Tag Archives: Bait

Fishing Strategies

Should You Use Stink Bait Or Live Bait For Catching Big Catfish?

A long-lived debate amongst catfish anglers concerns which bait is most effective for catching big catfish: stink bait or live bait.

The answer is both.

This is why: Catfish possess a sense of smell more powerful than a bloodhound’s and they target wounded prey with shark-like ferocity.

But this is the bottom line: Stink bait catches the most catfish, but live bait catches the biggest.

Favorite live baits include night crawlers, minnows, crawdads, shad, menhaden and freshwater clams. Bluegill can also be used as live bait where it’s legal to do so. Live baits also include chicken livers, shrimp and cut bait–such as shad, anchovies, carp, sardines or mackerel–even those these baits aren’t technically “live.”

The type of live bait used should be dictated by the type of catfish you’re fishing for. Flatheads are attracted to bluegill, whereas big blue or channel catfish prefer minnows, shad or menhaden. Catching big catfish can be as easy as using bait like crawdads and waterdogs.

If you’re using cut bait, it can be aged for a few days to until it becomes sour bait, which adds stink bait attraction. Just place a few chunks in a canning jar and leave an inch of air space below the lid. Add a few drops of water, close the lid fairly loosely, and bury it in the ground in a sunny location for a few days. It’s quite stinky, but it’s a delicacy for catfish. Sour bait is particularly effective in early spring, when catfish are naturally feeding on other fish that have died over the winter.

Anglers typically use single hooks for live bait. But treble hook rigging is also possible.

As for stink baits, they come in a variety of pastes, dips and nuggets. If you’re adventuresome, you can experiment with making your own, or they can be purchased.

Dip baits require a special lure, which is usually a treble hook equipped with a sponge to absorb the stinky bait. Paste baits are typically squeezed from a tube into a soft plastic lure that’s attached to double or treble hooks. And of course, nuggets are threaded directly onto single or treble hooks. Limburger cheese is considered a type of stink bait!

Stink baits can be placed on a leader behind a swivel and a sliding sinker. Alternatively, they can be placed off a three-way swivel or dropper loop above a weight, or simply on the main line with split shot. The variety of rigs, swivels and weights used is basically the same as those used with live bait.

Then, of course, you can enjoy the best of both worlds and double your chances of success by dipping live bait into stink bait! Then you’re likely to catch a load of fish and the big one. Many locales allow using multiple fishing rods or multiple-hook rigs, so you can even use stink bait on one rig and live bait on the other to experiment with which is working better at a particular location.

Beyond stink bait and cut bait, some anglers use dough bait. They may roll white bread into dough balls or include cereal flakes or flour in homemade stink bait recipes. Carp are attracted to dough baits, and catfish sometimes school with carp.

Some anglers have reported catching big catfish on nothing at all–just a shiny hook! Shiny lures and spinners work, too.

Catfish are also attracted by chumming, but this method is not legal everywhere. Chum can be purchased in cans, blocks or bags. Other effective chum includes cheap canned cat (as in feline) food, finely chopped bait, ground-up fish innards or even road kill in a weighted burlap sack.

So whether you use live bait or stink bait depends on whether you want to land that trophy fish or need to feed an army of people! For more great tips on catching big catfish, check out the blog below.

To read more great catfishing tips check out this site Catching Big Catfish

“sam”

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Carp Fishing Basics

Big Carp and Catfish Bait Secrets That the Famous Anglers Will Not Tell You!

If you use readymade baits, or if you make homemade baits then you seriously need to read this! Having just had a very lengthy conversation with the boss of one the UK bait companies we agreed it is so extremely clear that even really well-known anglers using readymade baits are not maximising the true effectiveness of their baits! So open your eyes and mind and read on now to improve your catches for life!

Apart from giving away trade secrets there are things I can tell you that will improve your catches. Many of these things cannot be simply expressed in a few lines because you need to know the why and how something works and how to combine it in ways to maximise impacts not only on fish senses but in terms of maximised interaction with water! Many anglers ask me for advice on pastes and making boilies.

But instead of giving them some recipes (which is what they most usually want,) I give them a far more powerful suggestion! Fish detect very many substances through actually having substances dissolved in the water actually contact their body, externally or internally. This fact is so central to how I see how we can maximise our fishing success when we truly appreciate and harness this!

When we design baits and adapt all baits so they cause maximum concentrations of attractive and feed-triggering substances to draw fish along their concentration gradients like the smell of a curry or bread luring punters inside a shop or restaurant, then we will catch far more fish! Far too many anglers think baits need to be bound up with a basis of cereal binders such as semolina, and then heated up to coagulate proteins, glutens, but I do not recommend this at all. Instead, I recommend you adapt your readymade baits or design your homemade baits based primarily on the feeding triggers your species of fish are most sensitive to; whether carp, catfish, barbel, tench etc!

