11 November, 2022 | Carp | Angler Blogs | Tips

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CompleX-T Discs and why They’re so Effective

For the past couple of years now, Adam Whittington has been enjoying unparalleled sport on a number of difficult venues, including Frimley Pits, using discs made from CompleX-T boilies. In the below article, Adam takes us through how to make them and why they’re so good for fooling wary carp… 

Adam Says…

Discs and tweaks – Give yourself an edge!

Slicing your boilies into discs, should you be bothered, is an edge that has many advantages. The primary advantage may well be the very fact that it is an underused technique.

Carp are very good at dealing with our traps and get better each and every season. Lakes never get easier, always harder, yet the carp invariably grow larger. The only logical assumption is that they get away with it more than ever.

If the angler changes nothing at all about his approach, logic suggests that he will catch less as a result. In summary, the carp get smarter and so must we. I’m not suggesting that carp display intelligence in the way we may know it, more that they become conditioned to how to eat our bait without ending up on a hook. Think of any of your local waters. Unless subject to a huge restocking, I can almost guarantee they will all become trickier.

Lakes are getting harder…

As a younger man, I used to eagerly await the latest copy of Carpworld. The stories were frequently rude, often thought provoking and less sanitised than much of the soulless dribble we get fed these days.

My favourite bit by far was some of the innovative and slightly bonkers new rigs being showcased. These guys were innovators, brave enough to take a risk and spend the hours experimenting.

The jumpers were often dubious, comb-overs seemed en vogue and I’m sure some should have been on a register, but pioneers nevertheless.

Some rigs were dreadful, others changed how we catch carp to this day, but all were once new. Very few genuinely new rigs are put forward now, just tiny tweaks on tried and tested methods. The carp change, and so should we.

It’s not just about rigs of course, but all areas of our sport can be tweaked to give you that edge over the next angler, hence slicing boilies.

Whether you use a Spomb, baiting pole or bait boat, discs will spread further once deposited into the lake. They flutter and travel with delightfully random patterns, settling lightly over any weed, debris or silt.

They still go a long way to avoiding the attention of nuisance fish as they retain the diameter of the original bait. The attraction levels are also increased by the vastly increased surface area of bait on offer.

CompleX-T has been my main bait for a few years now and I love the way that it is the ingredients themselves, not additional flavours that are the attraction. The advantages are a no brainer, the disadvantages are that it’s quite time consuming. Yet, if you can be bothered to spend ten minutes with a knife chopping up a kilo of bait, the rewards are there.

I tend to chop at the start of the session whilst perched on the bucket watching the water – you don’t need to watch as it’s easy to do by feel alone.

Discs all ready to go..

Once prepared, I soak the Complex-T discs in Shrimp Extract and crumble a few handfuls of boilies into the mix. This way, loads of particles of goodness stick to the discs and get dispersed into the water column as they flutter down.

Hookbaits are a personal choice – I currently favour a Frenzied Jumbo Tiger Nut balanced with a CompleX-T food bait pop-up.  Confidence with every cast right there.