni are popular and effective but extremely expensive as fishing baits. So let’s now see how to make your own big fish sausage meat baits and save yourself a fortune!

The first ideal part about sausage meat is how cheap and easily available it is. It comes in various forms and grades and as usual it is best to get the freshest product possible. This kind of meat is just not fashionable today which means right now is a perfect time to be exploiting it!

You can use the minced products or use a mincer to make a sticky pliable material to use to base you bait on. Pork meat is very nutritionally stimulating to big catfish and carp, supplying many essential nutritional needs including many amino acids and energy packed oils. Sausage meat may be made from pork alone or with other materials, but even adding very cheap wheat flour, or with a few eggs to meat with sausage rusk will bind bait to make practical bait dough for paste or boilies.

To make these economical protein based baits is fast and very easy!

For instance, start off with a small amount of meat to practice with like just half a pound of minced meat mixed with around 3 hens eggs in a bowl and with enough wheat flour added to mould into a pliable bait dough. You can use this as bait or put into sealed plastic freezer bags to store in the fridge or freezer for later use. Such bait is usually very instant on most carp and catfish waters, although different grades and brands of sausage meat will vary in success rates so do experiment!

Like the majority of carp and catfish baits, the best way to start fishing with it is to feed perhaps 2 to 6 pounds or more of it into your swim, in advance. (This is certainly not absolutely necessary however!) You might for instance, over a period of 3 days prior to fishing, start introducing paste pieces about an inch in diameter just by pulling them off your balls of dough you have made.

When you pre-bait fish will obviously get a smell and taste of it without getting hooked so be more confident when you do try it on the hook, so do it! You can use sausage meat baits as part of your ground baiting or with other meat baits like chopped spam, meatballs, luncheon meats if you want the extra expense; sausage meat and cheap rolled oats is fine! Scald or boil or steam your baits if needed where smaller fish prove a bother, but add some paste to your bait on your rig or on the hook to boost more soluble attraction…

As most commercial rolled baits have uniform shapes, your homemade baits in odd shapes have the advantage over more wary fish by disrupting their reference points! Boilies are just made by placing your dough baits only a handful at a time in half a pan of boiling water in a pan for a couple of minutes; this makes a resilient skin when they dry-off on conveniently placed absorbent towels or trays etc. keep your water boiling at all times by not adding too many baits at once and keep taking baits out after around 2 minutes or so.

Boiling baits for longer makes them harder as the eggs proteins coagulate more making your baits more resilient, but less attractive nutritionally. To make your baits more attractive the choices are many to improve results. Even adding garlic or sea salt or curry powders even at a teaspoon per egg will make a difference to performance.

You might just add a teaspoon of black pepper powder per egg used. Other examples of well proven kitchen favourites are yeast extract products like Marmite or Vegemite; add at a heaped tablespoon per egg, or even Parmesan or blue cheese powder which is ideal in sausage meat baits. You can simply add some Minamino or proprietary fishing liquid amino acids supplement like Nutramino to boost feeding stimulation and nutritional profile of your bait; or add fish meal, keratin, or poultry meal, or ground bird foods and lecithins for more digestible baits in winter, for example…

You can add almost anything to enhance the stimulatory effects of your sausage baits but it helps if you really know what your ingredients do inside your fish and how they work together in baits to contribute the overall effects and improve catch results, and this knowledge really does save you a fortune and boost your confidence hugely! There are many ingredients etc you might add to stimulate fish which may be very expensive over a season, but going to the supermarket, health food shop, Asian store etc can provide really potent gems for a fraction of the cost when you know what to look for in terms of bioactive substances especially… Even adding liquidised liver with a few drops of spice or herb oleoresins and liquid lecithins can make drastic differences to results for relatively little cost and your baits will always be unique of course which a big edge anyway!

