iCarp Excel Boilies put to test
iCarp is a new carp fishing company offering bait, terminal and luggage products into the fishing market. An innovative company with technology at its core, there hugely popular app has many good reviews and now we put their new boilie range, the Excel on test.
Screaming quality
At first look the Excel looks like many of its predecessors, CCmoore’s Live System and Cell come to mind but from their the comparisons finish, at least until we start fishing! The Excel boilies look the part, a pale cream look, soft outer layer and smooth inner core screams quality, taking a sniff your hit with a sweet cream aroma that again hits the spot. You can’t help but think that carp will love these.
On test we had a few kilo bags of the 10mm Excel, 15mm, a few kilos of matching pellets and combine that with a cracking set of pop ups that to me is ingenious. A tub of say 50 hook-baits that are all of similar colour gradients, quality and smells to the boilies but with the mixed shapes, sizes and textures its a cauldron of gems that I’m sure the carp will love it, time to find out.
Time to find out
So the boilies, pellets and pop ups look the part but we all know that it’s whether we catch on them that makes our decision whether to buy them easier or not. I decided to give them a thorough test, take them to 3 different venues and see how it goes with a day session on each.
The three venues I chose were Stanwick Lakes’ Mallard, not an easy water but should be good for a few runs but I had never fished that lake before so was a good test. The second venue was a runs water, a small farm lake on the outskirts of Northamptonshire which for anyone who could tie a hair rig could haul on. The third I decided was to be my current syndicate, but unfortunately I was unable to get on the bank on the planned trip so I decided to bait up a spot on the local Nene River where I had seen some carp cruising and see what the reaction was, with no time to fish the third spot I thought it would be an amazing test to see its drawing in power and one that I could pay attention to constantly.
Stanwick Lakes’ Mallard with the iCarp Excel
The day arrived and the Excel was burning a whole in my bait bucket, after an hour or so patrolling and keeping a sharp eye on the lake I decided to fish a spot with lots of water in front, lots of weed still in the bay to the left from the summer growth spurt and a nice clear margin spot ten feet from the bank which is my true passion in carp fishing so couldn’t turn that down.
An hour or three passed without much going on, my left hand rod off the weed bed to the left on a chod with no free offerings and one of the pieces of genius pop ups, the second rod was towards the middle in between two further weed beds, again on the chod but this one was scattered with 15mm Excel free offerings. The third rod was going to be a ‘roamer’ using a stick mix of crushed and powdered Excel and a snowman set up.
Time for a change
I had been trickling pellets, 10 and 15mm Excel mixed with crushed tiger nuts as I know the residents of another lake on the complex go mad for tigers and with nothing happening their either I decided a change was needed. I stepped up the amount of bait that I put in the margin spot, with much more crushed down small to kick up lots of smell across the lake, I decided to stick with the left hand rod in amongst the weed bed as I had seen some movement down there, the only movement I had seen all over the lake. With the middle rod I doubled up the boilies I was putting in, probably getting towards half a kilo total throughout the morning but switched to a slightly longer chod tipped with half of another of the pop-ups from the tub.
With the third rod I decided to really trim down, I went right down to a size 12 Kaptor and 2 10mm bottom baits as hook bait with a small bag of 10mm to top off the rig. I had a sneaking suspicion that there had been a few fish turning up to the margin spot but with the wind blowing in hard it was really difficult to see what was going on, so I glugged the bag in a dip I had made with blended down Excel with a few other bits and pieces and dropped it in perhaps a foot past the baited spot, the slick it created enable me to see clearly what was going on and within in 10 minutes I had several carp returning every few minutes seeing what was going on.
It was deeply cold, the carp were not moving quickly or feeding much but they were coming back regularly so I was in with a shot. It was getting towards dusk and with an hour or so of light left I new it was make or break so I re-rigged up with little confidence.
Ten minutes later the carp were back and this time feeding, they were getting their heads down proper hard and my rig lasted a good 3 minutes before it tore off, a small common of around 8lb was landed and put back, within the next half hour I had 2 more fish to 18lb on the same small rig with two 10mm bottom baits.
So at the end of the 1st session the Excel had excelled!
Test 2 – The runs water
To keep this short and sweet but to the point, the runs water produced a serious amount of runs, but you would expect that, this session was more productive than most seeing as the Excel seemed to target the bigger residents and although the lake was stocked full of carp the usual size was 6-8 lb where-as I continually pulled out fish of 11-12lb all morning, I didn’t stay too long as the boilies made there point early doors.
Test 3 – Pulling power
Next to my workplace is a cracking stretch of the river Nene, it probably has a name but its around the Irthlingborough area. Over the space of a week I dropped in a few handfuls of pellet, 10 and 15mm boilies onto a spot that I had seen several carp cruising in the summer but no more than that, I had never fished the stretch and knew nothing of the stock levels.
A few days passed before any of the boilies were touched, I was dropping them under a bridge peg and could see everything that was going on, the 4th day I arrived to see several tench and bream chowing down on the spot. I waited until they moved off and then added more boilies before I left.
I returned everyday to see the same tench and bream having a feed and assumed that they were responsible for the baits being gone everyday but on day 8 this changed, I checked the spot at first light to find several carp cruising over it and most of the bait gone, one of the fish was over 20lb and all were commons, averaging low doubles I would imagine.
On day 9 I couldn’t resist putting a rig in, when I arrived there was several carp cruising by topped with a fish of well into the 20′s and plenty of doubles to boot but in typical fashion I waited for them to move off on there patrols so I could drop a rig only to spook a tench or two that were sitting unseen in the bottom layers and the carp never returned.
iCarp Excel Boilies – The conclusion
These Excel didn’t let me down, the runs water would have seen me catch a few fish, the river spot may have been a hotspot and the Stanwick lake session could have been a winter wonderland but, all three a coincidence? Not a chance, the Excel is a cracking bait, well made, great ingredients and sure to pull in the carp from all of your venues across the UK.
The one niggling point from me is a very small point, to be honest its probably a personal thing, I prefer a bigger bag, the tightness and stiffness of the bag means it stands vertical rather than slouching down like most other boilie bags of the 1kg size. I do love the re-seal on the bags but if you don’t push the sides back together and put the bag down it is very easy to knock over and lose half a kilo.
All in all, the iCarp Excel looked the part from the off, it smells and looks the business and it performs on the bank which is the main performance indicator we all look for. Get on over to i-carp.com for more information on the Excel and iCarp’s other products.
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2 Comments
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Nice review danny mate, can I use your image on my blog?
@ Craigy – of course mate, as-long as you reference it back to here no worries.