How to use Korda Goo for carp fishing

Carp are incredibly good at detecting food scent trails in the water and can home in on them from a long way away.

So, if you are able to make your bait stand out then it increases the chances of the fish finding it, feeding on it, and you catching them.

You do of course need to balance that with not making the scent trail, and of course the actual taste of it when they eat it, so strong that it actually becomes repellent to them – there is no point in attracting them from the other end of the lake if they don’t actually want to eat your bait when they get to you as it has such a strong and unpleasant taste!

It is also very much the case that carp can become wary of particular attractors if they’ve been caught on them before, and especially so if those attractors have been used at very high levels – which is why flavourings and other additives in boilies are used at a level which will attract the fish whilst ensuring that the bait also still tastes good and will keep on working over a longer period of time.

So, with any attractor you need to find that balance, or use one where all of the testing and tinkering has already been done, and you can add it to your bait knowing that it works, and that is where liquids like Kiana Carp Goo are ideal.

Combining smell/taste with visual attraction

It isn’t just smell/taste which will attract carp to your bait and help them to spot it more easily and from further away, but colour also plays a very big part as well.

Anything that really stands out against the lakebed can get the attention of fish, and certain colours are more prominent than others – pink in particular is one of the last colours to disappear from a carps vision, as the available light source decreases (as a result of the water getting deeper or murkier).

Whilst it gets their attention, at the same time anything unnatural, in terms of its colour, can also make the fish wary, so you need to find a balance. Whilst in theory, dying all of your bait fluoro pink so the carp can spot it more easily might seem like a good idea, in practice on many lakes it would likely have the opposite effect that that which you’d hoped for!

Using different coloured baits in amongst the rest of your bait though is a totally different story and can sometimes be the difference between catching or not, and certainly in terms of how quickly you are getting bites and how many you get.

Even more so where that bait is not only a colour which stands out more against your free offerings, but at the same time is also giving off more attraction than any of the baits around it, thus giving the carp both a visual and a scent trail to home in on as it disperses through the water column.

Korda Underwater filming has proven how effective the right Goo can be - Pink Almond Supreme in this case!

This has been proven during the Korda Underwater filming on various venues over the years, where a change of hookbait colour has made a big difference to getting bites – going right back to the early days when a hookbait soaked in Pink Almond Goo was used to catch the Big Plated from St Johns, on the Linear Fisheries complex, live on camera.

The Korda Goo not only adds flavour to whatever bait it is applied to – whether that be your hookbaits, PVA bags, or even spod mixes (the less visual varieties tend to be used for this) – but also colour as well, and leaves a cloud of attraction in the water around your bait. Hookbaits appear to have a permanent halo around them as whatever Goo you have infused them with gradually leaks out over a long period of time.

Tom Dove revealed: “Whether you look back at Underwater 7 & 8 or the more recent ones, I can’t emphasise enough just how important hookbait choice is."

“In all these films you can clearly see the fish show a preference for different colours and flavours, despite there being loads of free bait in the swim. If you have the right hookbait on they will single that out very quickly.

“Flavours are vital too – we have seen fish show little interest in just a washed-out pink, but then a washed-out pink with Almond flavour has got multiple pick-ups. It’s all about experimenting and finding what they want. If you think the fish are around, are keen to feed in your swim and you’ve not caught one, change your hookbait. It’s one of the biggest factors determining if you will get a bite or not.”

Different flavours and colours of Goo

There are lots of different flavours and colours within the Kiana Carp Goo range, and that can seem daunting in terms of which to pick.

The reality is that they will all work on their day, and whilst one particular flavour and colour combination might work best one day, that doesn’t mean it will necessarily be the most productive the next day or following session.

Anglers will definitely have their favourites and stick to them – Elliott Gray for instance with his pink Spicy Squid Supreme Goo pop-ups – but it also pays to carry several different types, offering a variety of colours and different types of flavours, so that you can play around and find which one is working best at that time.

Which you choose will largely come down to personal preference when it comes to the type of flavours you like to use on your baits, whether that be fruity, sweet, savoury, or fishy, as each colour has multiple different flavours. There is a range of flavours to suit any taste, including Frutti di Mare Supreme which smells of fresh seafood; White Almond Supreme; Pink Almond Smoke, with its marshmallow pink colouration; Bumbleberry Supreme, with a berry smell and natural sugars; Corn Twist; Isotonic Supreme, Pineapple Smoke, and many others.

