It might sound strange to imagine a fish as a tongue, but that is what they are in effect in water; and exploiting this fact is well proven to catch you a shocking amount of fish! Too many anglers think like anglers instead of seeing and sensing things from a fish perspective and this often is the difference between an average angler and a big-name one! It's the substances leaching and dissolving into water from your baits that seriously impact on specialised taste and smell cells, (plus other senses) all over the external and internal surfaces of fish and realising that this is similar to taste buds on your tongue is something you can hugely exploit with bait to totally transform your catches...



To begin with, I will group carp and catfish together, because many anglers catch both or target both and seek the biggest ones possible. These fish share so many dietary essential requirements that baits meant for big carp or catfish will often catch specimens from each group. Carp and catfish are like swimming tongues because they are covered in receptors cells inside and out that maximise the ability to detect potential many food substances in concentrations as low as 1 part in a million or even 3 parts in a billion!

A human smelling a bait in air is more than a little different to a fish detecting the bait in solution in water and for this reason many anglers simply choose the baits and substances they use from their personal perspective; not really appreciating how a bait and its substances impact upon fish senses directly or indirectly to various degrees between different baits and their components! Fish use cells literally outside their bodies as well as familiar nose and internal mouth and also throat cells too for instance, to detect potential substances in water. The systems fish use to detect your bait are so very impressive and sensitive that you would be a fool not to find out how to exploit them to the maximum and make catching your fish so much easier, for life!

Carp find many potential food substances including your baits by using cells adapted for the purpose which are extremely sensitive to essential substances especially, like various combinations of amino acids. The cells that detect very many substances are located externally in the facial skin, areas of the head and flanks, the lips, fins, in the nose, the barbels, in the mouth, throat and other lesser known significant areas too! The so-called receptor cells are very sensitive and so can detect oils in water not supposedly water soluble, however, even these are to a small degree and using lecithins with oils obviously improves their detectability and attraction!

The lateral line in carp and many Cyprindae fish extends from the tail to the mouth and utilises specially adapted pit cells. This line of pits and cells are obviously highly important as they extend along the entire length of the fish. In carp the lateral line is so important that through evolution, the jaw bones and head has become shaped so to accommodate this system providing vital external sensory inputs!

The potential food, opportunities and predator detection systems in carp and other fish represent a multipurpose aquatic scanner which we would be very short-sighted not to exploit using our baits for maximum effect! Knowing more about the sensitive systems of fish such as carp, can help us locate them in the water, and concentrations of carbonic acid or ammonia for example can lead to fish being located and feeding in one swim more than in others through different temperatures and seasons for example. The highly adapted cells in carp and other fish will often detect things humans cannot detect and often carp will appear to behave appropriately in advance of certain changing weather patterns, changing air pressures and temperature changes etc, and water density and pressure changes may be involved more than we might think.

Carp and catfish have barbels; the highly sensitive projections around the mouth that in one role, help them find food and these have some of the highest densities of cells adapted for receiving chemical feedback from the water in solution. Your bait substances imbibe water or dissolve in water to form solutions. These substances have a highest concentration nearest their source and this gets weaker as you travel away from it.

Fish are able to detect these solutions and home in and follow the concentrations back to where they are highest and so find your free baits and hook baits for example. This is where balanced nutritional baits and nutritionally boosted readymade baits can really do manipulate fish feeding behaviours and dominate fisheries and catches! This is especially in the case where as many essential needs are covered as possible in a bait; so giving your fish multiple essential reasons to eat your bait and all the so-called bio-active substances used in baits all add to this impact!

This kind of bait exploitation of vital fish senses approach can even give your own adapted or homemade baits greater advantages over other anglers competing baits. So as you can appreciate, it will certainly pay you to find out more!

By Tim Richardson.