Tag Archives: Baits

Carp Fishing Basics

Carp Boilie Ingredients Choices For Cheap Successful Homemade Baits!

If you want to catch many more big fish then there are some exciting bait substances, fish senses, and vital energy and metabolism clues to help you attract more big fish to your hook baits! Far too many anglers ask themselves the wrong questions about fishing and baits that really are not that important! So begin by thinking more like a fish instead of an angler and get much better at asking yourself the most productive questions that bring success – and read on now!

So in the beginning when considering bait at all, why start of with bait itself at all when it is far more productive by starting off with taking a much better look at the fish?! Relatively very few anglers understand carp in detail so it is no surprise they have little idea how their baits might possibly work to attract fish to take baited hooks inside their mouths, but if you understood this imagine the power this provides you with over anglers with little or no knowledge or insight regarding this incredibly vital aspect of fishing.

Why be dependant on readymade boilies and pellets and exorbitantly-priced paste when there is no need whatever to blow your money away when you can make baits in the vast majority of cases as good if not much better?! It is in the interests of bait companies to make you dependant on their products and they use all kinds of sophisticated mans to achieve this but when you wake up and get better well-informed and make your own potently productive baits (of all forms,) you can seriously save yourself a fortune!

When it is you deciding your budget and costs of your bait, and deciding how they will work, how potent they will be, how different to normal they will be and how successful they will be and in what volumes at your own chosen price, then you really are a winner in so many ways, plus no-one will ever compete against you using the same baits as you ever again!

So set your own bait budget, cut your costs in advance and not let someone else decide your spending for you and save yourself a genuine fortune! Readymade baits cost so much each year or even per fishing session that undercutting these costs by making your own potent baits is very easy. Of course knowing significant details of things like how and why fish behave in the presence of substances they are sensitive to and so on, and how to exploit such things to get fish hooked on your own unique bait recipes repeatedly again and again is extremely productive!

Bait-making beginners can take many short-cuts by learning and avoiding the kinds of commonest mistakes that other bait-making anglers have made and then avoided themselves over the years through their own experience! Over the last 34 years of carp fishing I have had well over 80 percent of my own homemade baits work on many waters even from the first cast. Sure some waters demand bait changes and adjustments to be successful and these days this often is in regards to out-competing other baits as opposed to simply attracting fish!

Probably the commonest mistake bait-making beginners make is formulating a bait based on their personal opinions and own human perceptions of bait substances aromas, smells, tastes etc. The best way to avoid limiting success of your baits is to start with the fish and what they are most sensitive. Basing your baits on fish sensitivities is the most powerful starting point and this encourages you to think like a carp and not like an angler merely choosing a readymade bait flavour that thousands of others may have previously already exploited so massively reducing any competitive advantages.

Certain bait substances do necessarily not work on their own in water and need a bait carrier substance with which they can work synergistically to bring forth their most potent impacts on fish senses. However, many bait substances can be said to be very habit-forming and I include the essential amino acids and particular non-essential amino acids found in protein ingredients additives and liquids in this group too.

I am amazed at how many anglers feel they lack confidence in a bait if it has no strong discernible flavours or smell. Think about it; carp can sense substances down to a few parts in a billion and it will be very hard for the average carp angler to incorporate any substance in their bait that has no smell, taste or aroma or effect some sort of subtle electrical impact or difference on carp senses when in water for that matter that they will detect the presence of!

Carp can adapt all the time and sense new substances that are completely foreign to them and their environment and this is no surprise as this is how they have been able to evolve and exploit completely new potential food sources and monopolise them to supply their basic diet and vital energy needs in order to survive. Training carp to feed on your baits is just like training dogs using the rewards your baits offer that come in many forms in instant and more longer-lasting ways and these can be leveraged in creating more competitive baits with unique advantages over competing baits that my lack these benefits and rewards.

