‘Protein-based’ carp fishing baits have proven to be extremely consistently effective!

But how do you know how much protein ingredients will have an effect in your bait before you start making them? How is this measured and how accurate is this?

There is a new American measurement, for the biological nutritional value of food. Its name is:

The ‘Protein Digestibility Corrected Amino Acid Score.’

The name of the old method most often used for making carp baits is the biological nutritional value or the ‘BNV.’

The new, more refined method is the protein digestibility corrected amino acid score or the ‘PDCAAS.’

For example, wheat germ protein has a ‘PDCAAS’ value of about 0.4 to 0.5, and is limited by lysine. It has more than a carps’ requirement for methionine.

Haricot bean protein has a ‘PDCAAS’ of around 0.6 to 0.7 and is limited by methionine. It has more than the carps’ requirement for lysine.

Consumed together in equal amounts they provide a ‘PDCAAS’ value of 1. Number 1 denotes the highest protein value in human dietary terms.

Each protein food is balanced by the other. Carp can receive the full dietary requirement of both of each ‘first limiting amino acid’ in each food bait ingredient, such as white fish meal, or fish protein concentrate.

There are many nutritional ingredients that produce this effect when combined together in bait. Fishing bait suppliers offer the most commonly known ones, although are not necessarily the most effective on many waters today.

Below is an ingredients list of aquaculture carp feed stuffs, ideal for carp bait and boilie making. Used in combination, these can also maximize carp health and growth by combining the negative digestive effects of their individual ‘first limiting amino acids.’ (Indicated):

Whole egg: ‘the first limiting amino acid’ is ‘threonine.’ (Egg is an excellent whole food ingredient and bait binder.)

* Whey: first limiting amino acids are methionine / cystine.

* Whole milk: methionine / cystine.

* Fish muscle: methionine / phenylalanine.

* Fish meal (Herring): threonine.

* White fish meal: threonine / phenylalanine.

* Fish silage: tryptophan.

* Fish protein concentrate: cystine.

* Whole shrimp meal: histidine.

* Soya bean meal: methionine.

* Blood meal: isoleucine.

* Meat and bone meal: methionine.

* Liver meal: lysine.

* Beef meal: methionine / cystine.

* Poultry (chicken and turkey) by-product meals: tyrosine.

* Hydrolyzed feather meal: methionine.

* Spirulina maxima: cystine.

* Groundnut meal: methionine.

* Whole wheat meal: lysine.

* Maize meal: lysine / tryptophan.

* Potato protein concentrate: methionine.

* Worm meal: cystine.

* Leaf protein concentrate: cystine.

* Coconut: lysine.

* Sesame: lysine.

* Linseed / flaxseed: lysine.

* Sunflower: lysine.

* Cottonseed: lysine.

* Palm Kernel: lysine / methionine.

* Safflower: lysine.

* Crambe: lysine.

* Rapeseed: cystine.

* Chick pea: methionine.

* Cow pea: methionine.

* Mung bean: cystine.

* Haricot bean: methionine.

* Yellow (‘sweet’) lupin: methionine.

* Most pulses: methionine.

* Saccharomyces cerevisiae: (bakers and brewers yeast): methionine.

* Torulopsis utilis: (yeast): methionine.

* M. methylotrophus: (bacterium): cystine.

Most animal, pet and commercial bait companies will supply an analysis of each product. These list for example, protein content, added amino acids, minerals, trace elements and vitamin, salt supplement content, type of oils or fat content, dietary fiber, any ash (for potassium) content.

Researching the ‘PDCAAS’ value of your carp bait ingredients, is an excellent way to ensure you are balancing the wasteful limiting nutritional effects, of the first limiting essential amino acids in your bait. This ensures carps’ maximum utilization of your bait proteins for maximum bait attraction and available nutrition.

In a way, you balanced profile baits can become habit forming to carp you introduce more and they eat more of it over time. They will sense your baits superior energy efficient nutritional benefits and attraction. As a consequence, with good angling skills, your catches will grow, and the numbers of bigger fish you hook will improve.

The ‘oily fish group,’ is ideal as a ‘bait bulk protein provider.’ For example: meals made from anchovies, herring, mackerel, mullet, sardines, salmon, trout, tuna, and others like smelts and capelin. Most types of shellfish are ideal sources of protein for carp too, and have repeatedly produced excellent catches.

Plant sources like beans, pulses, grains, nuts, seeds, for example; soybean products, buckwheat, and millet, are also good sources of proteins. These also need combining with other protein sources for the best amino profile and balance, as they are often deficient in some important amino acids.

It is recommended to combine plant and animal proteins to best exploit the effects and benefits of each other.

Earlier biological measurement tests had in built faults and unknown variables. These popularly used evaluations were called the ‘Protein efficiency ratio or ‘PER’ and the biological nutritional value or ‘BNV.’

Of course, the validity of any nutritional biological value, and its accuracy, only holds true to carp, if tested using carp nutritional values!

In the past, many anglers have attempted to apply the old ‘BNV’ evaluation measurement to carp bait ingredients. These have been used produce a total figure for a ‘high nutritional value’ bait, but were not accurate at all.

These were human nutrition values for foods and food group constituents, and not carp tested evaluations!

However, they can give us comparative guide to values for carp. The highest ‘PDCAAS’ value is 1, (for humans,) with 0 as the lowest score. Examples of some ‘PDCAAS’ values for carp bait ingredients are:

Soya: 1.

Egg white: 1.

Casein: 1.

Whey: 1.

Milk: 1.

Beef: 0.98.

Kidney beans: 0.68.

Lentils: 0.52.

Peanuts: 0.52.

Wheat: 0.25.

Although the ‘PDCAAS’ is more accurate than the ‘PER’ or ‘BV’, the following are important facts relating to bait design, which can be misleading to any evaluation:

A. The scores were results from nutritional humans testing only.

B. The ‘BV’ measures nitrogen absorption, but ignores important variables affecting digestion.

C. The ‘PDCAAS’ adjusts for proteins digested but lost from the body unused, or to bacterial digestion in the gut. Proteins are assumed to have been available when a food was digested, but were actually unavailable because of digestive inhibitors like soy tannins.

D. It is misleading because a diet very rarely consists of just one food source

E. Probably the most important flaw is related to amino acids, and this also is a big point to remember in designing your bait! Calculating the biological digestibility value of food constituents of human diet purely based on the more accurate ‘PDCAAS’ measure is presently impossible to complete accurately. The same applies to carp bait too.

(There are other types of measurement which also help obtain a very rough guide.)

A single ingredient in the diet could supply very many of a large ‘profile’ of amino acids, which another ingredient is lacking in.

The ‘PDCAAS’ evaluation result would show a higher value than any of the individual ingredients. This is totally inaccurate as all the individual amino acids would have to be analyzed, individually assessed and calculated!

All we can do is use human nutritional values in the design of carp baits, until science catches up with our needs. If any carp fisherman knows of a flawless evaluation method that provides ‘true’ carp bait nutritional values, please let everyone know!

The author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges’ up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact on catches.

By Tim Richardson.