Aldi has all you need to catch some carp.

Fishing can be an expensive hobby, with many anglers spending a fortune on high-end gear and branded bait. But what if you could catch carp without breaking the bank? That's what my fishing buddy Big Dave and I set out to do on our latest fishing trip. We challenged ourselves to use a budget of just £10 to buy bait and see if we could catch carp using unconventional ingredients. Most of the time, we fish with a mixture of boilies and pellets. But this time, we decided to give each other a budget of £10 to buy whatever bait we could find in a super market, The catch was that we could only use carp-specific baits on the hook. 

With my £10, I bought two bags of frozen corn, a pack of porridge oats, a box of corn flakes, three tins of chickpeas, a tin of red beans, a pack of bread, and a tub of sriracha sauce. Yes, you read that right – sriracha sauce! I had heard some famous anglers using it, and I thought this was the best chance to try it out.

 When I got to my peg, I mixed a bag of frozen corn with two tins of chickpeas, the tin of beans, a few good handfuls of porridge oats and cornflakes, and squirted about half of the sriracha sauce on top. The smell from that was a bit crazy; it looked and smelled more like a curry than a spod mix, but I had faith

I baited up with six big spombs around 75 meters towards the island in front of me and went to set up my rods. The left-hand side rod was set with a 15mm yellow wafter on a size 6 spinner rig , and the right-hand side rod with a zig rig, 6ft up in the water, made of a size 10 choddy hook and a 12 mm white pop up.

  

The baiting up and casting was not great because of the strong side wind, but after a couple of tries, I managed to cast the rods in the desired spot. Not long after, the rods went in, and I had a take in the zig rig. The carp was not huge but came in close. I casted the rod back, and not long after, the rod on the left-hand side was off. I knew the fish might be a bit bigger due to the size of the bait  After a good fight, the fish was in the net – it wasn't the biggest, but a great looking fully-scaled mirror.

 

As the sun was out and the temperature rose, I thought the zig rig would be way more efficient than fishing on the bottom, so I soaked the bread and the rest of the porridge and corn flakes. This mix was very slow sinking, so it was very adequate for fishing up in the water. Every now and then, I chucked a few spombs over my rig, which most of the time triggered a bite. Plenty of fish came, most of them around 10 pounds, with a few a bit over and a couple a bit smaller

Overall, it was a great day with loads of fish caught by me and my friend who used similar ingredients. Without spending loads of money on expensive boilies, pellets, or branded zig mixes, we had an awesome day fishing for carp. It goes to show that sometimes, the unconventional approach can pay off.