Your choices of baits substances will directly impact upon carp hormones released when being sensed and eaten, and the behaviours resulting from these releases – so you can have incredible power over carp and even manipulate if they will feed in frantic excited modes or in more leisurely and relaxed ways; but there is much more power in making baits than this! (For even more information on making, adapting, designing and boosting your baits whether readymade or homemade see my unique secrets website and biography right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

For the unique and acclaimed new massive expert bait making / enhancing ‘bibles’ ebooks / books: “BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!” And: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” (AND “FLAVOUR, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS”) SEE: http://www.baitbigfish.com Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait-maker, and proven big fish angler. His bait making and bait enhancing books / ebooks are even used by members of the “British Carp Study Group” for reference. View this dedicated bait secrets website now…

Fishing Tips

Making Homemade Carp Baits – Successful Mixing Rolling and Binding Ingredients and Methods

Making your own secret catfish or carp baits is exciting and fun! It can result in catches you only ever dreamt of!

But many fishermen resist making their own baits. Unfortunately, they give up before they have even started. This is due to having been given the false impression that it’s to complicated, and that it’s only for expert fishermen, when the reverse is true!

In fact, when you make good homemade baits, you can catch loads more fish than other anglers of your experience level. Now you can learn so much more, faster, because of your improved catch rate that you soon become ‘an expert’ yourself!

The discouraged anglers are often doomed to a lifetime of missing out on many extraordinary catches and peak fishing experiences, because they rigidly stick to shop baits that are already known to catch fish. They do not fully appreciate that bait’s main advantage is that it has not been used yet, and has not hooked all the big fish in advance of the majority using it.

Using a particular shop bought baits is like entering a race, where you generally only get the best from them, when they are used for the first time on a water and where the fish do not associate them with danger yet.

After they have been used for a while successfully, results become standard for everyone using them again, and only the very most talented anglers will still achieve outstanding catches on them, as they will again have lost that competitive edge of being new and different.

There is also that unique sense of joy and satisfaction at catching a personal best fish or perhaps lake record fish, on a bait you personally have designed and made yourself. This is something that makes for some very special moments in your personal archive of special fishing memories!

Making and mixing dry dough baits and boilies:

(There’s more great information for more experienced anglers later in this article, so please bear this in mind!)

To make things much easier for everyone, let’s start by using a ‘standardized starting measure’. Often it’s easiest to bring a combination of dry flours, meals and ground materials together, to form one dry powder mixture. You can then add this to eggs or water, to make dough bait, paste bait, or so-called ‘boilie’ baits.

Boiled baits are most often small round dough bait balls, with eggs included. When these dough baits are dropped into boiling water for a minute or two, then a tough resistant skin is created around each bait, and this helps them last much longer on the hook, or on the specialist carp ‘hair rig’.

This is a short line loop (attached to your hook) of perhaps half an inch in length. A boilie bait is slid onto this loop, using a special baiting needle. The bait is held in place using a small piece of grooved plastic or rubber to hold it in place. Such baits can effectively last on this rig for over 24 hours in the water, if necessary.

A typical homemade ‘dry ingredients base mixture’, is usually divided into 1 pound weights or 16 ounces. (Approximately 500 grammes.) By doing this you can design your bait by listing it’s ingredients in individual ounces. You can use your fishing scales and a plastic bag to help you do this!

You may prefer to use kilograms, as your ‘reference weight’ if you are making very large amounts of bait. Either way, this makes everything else easy, because you always know how much water, or eggs, or actual ingredients of which type you have put into your mix.

It is very important to make notes of each ingredient and the amounts used in your bait base mixes. Also any liquid attractors like flavours, amounts of eggs used too, as this will save you much head scratching, and unnecessary mistakes later. Making detailed records is the key to successful bait making and makes everything easy!

A simple but effective beginner’s dry ‘base mix’ for example, is the following:

* 6 ounces of ground-up trout or salmon pellets or fish meal powder.

* 5 ounces of Semolina or ground rice flour.

* 5 ounces of ground-up soya beans (or flour.)

Start by placing your dry ingredients into a big strong polythene bag; it may be quicker and easier to mix up perhaps 6 to 10 pounds of powders at a time. (3 to 5 kilograms). Blow some air into the bag and tie up the top securely. Shake the contents very well until the powders flow and have mixed thoroughly and the mixture is an even color.

