PVA Bag Work

I am a huge fan of PVA bags. A small, attractive pile of freebies with a rig nestled in among it. Ready to fool an unsuspecting carp (or bream or tench) in to picking up a hook bait.

My PVA set up consists of a mixture of products that I find work very well together. I use the Avid carp bag loader with Korda and Avid bags, I love that the small loader fits the Korda XS bags perfectly. I don't tend to use large bags so this set up is perfect for me. I couple this with the Korda kwik melt tape, Avid carp bag leads in size 1.5oz and a Nash diffusion leader. For my hook link I use a soft braid, Supernatural, and have it approx 3 inches long. Sometimes shorter.

Hook baits. The sky is literally the limit with hook baits inside a PVA bag, you can use pop ups, wafters, bottom baits, critically balanced baits, fake baits, the list is endless! As long as it doesn't melt the PVA and fits inside the bag nicely then you can use anything.

I prefer to use a wafter for the majority of my bag work but will use a pop up sometimes if I want the bait to stand higher. If I am using a pop up I like to use a small multi-rig, I have the loop just big enough to pass a hook through and balance the bait as much as I possibly can. For my wafters I use a good old KD rig with a small shot on the hair just to balance out my wafters if they need it.

My bag mix is a right old mix of odds n sods. Below is a video to accompany this blog and you'll be able to get a visual of it all. The basis of my bag mix is the stick mixes from DNA, the NuttaS and S7 mixed and then added to this are left over boilies which I have crumbed down quite fine with a Krusher, I have used pretty much every bait in the DNA stable and all of these have found their way into my 'bag' bucket. I have added hemp oil, molasses, krill hydro-state and sunflower oil to the mix in small doses and this has helped preserve the boilie crumb as well as giving it a slightly damn feel which helps it explode from the bag.

I tie my bags as tight as I possibly can, no matter on the distance I am fishing as I feel the bag breaks up better with it being as tight as it can be. On the video you will see that there is still air trapped in the bag no matter how tight I get it. But ensuring there are several small holes in the bag, I use an old baiting needle, the air can escape quickly and help the bag break down. Once the outer shell has melted the bag contents literally explodes and spreads out letting the hook bait sit proud.

So that's it for my little blog for today, I hope you enjoyed it and please feel free to share it with others. Please check out the video below.