Recently I was perusing fishing gels and liquid attractions. Since I have never tried any, I thought I’d reach out to a wide audience to see what works and what doesn’t. I’m really only interested in catching carp for trapping bait. Try as I might, I haven’t been very successful. For baits I’ve used worms, crawlers, boilies and sweet corn. I got one on a small chunk of crawler on a 1/16 oz jig, on my fly rod. It was a blast but I haven’t been able to repeat the event. Lord knows I’ve tried.

Have you ever used a liquid or gel type lure enhancer?

What is your opinion of them?

Canned corn with raspberry jello
Chum one can a few hours before dark
They bite best after dark

I don’t think I have caught on anything but night crawlers that I cannot recall, aside from snagging some.

What state are you in? Arrows or gigging both work nicely if done right.

I have tried a few different kinds and never noticed a difference. Many old timers swore by WD40 and would spray their bait down with it.

I think Grimshaw used to make fish lure, my brother loved it smelled like spearmint

All of the ones I have tried smelled like rotten gopher guts.

Wheatie balls. There is a recipe with syrup peanut butter. If you are using corn throw a hand full out. Wait then cast your hork with about 5-6 pieces threaded on it.

Double hand full of wheaties dunk into he water and work most the water out forming a ball. break off a chunk size of a marble.work it back and forth until it forms into a ball. Use on straight hook and fish it on the bottom.

Get a road killed something and tie a rock to it, deer is fine. Come back the next day/night and the water will be rolling with carp eating it. I haven't done that in 30 years but it works good

Being this is winter and Minnesota, the bite might be slow. A local river is open and if I can get away, I might put on my neoprene waders and see if I can get some action on sweet corn and jello. Otherwise, I’ll wait till spring/summer and shoot them with fishing arrows.

By the way, does anyone use a hair rig with corn?

Thanks everyone

The only place I've ever fished with carp had too many bullheads to really get a line on them. I think I caught a Northern Snakehead out of that hole, wish I still had that photo so I could confirm.

Oh, but that wasn't the point, I've always wondered if salmon roe works outside the PNW and Alaska. Anyone here tried it? I always have extra someone want some roe to test south of the 45 degree line?

In the winter I catch them by accident while small mouth fishing with a grub and jig
They usually gather in pods ( large schools) and once you can locate a pod you will be in business
Open the gap on the jighead a little bit for, most will be tail hooked but you need a setup that you can set the hook through the scales or the scale is all you will reel to shore
It makes for a good time

Roe works great for trout in April around here. I buy the ones in a salt prine which makes the skin on them tougher

Salmon eggs work very well for steelhead, rainbows and browns in rivers emptying into the Great Lakes. We used to spend an hour or so tying spawn bags before fishing the Wisconsin Brule River in the spring and fall. One spawn bag would last for an hour or longer. Good times!

I've never fished carp in the winter, but had great luck in the summer. I found the best bait in summer was to thread canned sweet corn on a #4 hook. Let it sit on the bottom. Put your rod on a forked stick with a little slack in the line. When a carp picks it up, you will see the line jump, set the hook. I used this method when I was fishing for carp bait for my turtle traps.

CORN AND CORN AND CORN-Small little hooks and a pencil bobber-like someone else stated handfulls around the bobber to chum-my experience is that if they feel resistance of a bigger bobber they spit it out pretty quick.Thread a few kernels on the small hook.caught lots that way

The hair rig with softened field corn. Make the hair long enough to reach the carps pharyngeal teeth in its throat, with the tiny, stout, sharp hook in just past his lips.. Once the corn gets that deep, a carp generally won't pay any attention to the hook.
Do lots of chumming with corn.

This makes me curious, what kind of hook to use for carp? Circle hook might perform well since they're meant to hook mouths.

A circle hook don't work well for carp because they are designed to catch a fish in the corner of the mouth and carp don't really have a corner in their mouth
Most any other hook will work, but they make a special hook for hair rig's
Google European hair rig hooks