You can weigh out 1 pound or 1 kilogram batches of powders, and put these into sealed labelled individual bags for storage, for later use. It’s a good idea to weigh out a 1 pound of powders and put this into a container that holds approximately this amount.

This means that from now on every time you make bait you can quickly just fill that can with any new base mix powder and you know you will have about a 1 pound dry mix to start with; to add to your liquid ingredients and eggs, etc.

Mixing your bait:

Put some powders into a large bowl or pan, e.g. one pound of dry mix, crack 4 to 6 hen eggs into another large bowl and add your other liquid ingredients to them. (Some may require accurate measuring using a needle-less syringe.)

Examples of additives to put in at this stage might include sweeteners, liquid molasses, squid extract, sweet garlic oil, liquid amino acid compound, liquid betaine, flavor components, honey, yeast extract, anise extract etc.

Beat these very well until the consistency and color are even.

I tend to over flavour with an alcohol based flavour if I’m making baits to be fished as purely lone ‘attractor baits’ with no free offerings being used.

Add the dry powders, small amounts at a time, until the mixture forms a moldable dough. (It’s sometimes good to leave the mix in a sealed bag somewhere cool for 2 to 3 hours, and even leave the ‘soaking’ paste dough in the fridge overnight. This allows the liquids to penetrate into even the least soluble ingredients and really helps bait performance by maximizing its water soluble liquid attraction!)

By weighing any dry mix in a bowl, you can find the weight of dry mix required for each further 4 to 6 egg mix. Please note that every base mix you design is different and needs refining for the best mixing, rolling, digestibility, attraction, and water solubility ratios and properties you require for your particular fishing circumstances!

Roll the dough (like in bread making) to release air. You have many choices at this stage, like perhaps use a rolling pin to flatten the dough on a bread board, and then cut your dough into many odd shaped pieces. (A very quick bait making method, and a proven one for excellent catches!)

Or perhaps squeeze small pieces into dense blobs, or roll dough into sausages and create cylinder shaped pellets or flat cylinder shapes, or flat discs. (Ideal for weed and silt etc). Or chop dough into pieces and hand roll them into balls of varied sizes. (And even chop these pieces in half for another alternative shape!) A little vegetable oil on your palms will help if your baits are sticky.

I aim to create baits that will really look, act and feel different to the regimented commercial baits that the majority of anglers slavishly use predominantly these days; doing this is well worthwhile; how many carp don’t see perfectly round shaped boilies these days and don’t know how to avoid the hook where these are used most frequently?

Never forget that we anglers are training the carp to danger when we really need to keep re-educating them into thinking what we are offering them is safe! Well at least until they’ve been hooked!)

Prepared paste will ideally feel like a moldable bread dough without being sticky, this is very quick and easy to make boilies with minimum trouble, mess and time!

Try placing sausages into an empty, very clean mastic gun with the end nozzle cut to a diameter of e.g. 15 millimeters, and extrude smaller sausages to put onto a bait rolling table (a dual half round grooved device that chops and rolls simultaneously producing many round baits very fast!

I like to roll out sausages of various diameter and boil these, chopping them up when dry. I also make molded hook baits between thumb and forefinger, some with specially added cork granules to make them buoyant.

Put on a large pan of boiling water (when boiling I add sweeteners like molasses, honey, brown sugar, black treacle, and liquorice extract and sea salt. This really gives your boiled baits ‘different’ extra attraction despite having the usual firm skin).

I will often spike my hook baits or cut pieces off them to ensure their surface releases attractors much faster and can also absorb bait soaks more efficient. This really produces noticeably faster too at times. I’ve even caught fish to mid twenty pounds ‘on the drop’ straight after casting the bait in the water.

Put some bait into a sieve or chip fryer, and boil the baits for up to an average time of 90 seconds. (The less the better to retain the nutritional qualities of your bait.) Don’t forget that with using alcohol based flavors, these are boiling away into the air as vapors with every second!

Milk proteins should have the minimum boiling, or you’ll reduce their nutritional attraction and benefits, by damaging various amino acids in the proteins, (some much more than others!)