The options are limited only by your imagination; but using proven fish feeding triggering substances and metabolically stimulating substances are among the best proven substances when you look at bait components… Homemade sausage meat baits (and ground baits) for big carp and catfish are well proven against any popular modern baits (even enzyme-active ones,) and I’ve proven this myself (although my baits are sometimes rather more complex than here.) So give them a try and you might decide to get much deeper into making your own homemade baits; but beware – they can become addictive!

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Making Homemade Carp Baits Using Cheap Sausage Meat!

A thought-provoking piece about carp baits, nutritional stimulation, improving fish weights, and much improved catch results!

The scientific information available on essential dietary needs of carp most often does not take into account the presence of natural food in the presence of a test food item such as that of milk casein and gelatine. In fact it really makes a big difference when you consider that a carp is fully designed to fully digest and utilise its natural food items as opposed to an artificial food item composed of many foods such as in a boilie bait or pellet designed for salmon, trout or even specifically designed for carp! The actual energy and nutrient requirements compared to the actual biological conversion and energy supplied may well not be as great nor as efficient as thought by anglers.

Many anglers think about their baits in terms of nutrition but really miss the other points about actual feeding stimulation processes and mechanisms. In the real world, what if you have raised the level of natural food organisms available because of the abundance of fishing baits fed into a lake? What if the fish can pick and choose whether they actually need fishing baits to supply any needs at all at any particular point in the year?

When I began carp fishing in the 1970s a couple of cans of luncheon meat or sweetcorn, or a pound of homemade boilies, ground bait, paste bait or a pint of maggots or a loaf of bread would have been easily enough bait for a successful 12 hour trip. Now it is easily possible to introduce 1000 boilies upon arrival and get a fish hooked within 10 minutes on some waters. It seems very obvious that the use of more bait (despite far higher stocking levels,) has affected feeding behaviours at certain times of the year especially during the colder months.

It is true that the majority of the fish you could fish available to you prior to the boom in carp fishing in the UK were of double and single figures and it has been said that at that time there were as many twenty pound fish in Kent waters as the rest of the waters in the UK put together. New carp anglers in the UK today could never fully appreciate just what an achievement catching a twenty pound carp meant back in the 1970′s and early 1980′s; and the opportunity to actually fish a water that held a thirty pound fish was incredibly exciting experience! To many carp anglers fishing just a couple of decades ago, the first challenge was actually to locate a water containing any big carp over twenty or thirty pounds at all, and it might seem crazy to consider that to me it was once an exhilarating thrill to fish a water containing fish over twenty pounds, now having hooked a carp over eighty pounds a couple of years ago.

Not so long ago the capture of twenty carp of over twenty pounds in a season was a milestone few of even the top anglers had achieved. It is astounding to me today looking back, that you can catch twenty carp of around twenty pounds or over on certain UK waters in just a week or less; and this is very much due to the impact of the highly nutritional free baits applied by carp anglers over recent decades. Correct bait application is a massive edge which simply cannot be underestimated but is often extremely under-rated!

One 1991 milestone catch for me was of 23 carp caught over 5 days from an Essex reservoir, topped by the biggest in the lake (a mid-thirty,) and these fish averaged just under twenty pounds each; this provoked much jealousy from other members at the time, yet today such catches are pretty commonplace. Unique homemade bait design and regular effective bait application was the secret to my milestone catch back then and probably applies even more so today! Bait is often the last consideration today in the age of the instant carp angler who can buy everything except experience, but getting educated on the secrets of bait and how to exploit its power is a very big edge that can make your catches far better than ordinary, (even if you are a carp angler of average talent or experience!)

Bait design is very important and the nature of the free baits you use in order to get fish into an excited feeding state and drawn into your swim, hopefully to make a mistake with your hook bait is crucial; even in exceptionally prolific French and Spanish waters where 60 fish of over twenty pounds has been achieved by my friends in just 3 days. In the UK high-profile anglers are very much promoters of innovative baits and applications and the leverage of various bait substances and forms of recipes is a very big part of their ongoing success. Bait is important not merely as an edge in itself but as the whole basis of your ongoing success and so belittling the subject is rather missing the point that carp senses can be manipulated in our favour over and over again big-time…

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Carp fishing Baits And Methods For bigger Catches!

