In 1981 I learned a very valuable lesson about bait application which I have never forgotten.
I was fishing a small 3 acre lake with a good head of carp and most days in the summer you could catch 3-6 fish off the top but it was always much harder to catch them off the bottom and when the winter came my results along with everyone else's plummeted. That is except for one person. This fella could always catch off the bottom summer and winter and one day I found out why.
Upon entering a swim one day I found a bean laying in the margin, I had never seen this bean before and so scooped it out to take a look. It didn't look like much but I decided that I really wanted to find out what it was and so I popped it into my tackle box. The next day I made a trip to my local vegetarian food emporium. Here they sold every conceivable bean and pea you could possibly want as a carper (and still do) and I showed the bean to the girl at the counter. She immediately told me it was a fava bean and pointed to them on the shelf. I brought a two kilo bag and left the shop grinning from ear to ear, something told me that I had found the secret bait. On getting home I soaked them overnight and cooked them up separating them into half kilo bags.
On my next visit I put on a bean, side hooked on a size 6 Au lion de or hook. The in method at the time was freelining and so I whipped out a single bean on each rod closely followed by a handful of the same. That day I caught five carp off the bottom and fortunately I was alone on the pool. This carried on for a few weeks but eventually my success got out. Then one day the fella who always caught came up to me, leaning down he picked up my bait box and gave it a shake. He then looked at me, smiled and said "I see you have found out about my bait Steve".
He had been seeding the pool with these beans for a few years and they had literally become a natural food to the carp.
A lesson in establishing a bait over time so it becomes a natural thing for the carp to find everywhere they go.