Smaller baits can take less time than e.g. 18 millimeter ones. Whatever you do, remove them from the boiling water the moment they start floating.

Lay the skinned baits to dry on cloths on wooden fruit boxes or cardboard boxes or bread trays and keep turning them over to dry and cool evenly. Leave them to dry, usually from a few hours in warm room temperatures to 3 days or more depending how hard or dry you want them!

As they dry, your finished boiles will shrink and harden and absorb any strong smells or odors nearby, so ensure you dry them in a clean environment away from chemicals, paint, cleaning products etc that may be left around inadvertently and may taint your baits with fish repellent fumes!

To preserve your baits there are many preservatives to mix with your dry bait mix before mixing, many are great for winter baits as they replace eggs which could affect results in colder water temperatures.

Put, for example, a pound of finished boilies into individually marked freezer bags, with the date and mix and attractors or flavors clearly written. Or carry on drying them until they’re 95 % plus dry, and store them in air-drying net bags, paper potato bags or similar, somewhere dry, away from rodents!

I like to put about 30 to 60 milliliters of natural attractors additives and amino acid compound with boilies into freezer bags before freezing and shake the baits to distribute them. This can more than double your catch rate! For winter, try adding a favorite ‘raw’ undiluted flavour, like “Tutti Fruitti,” “Scopex,” and “Megaspice” etc.

For waters with excessive bait robbing fish or crayfish for example, use higher levels of casein in your dedicated hook bait mix, and after boiling and drying, leave your baits in a sealed container full of sugar. This is a very effective way to harden your baits and make them effectively last much longer!

To calculate the finished weight of prepared boilies from eggs and dry mix in advance of production, the eggs, (usually large hen’s eggs) are 30 to 40 % (average) the weight of the finished bait per pound.

To make my baits different from many shop – bought, uniform shaped, machine rolled boiled baits, I boil my baits over a various range of times, e.g. short 10 to 90 seconds (with nutritional baits) up to 5 minutes with carbohydrate baits with overloaded attractors.

For a useful quick bait tip for short range hand thrown or catapulted baits for example, or in a bait delivery ‘spod’ cast out at range, use dough rolled flat and chopped finely into bait pieces. I even leave portions of this procedure un-boiled as paste pieces, to be used as free baits, and in water soluble polyvinyl alcohol (‘P.V.A.’) bags, and dry these separately.

This gives baits of varied size, shape, consistency, texture and density, allowing for much greater attraction to carp, making it very much more difficult to detect the hook bait. This is very worthwhile and many of my biggest fish have come through using these types of techniques!

Floating or ‘pop-up’ boilies:

As you are rolling all your paste into balls before boiling, put aside, e.g. 50, for buoyant hook baits. They can be great fished on their own over weed or silt, or as a ‘snowman’ when used on the hair or hook with a normal sinking boilie.

You can incorporate cork or small balls of polystyrene into these or even use a high amount of cork granules in a dedicated base mix, to adjust the amount of buoyancy you want. These are available from the commercial companies. The advantage with these is that your hook baits are identical in nutritional make-up and signal leak – off to your ‘free’ or ground baits.

Another method is to put a small number of smaller, normal baits on a plate, and microwave them in time increments of, e.g. 20 seconds, removing them before they begin to burn. These are soaked in attractors before use, to maximize attraction.

Another method is to adjust the level of ingredients until you arrive at a floating test bait. I’ve also had this happen by accident, and not design while experimenting with more buoyant ingredients like sodium caseinate, shrimp and krill meals, even some egg biscuit based bird foods, for example.

I use casein as the base with sodium caseinate and then other ingredients, as this offers great nutritional signals, while being a harder more resilient bait. You can buy ‘pop-up’ base mixes from many commercial suppliers. These baits are best left to soak in a mixture of natural attractive extracts and flavours, with an added amino acid compound for example, to harden and preserve the baits and maximize their carp attraction qualities.

Such baits fished just on their own on hard fished waters can be very productive, especially casting immediately to carp seen bubbling or ‘rolling, and ‘head and shouldering’!