Test any boiled or steamed or other heated cooked boilies in cold water against and un-heated paste (even of the same recipe,) and you will notice that the un-heated baits form a solution massively faster than the heated baits. This solution is the prime basis of your baits success, so why on earth reduce the functional capacity of your baits by heating them up and dramatically sealing them? Apparently boiling baits can reduce nutritional values by as much as 60 percent in some recipes and even though this cannot be proven in accurate terms in fishing reality the damaging and detrimental effects of heat upon vital nutritional elements and bioactive factors essential in the biological and health values of foods is very well established!

The next time you think about looking at comparing prices for readymade boilies think how much you want your bait in solution in the water because this capacity of your baits will be extremely essential and vital to your success! Quality of bait ingredients and the recipe etc is so secondary to this and price is of such low importance by comparison! I would rather use a handful of exceptionally potent homemade feeding trigger based highly soluble paste baits fished accurately, than use 10 kilograms of the most well nutritionally-balanced boilies; no matter which potent additives, ingredients, enzymes etc they contain, and no matter what a great priced deal they might appear to be!

By practicing seriously feeling and experiencing like a fish, and not just thinking like an instant angler, you will be amazed at your improvement in your catch results! But it takes the right knowledge and insights to be able to do this correctly and it can take decades to achieve this; but my ebooks are proven short-cuts that will skyrocket your catches by comparison to remaining in ignorance for decades to come! Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information so see my unique website (Baitbigfish) for these highly essential details right now!

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” For these and much more now visit:

http://www.baitbigfish.com

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Carp Fishing Basics

Homemade Carp Boilies Made Using Nut Fishing Bait Recipes For Big Fish!

Nut, seed and pulse baits for carp have always been outstanding. With so many carp anglers using marine, fish, and meat based baits today, being different represents a massive competitive advantage – so try out some seriously potent, habit-forming nut based homemade baits and recipes instead! Read on to discover more about how to drive your carp wild right and boost your catches big-time right now!

One of the simplest ways to make a nut bait is to buy a readymade semolina and soya base mix (or make this yourself for less money,) and add your nut ingredients and additives to this. Two of the most well proven carp bait nut ingredients are tiger nut meal and roasted peanut meal (technically tiger nuts are not actually nuts but nut sedge tubers.) The options for making endless forms of unique nut baits are very exciting, and offer many varied effects, special nutritional properties and other beneficial characteristics.

You could perhaps try beginning by using any homemade bait base mix with around 50 percent or more of nut ingredients. One of the greatest edges of incorporating tiger nut meals etc into your base mixes is not merely the sugars and oils or carbohydrate content, but the powerful digestion-boosting impacts of its unique fibre. In the case of peanuts, and almonds for instances it is the alkaloids content that make them even more habit-forming.

Walnuts and other nuts such as macadamia nuts, hazelnuts, and pistachio nuts need using too – these have potent lipids and some particularly stimulating bioactive factors few anglers will ever have realised they contain! Ground nut oil is one of the cheapest essential sources of omega oils you can find in the supermarket – maybe try it mixed with toasted sesame seed oil and hemp oil or walnut oil for instance!

You can save a fortune and make a basic soya flour and semolina base mix with your nut ingredients plus eggs to help binding. Or perhaps add additional CLO, egg albumin and whey gel, or even add just little wheat gluten for instance for a practical binding bait. Of course for those wishing for a more nutritious and more digestible bait, very many options and combinations are possible to create a bait totally unique to yourself. For example, with the addition of Vitamealo, sodium or calcium caseinate, lactalbumin or whey protein concentrate, soya isolate, caseins, enzyme-treated yeast, corn steep liquor powder, various pre-digested fish proteins and so on.

The CC Moore bird food ingredients including Sweet Meggablend and Meggablend Red, the gritty maize protein product Supergold 60 (60 percent digestible protein and nutritionally good enough to replace fish meals,) are just a sample of excellent ideal additions to nut based baits. But you can turn your bait into a really unusual one by combining many various nutritionally valuable and very attractive ingredients. For example using crushed tiger nuts, tiger nut flour and crushed hemp and adding krill meal, spirulina powder, bloodworm extract and tuna oil for instance.