In the Virgin Islands a wide range of diving and other amazing activities can be found, the Us Virgin Islands consists of over 50 islands with the most famous ones being the islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Reaching these 3 islands is fairly simple with many airports in the US flying their.

St. Thomas

Typically the dive centres will take you to a dive site located at the waters of Pillsbury Sound between St. Thomas and St. John to dive the various shipwrecks encrusted with bright sponges and coral. One nice example is the General Rogers what is a 120-foot US Coast Guard buoy which was sunk to form a reef which sits upright in around 60 feet of water. The reef as grown on the buoy and has created an Orange cup coral and others with abundance of fishes such as angelfish and grunts.

Named the best diving in the Virgin Islands, Sail Rock reaches up 125 feet in the air off the West End of St Thomas and is teeming with jacks, wrasse, barracuda and turtles.

St. John

Located between the islands St. John and St. Thomas are two very popular diving locations called Congo Cay and Carval Rock. Carval rock a nice dive site which is home to many turtles, swarming silversides, cruising reef sharks, and waving sea rods and gorgonians. The swim-through is a must do which tower is between two towering rock faces is covered with vibrant marine life.

Congo Cay’s is a totally different experience and is a lovely drift dive using the currents to move long the reef. Complete with their own resident string rays and the weathered rocks create a lovely dive. Both Congo Cay and Carval Rock are diverable by all skills except in bad weather.

St. Croix

North side of St. Croix is one of the best wall dives in the Caribbean, the wall starts only 100 yards of the beach line and drops to several thousand feet, there are around 20 dive sites located along the wall with varying natures features such as pinnacles, ledges, walls and caverns.

All the Dive shops on all three islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix will offer resort courses, complete certification classes and rental equipment. Many package deals are available with local hotels and dive operators combining for a single price package. Accommodations range from 5-star resorts and villas to small, family run inns and hotels. Camping is even available for those who want to rough it a bit outdoors.

Post from: Discover Boats

America’s Paradise is the US Virgin Islands

You can make carp baits as easy and simple or as complex as you want but one thing is certain and that is, for best results you need to make sure your baits are as unlikely to arouse as little suspicion in fish as possible. To do this you need to leverage the top rule with fishing bait; that of making your bait unique and different! A new different bait has the best potential to tempt big wary carp because even where a so-called food bait or nutritional biological value bait is established, once fish get hooked on it, then fish feeding behaviour on it can alter dramatically!

The purpose of a fishing bait is not to smell like a banana, nor be an eye-catching colour, nor shine in the dark like a beacon, or taste like a banquet. It is merely to get your hook in the fishs mouths for the split second it tasks to have the slightest chance of hooking a fish. Everything else is secondary. But many fishermen seriously cut their chances by using baits many others have caught fish on before, not realising how much harder fish on such baits unfortunately can be to catch; having been hooked on them previously! (So many overlook this top priority warning!) It should therefore make absolute sense that making your bait different to previously successful baits is a big key to consistent big fish success.

Many baits simply tantalise the fish and evoke a curiosity response rather than provide anything nutritional and many angler get confused thinking that baits absolutely must be an perfect square meal to get takes, but this is completely untrue. Any change you make to a bait can induce a curiosity response from a fish regardless of any other olfaction or other chemoreception stimulation which might be present in the bait. Carp feed using far more senses than merely taste and smell and all can be exploited for improved and prolonged more consistent results!

There is much said about flavors. This probably because they have such vivid impacts upon our senses as most are mainly based upon strongly volatile solvent substances and many taste and smell like foods we recognise; like pineapple, cranberry, banana and strawberry. Changing flavors can easily produce a new bait and renewed results, but synthetic and solvent based flavors are merely a tiny tip of the real flavors iceberg available to us to exploit. Flavor components can do very various things to fish and the water surrounding our baits to induce bites.