So, why not give bait making a go; you really can have your ‘cake’ and eat it this is the tip of the ice-berg!

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.

For the unique and acclaimed new massive expert bait making / enhancing ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:

“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”

And: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” (AND “FLAVOUR, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS”) SEE:


http://www.baitbigfish.com


Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait-maker, and proven big fish angler. His bait making and bait enhancing books / ebooks are even used by members of the “British Carp Study Group” for reference. View this dedicated bait secrets website now…

Fishing Tips

Homemade Carp and Catfish Baits – How to Make Them Instantly Attractive!

* Many thoughts exist on making baits and so many ideas and opinions contradict each other. So how to find the truth about what really works?!

Well, for example, in creating recipes for an instantly attractive carp or catfish bait, (these very often work for both species) people argue over ingredients, and how baits actually trigger that crucial fish feeding response.

A good sign when designing your homemade bait is that it instantly attracts the attention of a wide range of species. This might be great if you want to target all these others, but your bait might be attracting ‘bait fish’ around your hook bait that will attract the much bigger predatory, or curious catfish, or carp.

Such baits vary from just 2 ingredients and a flavour, to the most advanced produced by fish nutritionists and biochemists. But for each extreme, there are ideas and principles common to each, so let’s start by looking at what makes a ‘simple bait’:

To begin with, the simplest baits often utilize cheaper bulk ingredients as basic as wheat or corn flour, with a ‘high energy value’ but a low protein content.

Such baits may seem easy to distinguish from the ‘balanced nutritional profile’ protein based baits, but things overlap: Each type works and seems to contradict each other’s theory of why they should work at all!

And perhaps the key is less to do with the effort and energy cost to the carp, of eating your bait, versus its bio – energy reward for doing so. But more to do with exploiting methods of initial feeding response stimulation and initial bait small, taste and palatability. For example, we all know that food that is very nutritious can be repellent because of its strong taste or smell; some people hate fish, or garlic, or certain vegetables…

So what are the theoretical origins of carp baits made from ‘humble’ low protein and economical ‘carbohydrate’ ingredients, after all, we all know sweet corn is one of the greatest carp baits of all time, even catching a British record or two, but is primarily a sweet low protein carbohydrate food?

Traditionally the best known low protein flavor attractor ‘commercial bait’ (used world wide) is probably is Rich worth’s or Rod Hutchinson’s ‘Tutti Fruiti’ flavor / boilie. Fish love certain alcohols / combinations far more than others and a cheap semolina / soya flour base mix were ideal to carry this attractor label, and work anywhere.

However, flavors were originally used in baits to change their TASTE, when catch results achieved on the low nutrition baits were slowing down, and NOT because flavors actually worked as attractors in their own right! (Although they have evolved to become so today.)

There are still many cheaper flavors, sold as ‘carp attractors’ that are really only ‘labels’ for your base mix, and do not have much in them that will trigger carp into feeding on your bait! Carp can be fooled for quite a while though; A very successful UK angler (Andy Little) who was the first to land thirty 30 pound carp in a season, did this: he began catching by feeding a high nutritional value bait into the lake (SAVAY), and as time and catches grew, his bait ran out.

So, he put the same flavor label (strawberry?) in a cheaper, low protein, high carbohydrate base mix, and he continued to catch successfully for some time. The carp had associated the flavor ‘label’ with nutritional benefit, and were fooled into carrying on eating the new bait – despite its lack of food nutrition benefits!

This category of basic dry mix consists mainly of high carbohydrate ingredients which also roll and bind together easily. A basic combination of 50 / 50 % semolina flour and soya flour is the most commonly used base, although this has often added nutritional factors added like vitamins and minerals, cheap fishmeal, an amino acid source like corn steep liquor for added attraction etc.

These baits are often highly coloured with ‘fluorescent’ edible dyes to get carp to see them more quickly and easily, black, pink and white and background contrasting colors are often ones I’ve done well on when I’ve made these baits.

You have to ask how carp see these colors in water at different light intensities, of day / night, water clarity etc, and to come to your own conclusions. White seems good as anything, and I’ve caught plenty of good carp on this.