If you want to cut your costs you can use maize meal or maize flour for up to half your bait to bulk it up. Carp love maize all year round even in winter, despite it not being the most nutritional nor digestible ingredient for cheap bulking up; it simply works! (It does naturally contain betaine and other bioactive antioxidants among other important factors.) I find using maize meal in combination with full fat semolina produces a bait that is easier to roll if cost is really an issue, however I would very much prefer to use highly nutritionally attractive ingredients which contain far more feed-triggering substance reasons to turn carp on!

Popular examples are Belachan, fish meals, krill and shrimp powders, calcium and sodium caseinates and blood powder, lactalbumin and whey protein concentrate. Egg albumin is a great highly nutritional binder and is often used in a fifty percent combination with whey gel. Wheat gluten is a another well proven binder where bait digestibility is less important. The milk powder products Vitamealo and Lamlac are very useful in aiding binding and soya isolate is another high-protein ingredient I have found really works well functionally in baits, from over decades of homemade bait making.

CC Moore pre-ground CLO is an attractive bird food based binder with a great track record which is ideal for economical absolutely top quality trustworthy very effective homemade mixes; you can include perhaps 8 ounces per pound of dry mix. If you use semolina it is a good idea to use only up to 7 ounces per pound of dry mix and ensure you improve the nutritional attraction of the bait intrinsically by adding some choice additives and ingredients, such as Robin Red, corn steep liquor powder, vanilla extract meal, molasses meal, CC Moore dried insect meal and shrimp type products for instance.

To make your nut baits compete effectively and even out-fish the best ready made baits you need more than this in your arsenal of knowledge. Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information. Look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!

By Tim Richardson.

Now why not seize this moment to improve your catches for life with these unique fishing bibles: “BIG CARP FLAVOURS FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CARP SENSES EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” “BIG CARP AND CATFISH BAIT SECRETS!” And “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” For much more NOW VISIT:

Catch Your Best Carp Ever With Home Made Bait – Fast!

Home of world-wide proven readymade and homemade bait success secrets bibles!

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Fishing Tips

Big Catfish and Carp Baits – Cool Hook Bait Ingredients

Keeping ahead of fish by using new baits, or versions of baits to keep on catching consistently, is so often the key to success, after location! But some fishermen might wonder how and why constantly changing baits has major advantages; there’s more to this than you might expect…

With many big catfish when fished for constantly, over time, many traditional baits can fail as fish associate these baits with ‘danger.’ Often catfish baits will go in a cycle of success before seemingly failing completely at the point where the catfish diet may have changed to predominantly feeding on live fish instead of fishermens’ baits.

I’m not alone in experiencing having ‘hits’ often very good hauls of catfish over a relatively short space of time, on one particular bait. Then the catfish simply ‘switch off’ the successful bait, often for an extremely long of time indeed. You can end up constantly searching for a completely new bait altogether.

Making catfish dough baits is an easier option as the ingredients, attractors and stimulators, size, shape, colour, density, texture, buoyancy etc, can be skilfully manipulated to constantly keep ahead of the fish before it ‘blows’ and results significantly reduce.

This has been found with various boilies, squid, and liver, certain pork baits like luncheon meat and Pepperami, even with nightcrawlers, prawns, mussels and cockles and so on. It seems like each has its day, then they can be ignored completely for an amazingly long time. However, dead baits of whole or chopped fish, but more especially, live baits, can really exploit the catfishes’ change in feeding behaviour.

In certain situations with particular fish, the question is how to get around these ‘defence mechanisms.’ Use of natural baits style is one answer but these often just act like a needle in a haystack, like fishing a single bloodworm in a bed of millions of them. Sure, worms, night crawlers, maggots and the like do make catching ‘clued-up’ fish easier initially, especially where fish have been not been used to being hooked on these baits before.

The famous giant 50 pound common called “Herman” of “Warmwell” repute in the UK, was very wised-up about conventional boilies. But this fish was not immune to worm bait… The “Redmire” fish, which could be very difficult to catch, were very keen to feed on tiny baits like various particles such as hemp. Use of new particle baits to a carp water can be devastating and this has been proven again and again.

The “Redmire” carp including Chris Yates’s record fish that stood for years were often tempted by sweetcorn. Often a can of “Jolly Green Giant” can save the day. These days soaking sweetcorn in sweeteners lik talin and thaumatin, or in liquid liver, yeast or betaine might work better. I’ve had good hits of fish on ‘Scopex’ soaked sweetcorn for example. The possibilities just with bait are endles, but it could be tiger nuts, peanuts, or any other bait. But I wonder how many fisherman think how to give the fish what they want but are very difficult to tempt on an individual bait alone.

A hook with samples of various diverse unrelated baits can often produce fish for many reasons, not least because the fish have not previously been ‘conditioned’ to be able to deal easily with it. Various different types of boilies and or dough type baits with particle baits or maggots or worms on the hook can do well for example.