When it comes to colours, all of the popular ones are included – such as white, red, pink, yellow, and orange – and these vary from very bright fluoro colours to far more subtle ones, such as No Name Supreme or Tiger Nut Smoke.

Obviously the colour of the bait that you are adding the Goo to also plays a part in what colour you end up with. If you’re adding it to white pop-ups then they will turn the same colour as that particular Goo, but at the other extreme, if you were to add a white Goo to brown pop-ups, then it would have very little impact on the colour of that bait.

Goo isn’t all about bright fluorescent baits, and also works well with certain varieties being added when using a more match-the-hatch approach and fishing on the bottom, as opposed to just with in-your-face pop-ups!

New varieties of Goo are regularly added to reflect what is popular with anglers, such as the brand new Sriracha Supreme Goo which is based on Danny Fairbrass’ favourite bait additive, a Thai chilli sauce, which he includes in a lot of his bait mixes.

He revealed: ‘My go-to mix when fishing bottom baits always includes a spicy kick, carp react to it incredibly well.’

Smoke or Supreme – what is the difference?

With so many different flavours and colours in the range, one thing that we find that many anglers get confused about is the difference between a Supreme Goo and a Smoke Goo.

The difference is actually very simple and all comes down to the viscosity of the Goo, which determines the uses that it is best for.

All of the Smoke Goos have a thicker consistency to them, which makes them ideal for adding to the outside of your bait, which they will adhere to well and then gradually disperse through the water. So basically, in any situation where you want the Goo to stay on the outside of the bait during the cast and making it down to the lakebed without washing off, and where it will then gradually start to give off a cloud of attraction.

The Supreme Goos have a lower viscosity and are much thinner, so unlike the Smokes if you try to just add it to the outside of a bait and cast out, most of it will have come off before it even reaches the lake bed.

Supremes come into their own when being used to soak baits in over a period of time, where they will gradually penetrate right through to the core, ensuring that once submerged in the water the Goo will slowly leach out over a long period of time. Or they can be added to things where they can’t come off during the cast, such as injecting them into solid PVA bags - the nozzle shape makes it very easy to do this, and all of the Goos are PVA friendly.

So which type of Goo you pick – Supreme or Smoke – will depend entirely upon what you intend to use it for.  

Using Korda Goo on your hook baits

Goo can be added to pretty much any bait and the only real limitation is your imagination!

Its most popular uses are using a Supreme version to flavour and colour hookbaits, via soaking them in Goo for longer periods of time – sometimes for weeks in one of the Korda Infuzas – to the extent that when you cut the bait open, the Goo has soaked all the way through to the middle of it. It can also be used on plastic baits such as the Korda Fake Foods range, which will take it on, although to a lesser degree than a boilie will.

You can even further boost your hookbaits attraction by using a Smoke Goo that can be applied to the outside and then left to dry onto the bait, creating something resembling a bonbon and which won’t start to break down and release attraction until it is in the water.

What else can Korda Goo be added to?

Due to Goo being PVA friendly it can be squirted directly into solid PVA bags, or a Smoke version can be added to the outside of mesh PVA bags, plus of course the contents – such as micro pellets, boilie crumb and similar - can also be soaked in it to make the bag really stand out against any other bait around it, or for helping fish home in on it if you’re just chucking out bags on their own.

It can also be added to particles, pellets and spod mixes - including zig spod mixes - to give them more attraction, but you don't want to go too mad and over-flavour them. Some of the more subtle Goos are ideal for this, and Tiger Nut Smoke is one of the longer standing flavours in the range and is still a very popular choice for this, as it achieves a sweet cloud coming off of your bait, and sinking down through the layers if you are spodding it out.

Groundbaits and Method feeders are far less common in carp fishing than in other branches of the sport, but can still be very effective and lend themselves to either a Goo being mixed into the groundbait when it is made, or via a Smoke variety being added to the outside of your Method ball immediately prior to casting it out.

Some anglers also favour ‘painting’ some Smoke Goo onto their zig hookbaits before casting them out, and it will adhere to foam, cork or similar, for long enough to stay on during the cast.

The same goes for hookbaits when floater fishing and it can help fish to home in your bait amongst all the freebies, or it can be used to give them a boost as well when you are using things such as floating pellets or dog biscuits.