We can associate flavors with fruits and sugars of many kinds from oranges and pineapples to apples, pears, butter and cream, spices and herbs, molluscs and crustaceans, fish and everything in between and those besides. But many flavors are beyond what most anglers would even term flavors and have bitter, sour, salty, sickly, acidic, highly pungent even repulsive effects on us humans, but carp absolutely love them. It is an interesting fact that complete digestion of many substances occurs as a direct result of bacterial action to help break down food in the gut which enzymes alone cannot digest. In this example, this means that flavors and ingredients that are partially digested or even represent or mimic these can be super attractive to fish

In the case of big carp, they can be caught on baits containing strong powerful flavors or minimal amounts or none at all. The angling fishing pressure they receive 24 hours a day will often influence which approaches and which forms of flavor are more stimulatory or more repellant! But even using rubber and plastic baits will eventually be associated with previous captures and be less effective for this reason.

It is obvious that nearly any bait will catch a carp once. Much of the reason fake plastic and rubber baits catch carp is the lack of suspicion aroused by them, compared to conventional round boilies for example. This often because they do not contain the concentrated substances carp can recognise and relate to previous experiences of getting caught, but even these baits are far from sterile, having natural and human hand added attraction too like butyric acid.

So what is the translation of making a bait different in order to achieve perpetual edges over your fish especially in regards to bigger fish? The fact is there are thousands of substances to exploit and just one can make all the difference and transform your results. Put as simply as possible, fish and humans share numerous very vital processes which all relate to energy and its efficient use.

A great additive for big fish baits is betaine. This is a familiar substance for many carp anglers. But why is it special? So many substances trigger feeding or at least induce exploratory feeding behaviours. Well betaine occurs naturally in human diet and fish diet in natural foods. So it is no surprise that it is used for many vital functions roles and processes in our bodies and though not an a carp essential amino acid it is very important and vital to fish. In fact, so vital that its feeding triggering effects top that of the amino acid alanine which is a known feeding stimulant for very many fish species. The fish olfactory bulb receptor cells are especially stimulated by betaine. It was originally named betaine because it was first identified in the root crops beta vulgaris or beetroot, from which the very first sugar beets were derived from. (Sugars and sweeteners are potent carp feeding triggers.)

Betaine even rivals many essential amino acids carp require in their natural diet and its effects upon food palatability and synergistic interactions with amino acids in baits and in the carp body demonstrate how important this substance is in carp baits! Betaine is a bit like sugar and salt and even flavor components like malic acid which really intensify the effects and profiles of other substance like amino acids and other flavors etc at carp receptor sites all over its body from lips, face, fins, flanks, in the throat and gill areas and even in the gut itself. Yes betaine is a big fish substance for sure!

You can help your bait enhancing and bait making efforts enormously by looking at how the food we eat is formulated. The food industry go to great lengths to get substances in our food which make you eat more of it, even to the extent of training our taste buds with all that sugar, salt, yeast extract, and the vast number of other healthy and unhealthy additives hidden away in long ingredients lists. When I began writing books and articles many scoffed (please excuse the pun,) at my claims that there are many addictive substances to exploit for use in baits for big fish; just 2 clues are the capsaicin receptors found in carp, and the addictive effects of certain cereal gluten substances which release feel-good but addiction forming endorphins in carp brains! Fishing blends well with other outdoors recreation and sport activities like hunting, camping, boating and other such hobbies and but so knowing as much as possible about your improving your fishing baits will ensure you always have better results; guaranteed!

By Tim Richardson.

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25 Easy Fishing Bait Tips To Catch You Bags Of Big Carp!

