I can still remember the first time I walked in to a tackle shop and saw the bags of Savay Seed Mix on the shelves. That was a few years ago now and things have come a long way since then! Martin Locke had always been known for his carp catching exploits in the Darenth Valley and Clone Valley and of course for his forward thinking where baits were concerned.

Time may have moved on and so too have Solar baits but I’m a great believer in the theory that a good bait will always be a good bait. People may think that it’s only in recent years that I’ve started using Solar baits, but it goes back further than that – in fact really it goes back to the time when I first opened a bucket of the Dairy Cream Mix. It was one of those times when as soon as you smell something, you just know that it’s going to catch you some carp.

That was probably almost fifteen years ago now and it was around the time when I was just starting to get involved in the winter trips to Cassien. Those winter trips were never the easiest in terms of putting fish on the bank and back then there weren’t as many fish in there as there are now.

A good bait is the starting point for any trip and I put my faith in the Dairy Cream Mix and it was a good choice as I ended up having several good results with plenty of forties and a few fifties over the following few years. The only reason I moved on to other baits after that was because the Dairy Cream Mix became unavailable, so when Martin said that it was coming back in to the range I was over the moon!

A Cassien 54lb'er on the Dairy Cream!

What I like about all of the Solar baits but especially the seed mixes is that they just smell good enough to eat myself let alone give them to the carp. The Top Banana is another lovely-smelling bait. It is still based on that winning formula of the Savay Seed Mix but with mouth-watering enhancers and additives.

Martin Locke always used to refer to boilies as ‘carp sweets’ and you’ve only got to get one whiff of them to know why! The gravel pits of the Colne Valley were never safe when these baits were around and they continue to account for vast amounts of quality carp each year. As well as the mixes it was the flavours that set Solar apart from the rest and of course the Squid and Octopus is now legendary but for me it was the Esterblend 12 that was my original favourite.

Another 'frenchie' falls for the Dairy Cream.

It was the flavour that I used in the Dairy Cream Mix but it also came to my rescue down in darkest Kent. Johnson’s Railway lake was a lovely place to fish but a real ‘head banger’ and I tried for a long time to put some of those fish on the bank. Eventually I tried some Esterblend 12 pop ups and the got me eight bites in a week – more than I’d had in the previous two years! It’s always something that I turn to when times are tough.

The Solar range is growing all the time, and although the new baits are the ones that often grab all the attention, the simple fact is that they all catch carp and will continue to do so in the future. The starting point for all of my fishing is bait – it’s the first thing I sort out in advance of a trip. To catch a carp it first has to want to eat the bait you put in front of it and I have to be 100% confident in what I’m using otherwise it would be a non-starter.

I’m lucky really, the guys at Solar have already done the hard work by formulating such great baits; all I have to do is go out and catch carp with them!

Steve's favourite flavour!