I first came into contact with Mainline baits in 1990 fishing at Darenth Lake and saw how the GLM (green lipped mussel) was taken the lake apart. Zenon Bojzko, who fishing with his young son Raul was consistently outcatching the rest of us, and although other bait companies were eager to establish their own products with plenty of field testers using their boilies it was obvious that this new boilie making company had something special in their baits.
I was introduced to Kev Knight and Steve Morgans around this time by Paul Hunt (Canadian Carpin) and started to use exclusively mainline baits. The first bait I was to use , which was being tested then was the now famous grange bait. This bait was to become synonymus with the name mainline and over the next season or two absolutely took lakes apart and accounted not only for unprecedented succesfull seasons for myself but for countless other anglers across the UK.
From the early 1990s I was now a fully fledged mainline team member and was to test each new bait along with all the other growing army of field testers and consistently outcaught my peers with each new bait on the lakes I was fishing.
We saw the introduction of Active 8, assassin 8, NRG, Pulse, CP 2000, Fusion, pro active pineapple and more recently the cell and new grange boilies, each of which was a tremendously successful boilie on its own.
Each and every time Mainline boilies are instantly recognised by the carp as a valuable and quality food source by the carp we are fishing for and the worry of bait in trying to catch our quarry is immediately eliminated .
A testament to the belief I have in any new products that Mainline introduce can be summed up in one trip fishing with Kev Knight at Farlows in a BCAC eliminator :
We didn’t get the draw we had anticipated but were relatively confident in our swim. Kev had brought along a new bait that hadn’t even been put into any carp water anywhere in the country. It was a new bait and we were the first anglers to use it. The match started at 12 midday and after about 15 minutes I saw a carp roll about 60 yards out. I reeled in one of the rods and attaching a 5 bait stringer to the hookbait cast to the spot it had rolled. Within 5 minutes I had a take and landed a carp just under 30lb, along with a couple of smaller carp landed over the wekend we then qualified for the BCAC final. The bait was NRG.
I started in 1985 as a carp angler and will continue to be a carp angler, however I am now a Mainline carp angler and cannot ever see myself using any other bait. It just wouldn’t be right.
Carp fishing since 1985, graduating from small local waters in South London such as Clapham Common, Tooting Bec and Battersea Park where catching my first 20lb+ Carp, and then moving on to join such esteemed waters as Darenth Lake in Kent, Horton Church Lake in Surrey, Mercers Park in surrey and numerous other big carp waters in the South of England. The last 12 years have seen a growing involvement in Carp competitions which I have thrived in and enjoy the competitive nature of fishing not only against the carp but other experienced carp anglers.