Other ingredients are added to give a ‘variety’ or initial difference to the bait, as a carbohydrate bait can ‘blow’ very quickly compared to high nutrition baits on some water, for example a difficult, low stock density, high natural food / exceptionally high water quality lake. It can take much work in pre – baiting for example, to keep ahead of the carp’s natural wariness having been caught on these baits, and even to get them to eat such baits initially!..

You can change your bait characteristics; type of attractors, color, rate of attraction leak – off, ‘crunch factor’, etc. Instant attractor baits are often highly coloured and ‘over – flavored’ with sometimes with natural juice incorporated flavors; solvent based flavors (e.g., acetates and similar groups of chemicals), or alcohol and oil based flavors for example, and attractive extracts like that of fermented fish /shellfish.

Changing the flavors, especially of ‘non solvent’ based ones, can keep the bait working purely on the basis of flavor attraction. (Some say these baits work by ‘simulating’ the carp’s natural food signals, ionizing the area of water around the bait but there is far more to this and it is a very advanced area to really begin to understand.)

Cheaper ingredients, like ground cereals or bean derived flours and meals, make this style of bait cost effective, simple, and very quick to produce. Years ago I used to soak my baits in a mixture of pure ethyl alcohol flavors, oil based flavor extracts and liquid ‘Robin Red’ extract. The main cost was flavors and added attractors and they keep working when changed regularly although I always use a liquid protein source as a bait soak / and in the bait as I have found carp caught by doing this are often much bigger!!

I recall the first time I experimented with overloading baits with ‘raw’ undiluted flavors around 1980… I caught all night, trebling my catch rate at that time. But I used this bait only over 6 weeks, as 90 % of the carp were smaller ones 6 pounds to 16 pounds. Very nice catches despite this.

I tried this approach on a giant water in the south of France (Lac Du Salagou) about 15 years ago. I hooked a fish only 15 minutes after arriving. It was gigantic too, and emptied my reel, snapped the line, leaving my friends laughing, in a mixture of amazed shock and jealous relief that I did not land it!!! I’d gradually stripped off down to my underpants and waded out 30 yards to chest deep water too! (I wonder if the video they took of the action still exists – eh Mr Grimes!?) I still wonder about that fish….

Please be warned: Be aware that highly flavored instant attractor type baits can badly ‘backfire on you’ and actually be extremely repellant to many big carp on some waters, owing to high pH factors etc, and also where it has been used on a water, by many anglers, for quite some time.

The biggest, most wary of fish can be terrified of over flavoured baits and even the average artificially flavored bait simply because it recognizes that signal as related to danger! You may wonder why you almost never even hook a bigger fish on such a bait at certain waters. Remember, the aim of the bait is to get a carp to pick up the bait as confidently as possible, as this gives the greatest chance of obtain a solid hook hold!

I took a quality milk protein and wheat germ bait to the famous ‘Rainbow Lake’ in France, and made a terrible mistake by putting the recommended synthetic flavor in it, instead of leaving it out completely! This bait produced NO takes at all, and I ended up catching fish around 50 pounds on other bait with no flavor instead!…

The Japanese and American scientists have both proven that carp instinctively prefer a protein instead for a Carbohydrate based food.

In one of a series of similar tests producing similar results, a carp diet was supplemented with a carbohydrate food. The carp regularly ate this food for only one week before stopping. This particular food was ignored for a total of 26 weeks, but when a protein based food was then offered, it was eaten immediately!

The Japanese probably lead the world in knowledge of carp nutrition and carp attractors, with over a thousand years of history in carp breeding, testing and so on.

I’ve read that in many tests carp are induced into feeding less nutritional food, by adding PLANT EXTRACTS and NOT SYNTHETIC CHEMICAL FLAVORS. For example, I’ve seen fenugreek extract used, and this is a component of the extremely successful commercially produced ‘maple’ flavor. You must assume that these scientists are at the top of this whole game, so if they’re using it in tests as a carp feeding trigger it probably great to use in bait!