Few carp anglers have never heard of the world famous carp bait additive called Robin Red which has been an enormously important bait ingredients for both homemade and readymade baits for decades. Find out more about how to exploit this wonder bait here…

Robin Red is an original formula from Haiths based in Cleethorpes UK. Included in their best-selling items are these well-known bait ingredients: Hempseed, Carpticle Mix, Multi Mix, Super Red, Prosecto Insectivorous, Robin Red, Red Factor, Nectarblend, soft Bill and Red Band. Having many years in producing leading specialist bird foods, this experience and such products and many others have been extremely productively applied to catching carp!

Among such bird food products Robin Red is the best known and is literally a legend when it comes to carp bait ingredients and additives etc today. Hinders offer other bird foods which have also been integral in the success and universal use of bird food based carp baits throughout the world today. Countless modern carp bait companies have taken hinders and Rod Hutchinsons leads for example and formulated their own commercial bird food based baits ranges and now additives and liquids etc based around robin red and chilli for instance are extremely fashionable and successfully proven; such as the Ccmoore Red Venom additive.

The popularity of Robin Red is so great that Im sure that at times in the case of making your own homemade boilies, that if you do not use Robin Red in your bait, it will likely as not be the only carp bait in the water that does not include it! Not using Robin Red can actually be a good thing as carp are so familiar with it on busy very hard-fished carp waters that it could well act as an indicator of potential danger! You might find out a bit more about it and choose to use a component of it instead, or use it in very low levels, this works well winter summer or fall…

Ways to incorporate Robin Red and apply it in homemade baits, spod, method, particles, pellets and boilies mixes are legion. Just dampen your boilies using a mixture of liquid foods and Robin Red… Or try pre-soaking your pellets in any liquids you like and add Robin Red to produce super ground baits, method mixes or spod mixes for example for both winter and summer use.

The ingredients and components in robin Red have been speculated on for decades and a few of these have been identified but apparently no-one has actually copied the original accurately, although most copies will still stain your hands red and turn fish red too! One fact about Robin Red which has been confirmed is that it does not contain the antioxidant pigment Carophyll Red, but what about cantaxanthin perhaps? Whatever Robin Red contains, it sure works!

Why not save yourself a fortune in bait costs and try making your own homemade baits for the first time using a mix of semolina, soya flour with added robin red? Try boosting your pellets by just adding water and adding neat robin red and mixing thoroughly; this will cloud the water very red too, (wash your red hands after use!) One easy to use product incorporating Robin Red is Haiths super Red which can be used neat in PVA products and contains the following:

Super Red has aniseed oil, teasel seeds, crushed Carpticle mix, crushed hempseed, Red Factor, robin Red, peanut granules and crushed tiger nuts. This combination is only one of countless others you could try in making your own boilies, pellets and ground baits and to maximise this and more and to save yourself an fortune in bait costs why not now read on…

By Tim Richardson.

Post from: Discover Boats

Carp Fishing Robin Red Bait Secrets!

The Garmin Handheld GPS 400t like it’s predecessor the Colorado 400c features a three inch diagonal touch screen with the latest touch screen technology. Touch screens have become very popular on high end electronic devices and the Colorado 400t is no exception.

The color screen is highly readable under direct sunlight and this is remarkable because most of the units of similar type fails miserably in this department. Thanks to the innovative software which has been programmed into the Garmin handheld GPS Colorado 400t, the interface is easily understandable both for the experienced and not so experienced user. Due to this interface which states all the important guidelines on the screen, the device is fun to work with, especially outdoors.

The ABS plastic case of the Garmin Handheld GPS prevents moisture from being a problem. It is not waterproof if submerged in water however. Like all electronic devices be aware of the limitations of the devices exposure to water. Just don’t dunk the Colorado 400t in water and you should be problem free from moisture causing a problem with it’s function.

Topographic maps, of the USA have been preloaded into the unit. Three dimensional view of the map is also made possible in the device. The unit may be very useful for those who are into hiking and mountain climbing. All the relevant details about the local and national parks and sanctuaries, coupled with information about rivers and lakes are also preset in the Colorado 400t handheld GPS receiver.

