Bait and its part in the carpy equation - part 2! Fred Wilton’s HNV theory was actually dealing with a carp’s metabolism. This covers the processes by which the carp use the nutrients acquired by ingestion/ digestion, and the potential for the carp to recognise the bait we present to it as a valuable food source. Why should we worry about how well a carp can digest the bait we use? Who cares? We only want to catch the bloody things, not treat them to a health regime – right? Wrong! And I’ll tell you why. Assuming the bait we’re using is attractive enough for the carp to pick it up and eat a couple of handfuls, if that bait is indigestible, what happens next? This carp now has to deal with what we’ve fed it, so it heads off to its favourite hole in the weed or snag bush and stays there while it digests what it’s just eaten. That carp is now completely uncatchable, and we’ve set ourselves an impossible task on all but the hungriest of waters. This is the immediate effect – but just imagine a lake that sees a lot of indigestible bait; the cumulative outcome can have a devastating effect on the sport experienced by anglers. Remember, what we want is a positive experience to generate a memory that will make the carp keen to feed on our bait when it encounters it again. How long this takes is entirely dependent on any potential deficiencies it may have in its existing diet, be they bait-related or not. This is why rich waters, as a general rule, are harder than heavily-stocked or less rich venues. Using a bait that is hard work for a carp to digest is, at best, counterproductive, and, at worst, we could be consigning ourselves to a disastrous season. We need to understand how a carp processes food items. Most other animals and fish are equipped with an acid and pepsin stage to their digestion – not so with carp. They rely solely on their intestine for the digestion of food and are therefore classified as ‘stomachless’. There is much conjecture as to why the carp can thrive so well with this arrangement when most other animals require a stomach containing acid and pepsin. Suffice to say, they have evolved with an intestine long enough to digest and absorb all the nutrients they need. Upon identifying and ingesting a food item, the carp grinds it up into particles using its throat or pharyngeal teeth until suitable for further digestion. These particles are then passed through a duct known as the oesophagus into an expanding receptive sack. Our bait that the carp has just eaten contains many dense, insoluble ingredients, including proteins, fats and carbohydrates, all with complex chains of molecules binding them together.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 20:50:11 +0000
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