Numerous manufacturers of baits for carp, bream and other cyprinid fish often include original Robin Red in their products (pellets, boilies, pop-ups, groundbaits).

Robin Red is known as an attractor and nutritional food product for carp and other cyprinid fish since 1950s. The active ingredients in Robin Red include blended peppers, sugars, selected food oils and blended spices. There is only one genuine, authentic and original Robin Red that comes from Haith's Company, United Kingdom.

For decades, Robin Red is considered as an undeniable ingredient of fish baits: its effectiveness is taken for granted, not qualified or verified. However, our field tests with young roach, Rutilus rutilus, as model fish do not educe an admitted effectiveness of Robin Red and related products.

Fig.1 (read text)

Field experiments were usually conducted in river bays on the sandy shallows (20-30 cm depth) near the shore using the two portable guiding net (10 mm mesh) wings (1.2-1.5 m length, 20-30 cm height), with small foam floats and brass sinkers, that were stretched between the two stainless steel pegs perpendicular to the shore (see Fig 1). Roach (usually, from 4-5 to 10-12 cm length) that moved along the shore faced one of the wings, avoided it, entered the corridor (35 cm width) between the two wings and found, near the shore, the two clay balls (at the distance of 25 cm from their centers) that formed Odor Zone 1 and Odor Zone 2 to choose from (see Fig.1).

Common roach, Rurilus rutilus

Other mass bentivorous fish, such as young bream, Abramis brama, and young white bream, Blicca bjoerkna, were also used as model fish in these experiments.

Direct field experiments with young carp are difficult, because hatchery ponds usually have not suitable shallows.

To provide constantly the same distance between the clay balls (shown conventionally as red spots in Fig.1), they were placed on the adjustable cup-like pedestals of the brass frame (Fig.2) hidden in the sand.

Fig.2 (read text)

Compared mixes were prepared of pure dry clay (90 or 100 gr per one ball, plus 10 or 1 gr of attractant) and the corresponding attractants. Moist mixes were rolled in the balls that had the same color (grey), shape (sphere) and size (2.0-2.5 cm radii depending on the density of clay).

To ensure exactly the same color of the balls, sometimes they were powdered with the sand.

In the capacity of standard attractant, one of our Unificated Feeding Attractants (UFA) was used in experiments. This four ingredient attractant, that is marked as UFA F4 and includes equal parts of squashed live sludgeworms, Tubifex tubifex, zebra mussels, Dreissena polymorpha (without shells), sideswimmers, Gammarus pulex, as well as water larvae of insects, mainly bloodworms, Chironomus plumosus, is very strong for feeding-odor guided fresh (F) water fish (Cyprinidae, Percidae, Cobitidae, Siluridae, etc.). One gram of this attractant, with 0.25 gr of each ingredient, was mixed with 100 gr of pure dry clay.

This attractant with the same or related feeding organisms and its ingredients are widely used in scientific research.

As the compared attractant, Robin Red Carp Pellets manufactured by Dynamite Baits Company, United Kingdom, were used. Dynamite Baits is an approved company that uses Haith's Company products. The concrete nature of active ingredients in Robin Red (see above) and their amounts are unknown. According to Dynamite Baits, Robin Red Carp ... Read more »

Clay-eating as one of the forms of geophagy is well known and documented in many animals (for more data, see Dietary Clay Boilies. Natural product number one in the ethical angling world). Unfortunately, next to nothing is known about clay-eating in fish in the nature (in particular, Ms. Ulli Limpitlaw does not report such cases: personal communication).

Some our observations on indirect clay-eating in fish (in clayey localites of the Goryn river and other right affluents of the Pryp’yat river, Ukraine, beginning from the 1970s) are given below.

Among various clayey localities in the foregoing region, those localities that are colonized by the burrowing invertebrates, such as maylies Ephemeroptera (in particular, Ephemera vulgata), with the accompanying microfauna, are most attractive for fish. Localities of this type are easily detected on the above-water (dried) and underwater clayey or clayey-carbonate grounds dotted with the numerous burrows of mayfly larvae. Cyprinids (about 15 species, except limnophilic species), percids (such as perch, Perca fluviatilis, sander, Stizostedion luciopera, and Don ruffe, Gymnocephalus acerina) as well as juvenile pike, Esox lucius, wels, Silurus glanis, and burbot, Lota lota, constantly keep these places. Judging by the compostion of their intestines, larvae E. vulgata are the main component (up to 90-95 weight percent in benthivorous cyprinids) of their diets. Large benthivorous cyprinids, such as bream, Abramis brama, and others, can dig the clayey and (harder) clayey-carbonate grounds unaidedly: in our context, searching for the larvae, they can ingest the clay. Other fish explore actively and nibble the crumbling pieces of the clayey bank or feed in the windy weather, when the waves break up the clay ground (with the characteristic muddy trails) and wash the larvae.

Fresh chunks of the burrowing clay, placed purposely at the closely spaced sites of the sandy shallow (30-50 cm depth), attract juvenile cyprinids, like ever-present roach, Rutilus rutilus, and others, with an intensive nibbling.

Besides the general observations, interesting results have been obtained with the assistance of express pair comparisons of the olfactory preferences for the different clays. Of the two balls (4 cm diameter, equal color) made, one, of the fresh burrowing clay and, the other, of the same but old, sun-dried clay (collected at the shore) and placed at the sandy shallow at the 30 cm distance each from other fish have prefered the first (the total number of pair tests n = 12, fixing the first nibble, sign test, P < 0.05).

The olfactory attractivness of balls made of the fresh burrowing clay must be determined, in the first turn, by the exometabolites of live E. vulgata larvae. At high ... Read more »