The Garmin Handheld GPS Colorado 400t has the ability to share with other Garmin Colorado and Oregon users data with the click of a button. Geocaching files can be downloaded from any computer to use and share. The touch screen allows viewing in three dimensional view for a better understanding of the terrain. The points of interest entered in the Colorado 400t are easily accessible with the touch screen.

The Garmin Handheld GPS Colorado 400t is Geocaching friendly and is a great GPS unit for the sport. You are able to download Geocaching files without having to manually input them. All you need to do is download the files and then go geocaching. By being able to download the Geocaching files, entering files is now almost automatic. As Geocaching becomes more popular downloading Geocaching files is a great time saver that can be used for your outdoor adventure.

The Garmin Handheld GPS Colorado 400t photo viewer supports JPEG file format. It also is a very easy unit to carry. It is slim and light and is easy to carry in a pocket or on a belt clip. Garmin has scored a win with all the user friendly attributes of the Colorado 400t.

With plug in SD cards usable in the Colorado 400t you can input most any geographic data as well as street maps for almost limitless navigation. The card slot is located inside the waterproof battery compartment for data safety. With the Colorado 400t your adventure potential is limited only by your imagination.

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The Garmin Handheld GPS Colorado 400t Receiver for any Your Adventures

Outdoor enthusiast a generation ago had to rely on maps, compasses and landmarks for navigation in unknown territory. There were unseen dangers due to getting lost in dangerous areas and even not being to find your way back to safe areas because of weather. Garmin Handheld GPS units and others have changed the dangerous into exciting adventures. Now you can navigate to anywhere and back without becoming lost or getting into unsafe areas by using a GPS unit.

Exploring the great outdoors entails risks that can be dangerous if you get lost in unsafe or unfamiliar territory especially in unexpected bad weather. Garmin Handheld GPS units are especially popular for hikers, bikers, Geocaching, hunters, fisherman, and boaters. Some of the latest Garmin units include instrumentation to help predict changing weather.

GPS units can replace the traditional compass, paper maps or relying on landmarks to guide you. Terrain and even traveled roads can change from what they were on maps that may be outdated. GPS units are also accurate in inclement weather conditions as well as good weather.

With GPS technology and electronic mapping you can explore unfamiliar territory without the fear of getting off the course you choose to travel. With Garmin Handheld GPS tracback technology you can retrace your trip exactly. If you are a boater or fisherman you are able with GPS technology to keep up with where you are, where you are headed, speed you are traveling and return to an area or spot where fishing is the best. Also GPS units are just as precise at night as in the daytime.

With Garmin Handheld GPS receivers you can transfer data to and from a computer. You can download data from a computer and then share that data with other Garmin users in the field. You can share fishing areas as an example, or hiking or biking trails as well. You are only limited by the data you collect or download.

The Golfing game has been changed for many by using a GPS unit to give distances of the next shot and the correct distance of the last shot which can improve your game. The Garmin Handheld GPS Approach G5 golfing unit comes preloaded with thousands of golf courses in the USA. It also allows you to map any course not included you might wish to play. Try a GPS unit for your golfing and improve your game.

GPS technology has generated new outdoor activities and new sports. Geocaching is an example of a new sport that combines an outdoor excursion and a treasure hunt into a day of excitement for many people. Another new sport generated by GPS technology is Geodashing. Geodashing is an outdoor race to a precise coordinate that can even be across country.

Just as cars are more advanced today than in the past GPS technology is advancing at a fast rate also. Garmin Handheld GPS receivers become more advanced with each product release. Whether you are a boater, hunter, fisherman, biker, hiker or engage in other outdoor activities requiring GPS technology, you will find Garmin leading the pack.

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Todays Role of Garmin Handheld GPS Receivers On Outdoor Recreation

GPS receivers are becoming less expensive as well as more technically sophisticated, as the scope of the product keeps expanding. The Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c Receiver is the latest offering from Garmin. The unit features a touch screen which is precisely three inches in diagonal length. The screen is also readable under direct sunlight.