Combinations with seafoods like prawn or cockles, an old fish cube, with some chicken or pork meat, all coated in an enticing paste or dough mixture can really produce fish when an individual bait simply will not.

Even boilie and dough mixes that have done so well on waters previously, can need changing after a long period of success. The revitalised success of the boilie “Active 8,” when teamed with a new maple attractor brought a new generation of anglers their first big fish success, even when the original version of this bait was still available, but it’s effectiveness had tailed-off compared to its early success before fish wised-up to it.

Often bait is still effective in triggering a feeding response, but the carp feed in different more cautious ways on and around the bait. Often the phenomenon of baits being picked-up, off the edge of, or even some distance away from a bed of baits, has worked better than a hookbait fished in the middle of thousands of identical baits.

The amazing way carp can ‘clean-up’ a huge bed of baits just leaving your hookbaits remaining is quite staggering to those fishermen who just do not appreciate how sensitive to every aspect of their surroundings, fish can be. Often it is those last remaining baits, your hookbaits, which are the last to be picked up, if they are at all!

Big fish man Dave Lane has experienced this many times. The question is really, why do the fish still pick up these hook baits at all, when out of possibly hundreds or even thousands of baits, these have been identified by all the feeding fish to be the ‘dangerous’ ones?

Most fishermen might suggest it is the ‘just one more’ syndrome kicking-in, where the urge to feel the effect of one more morsel replaces the instinct to leave those last baits ‘well-alone.’

There are numerous ways to make a bait have this effect, often by exploiting essential nutritional food signals, or by using attractors, enhancers, stimulators etc with highly stimulatory effects, many of which bear little resemblance to any natural carp food at all nor providing any particular nutritional benefits, but work anyway.

There are many ways to add these effects using many ingredients and additives to boilies, meats, and particles like hemp, pellets, and ground baits etc which are highly effective at keeping those bites coming.

This fishing bait secrets books author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges.’ Just one could impact on your catches!

By Tim Richardson.

For the unique acclaimed expert bait making and secrets ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:

“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”
AND “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” And ” BIG FLAVORS, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION EXPLOITATION SECRETS!” SEE:


http://www.baitbigfish.com


Tim is a highly experienced homemade bait maker big carp and catfish angler of 30 years. His bait enhancing books / ebooks now help anglers in 43 countries improve their results – see this bait and fishing secrets website now!

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Fishing Strategies

Stink Bait Recipies – Different Stinkbait Recipies for Catching Catfish

The catfish is a unique species of fish with prominent barbells that gives them the appearance of whiskers, which is what earned them the name catfish. They also have spines on their dorsal fins which may cause a lot of pain if you are stuck by one, depending on the type of catfish you are catching. Despite this fact, catfish are one of the most sought after species around and anglers will travel for miles to find a good fishing spot in which to catch them.


There are many different methods available when it comes to fishing for catfish but there’s nothing quite like using the right stink bait recipe to get the perfect catfish. If you’re looking for a stink bait that has those catfish practically jumping into your lap, here are some great ideas.


Sardine Bait Mix – Sardine bait mix is made with flour, water, sardines in oil, salt, tropical fish food and cream of tartar. Mix up all the ingredients in a pan and simmer until it becomes thick and hard to stir. Next, you need to remove the mixture from the heat and allow it to cool by spreading it out ontoe the mixture has dissolved spread it out on the aluminum foil and cut into cubes while it is still warm.


Blood Bait Mix – Blood bait mix is made up of flour, cornmeal, garlic powder, chicken blood, cheese cloth and strawberry jell-o. Combine these ingredients and then roll them up into ops. Combine all the ingredients together with the exception of the coco pops until the mixture is stiff enough to form a ball. When you are ready to use the mixture you need to place the coco pop onto the hook and squish the bait around it into a ball.


Catfish and Carp Hotdog Bait Mix Catfish and Carp Stink Bait Mix – With this bait you will need nightcrawlers, flour, frozen bread dough, sour cream, beef livers and garlic powder. Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and kneed them together.


There are other recipes available and many anglers have designed their own special concoction that works wonderfully. All stink bait should be kept in an air tight marked container until ready to use. This will keep it fresher so you can get the full benefits from the bait. It’s the strong odor that draws the catfish to your bait. Experienced anglers have learned they can have a lot of success when using stink baits. In fact, many have doubled the number of fish they can reel in during each fishing trip.

Dan Eggertsen is a fishing researcher and enthusiast who is committed to providing the best catfish fishing information possible. Get more information on Stink Bait Recipies here:

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