Garmin manufactured the Oregon 400c touch screen with a protective covering to protect it from cracking if the unit is accidentally dropped. The Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c uses innovative and easy to use software. It is waterproof, rugged and be used for any of your adventures into the unknown.

If you boat or fish in coastal waters of the USA and the Bahama’s you will benefit from the bluechart G2 preloaded in the Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c. It is just as beneficial on land as on the water. Take it with you on any excursion and be confident it will fit your needs.

The Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c receiver allows you to download Geocaching GPX files without needing to input them manually. Like other Garmin receivers you can share data with other Garmin users also. These features make the Oregon 400c adaptable for most any outdoor adventure.

The Garmin handheld GPS also features a picture viewer so that photos can be shared with loved ones. Besides being slim, it is easily hand held and also fits well into a pocket if so desired. It’s size makes it convenient to carry and use without being cumbersome.

With the Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c you get WAAS technology as well as HotFix prediction algorithm. The Oregon 400c will give you accurate data even in very difficult situations such as heavy tree cover and deep canyons.

The compass which has been integrated into the Garmin handheld GPS receiver is electronic in nature and information with regards to the bearing can be noted down even when the unit is held still. The integrated barometer ensures that even the minutest pressure variation can be recorded. Graphic plots can be drawn using the different values of the barometer. This enables the user to check the weather which may vary from previous reports. A facility for inserting Micro SD cards is also provided in the Garmin Handheld GPS Colorado 400c unit. Preset maps using the revolutionary MapSource card are available for purchase and can easily be inserted and integrated into the receiver.

With the advanced capabilities of the Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c reciever you can explore all those out of the way places you always wanted to go. The Oregon 400c will please even the most discriminating.

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The Many Attributes of the Garmin Handheld GPS Oregon 400c

You probably have a story, too.

It could be a bet you won by a fluke. Or a stroke of luck you had.

Maybe you have a story about the way you met your spouse. Or the disaster that occurred the first time you tried to make pie crust. The camping trip where it only rained. Climbing over the fence at the wrong time. The time you tried to put on a rain poncho while riding a horse. An escape. A fantastic last-minute win at sports. The job you got when it seemed impossible. How you learned to dance. The dog that ran off with your shoe at a wedding.

Or maybe something unusual – maybe you saw a ghost once. Or a UFO. Maybe you read someone’s mind and found out you were right. It could be anything.

Everybody has a story!

I call these stories your “Once Upon a Time Stories.” They could be short or they could be long. People like to talk about their stories with their friends. At lunch. On the bus. On the phone. Or while they sit around the fire or on the back fire escape chatting with a friend into the wee hours. (Or maybe on Instant Message while they are supposed to be working! …)

I would like to invite everyone to come and post their own “Once Upon a Time Story” at Your Poems and Stories

In case you would like to have an example of a Once Upon a Time Story, I will tell you
one of mine.

Okay … let me think. I’m thinking.

Okay.

Once upon a time …

I decided to go on a camping trip with my friend Matt. We hitchhiked to a village which was north of the city we lived in. We had heard that there was a cave there and we thought it would be fun to sleep in a cave. I had just met Matt around the city, and I didn’t know him that well. He was a friend of friends. But we got along fine.

So we began to hitchhike. Somehow, before we arrived to our destination, it got dark. The people who were giving us a ride invited us to stay in their home for the night, so we did. They lived in a small village high on top of a hill.

When we woke up in the morning we had breakfast. White rolls. I ate way too many. I don’t know why I ate so many rolls! But I remember Matt looking at me with a surprised expression because I was eating so many rolls.

In any case, we had to continue on our way to our cave. So we said thank you and goodbye to the people who had helped us, and we proceeded to walk down to the main road.

Now, this village was way at the top of a hill. There was a long windy road down to the bottom. But there were almost no cars on that road at all. So we walked all the way down, maybe two kilometers.

At that age, I had a habit of eating dandelions and I was picking them and eating them. Matt thought this was strange. He wanted to eat in a restaurant we passed, and I objected as it was quite an expensive one.

When we finally reached the main road, we continued to hitch hike to the village where the cave was. We arrived at the village and found the park which had a rock hill in the middle. The cave was supposed to be in that hill.

Now somehow, at some point, while we were searching for this cave, we lost each other. And Matt had my sleeping bag.

I remember searching for Matt around that little rock mountain in the middle of the park. I went around and around that mountain for – well – three hours, as I recall. Searching and searching for Matt.

As the minutes and hours rolled by, I began to believe that perhaps Matt had actually run off with my sleeping bag and that I would never see him again. I began to chastise myself for trusting someone whom I just met. I mean – didn’t my father warn me? “Don’t trust anyone,” that’s what my father said. And here I was, trusting Matt with my sleeping bag!

I kept trying to convince myself that Matt would not come all the way out here just to steal my sleeping bag. But, one has to remember, I was in the middle of the situation. A lonely young girl in the forest, without a sleeping bag, walking around and around a rock hill for hours, searching for Matt.

I thought, “Could this whole thing really be a plot to steal my sleeping bag?” It didn’t seem to make sense. But he was gone!

I looked everywhere. I began to climb the rocks. I looked in among the crevices. Perhaps he had fallen and gotten hurt? This went on. Time went on. No Matt.

My trek continued.

And just as my last hopes were fading away, I heard a voice call my name. I turned and there he was.

Matt.

With my sleeping bag!

As you have probably guessed by now, we both had spent those three hours walking around and around the hill, looking for each other. But both walking in the same direction. Finally Matt realized what must be happening and he turned around to walk the opposite direction. And then he found me.

Well, there’s one little story. Later, I could tell the story of what happened when we tried to sleep in the cave.

But in any case, you see, it’s not even that fantastic or incredible. Just one of those funny things.

Now and again, when I think about it, it puts a smile on my face.

To imagine how I had wondered if perhaps this whole cave-camping trip was really a ploy to steal my sleeping bag!

Do you have a story? Or a poem? You can submit your story at Your Poems Your Stories. I think we would all love to hear it.

Love,

Anna of Poems

Poems for Free

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Once Upon a Time: Poems and Stories

For me it’s fall, but for others it could be spring or winter time. Yes, I did mention winter time. Although it may be chilly, you can appreciate the fact that mosquitoes and ticks won’t eat you alive like they will in the summer. So then there’s camping, hunting and fishing. These are the epitome of outdoor activities. Especially if you’re heading up through the woods. It’s not all about nature hikes and rock climbing.

The entire time I grew up in the rural area of Iowa, my father was an officer of hunting and fishing. A game warden for short. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Iowa has no rural area in particular; the entire state is rural. In fact, it’s one gargantuan corn field. This is what a buddy of mine thought anyway. Once I moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, folks thought I was from the back woods. My buddy actually asked me if we were the only house in Iowa. Wow, are people ever naive! Iowa is a state; not a corn field. Anyway, I certainly received my dose of hunting and fishing while living in the heartland.

Anything from deer hunting with a shotgun, to bass fishing on the Mississippi, to turkey hunting with a long bow. I was able to experience a range of hunting and fishing activities. However, I did grow tired of the hunting part. These days I no longer care to sit quietly in a tree stand and wait for a massive buck to stroll past. Fishing on the other hand is still outstanding. I think it’s the fresh trout that I love so much.

Definitely take the time to learn all about camping, hunting and fishing before tackling them on your own. Find out what supplies are imperative and what seasons will work best. And always remember that with hunting and fishing comes responsibilities. You can’t simply run out in the woods and start gunning down deer like it’s no big thing. There are rules to this sport. Follow them respectfully and you’ll have a great time.

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The Beauty Of Hunting And Fishing