I also got the impression reading about the writings of the famous milk protein bait pioneer, Fred Wilton, that these baits were EQUALLY as effective or perhaps even MORE so, when synthetic flavours were NOT used in them! (So give it a go!)

Once, about 16 years ago, I was catching some good carp using very successful instant attractor baits, when the carp started head and shouldering, ‘en mass’, straight out of my swim, without returning; someone had just put out a large quantity of his own secret ‘High Nutritional Value’ bait (based on anchovy and sardine fishmeal), and the carp had shown their preference immediately! This taught me a BIG lesson about the advantages of really understanding essential carp nutrition in bait and how carp feeding behaviour can be manipulated by using the right bait at the right time on a particular water!!!

In some circumstances where there is sufficient baits of nutritional quality, fish mass population / density/ competition with other species / natural food supply etc, low protein carbohydrate baits can still continue to be effective, and consistently catch almost all the fish in a lake: The key seems to be in, if enough large quantities of a particular bait are introduced, and the attractors, e.g., chemical flavour labels are changed regularly enough, then they will continue to be successful.

One outstanding example of this happening on a water where quality protein and balanced nutritional profile baits had been used for many years there, was at the famous UK water; Darenth. In one season most of the waters biggest carp were landed on a carbohydrate bait based on full fat semolina and soya flour.

It may seem surprising, but then perhaps the fish treated it as a low energy cost food source as over 1 tonne was put in and it was used consistently by the majority of the anglers on fishing the at that time! Only when the anglers’ fashions changed and they tried other types of baits in large quantities did this trend in results on ‘instant baits’ reduce.

They do work well however and on a bait of a similar design, the old French “Rainbow Lake” record carp of 76 pounds was landed in 2006.

There are increasingly more countries and waters where ‘carp bait selectivity’ is now a common occurrence owing to intensive fishing pressure on carp; they can eat foods selectively while ignoring or preferring certain baits above others!

Worldwide carp do seem to literally eat almost anything used as bait. Overall, however, the majority of the heaviest carp caught in the UK seem to be caught on nutritionally based baits, but questions still arise concerning those captures by ‘instant attractor baits’ and why they can ‘trip – up’ many of the biggest carp at times… after all, carp are only conditioned by anglers and THEIR habits and preferences!

This fishing bait secrets books author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges’ up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact on 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!

Fishing Tips

Carp Bait Recipes – Secrets Of Readymade And Homemade Baits For Big Fish!

You may be looking for a new edge and keep trying costly new readymade boilies, but you have the power to make your own awesome baits extremely easily and cheaply – and far faster than you ever imagined! Such baits are very effective indeed when compared to standard baits because they can be made different to normal – and being different is truly the biggest edge in carp fishing! So read on to discover how to be an even sharper carper and get ahead and catch loads more fish this year and many years to come!

Today many anglers either care very much about the nutritional attraction of their baits – or not as the case may be. This is whether an angler always uses readymade baits or makes his own or uses both.

Ultimately the angler is aiming to be different and offer carp something irresistible – that overcomes instinctive and angler-programmed caution to as great a degree as possible. But most anglers actually do not do this because the basic format of their baits is far too standard. I may be stating the obvious here but if a big wary carp has been dealing with boilies and pellets on round, barrel or barrel shapes for the past 40 years it is pretty obvious he is going to be that much harder to hook no matter how mind-boggling the nutritional profile or potency of the enhancer and flavours and extracts incorporated etc in a readymade bait.

It is very obvious that carp learn by experience and association and this is at an instinctive level – basically just like humans. Without these instincts and constant behavioural adaptations survival is just not going to happen! Most anglers are unaware that the firmness and surface feel of the vast percentage of readymade baits makes it very easy for very wary fish to detect baits that are safe and baits that are not. I would go so far as to state that these days if you always use boilies that have been cut down into odd shapes or simple squeezed in half and stabbed a few times and chopped a bout with a pair of sharp nail scissors, then such baits will out-perform perfectly round or barrel shaped baits consistently.

A very striking example of how easy it can be to double your catches or get more fish that much faster is this example. In the nineties I used to fish a water in Essex where it was very noticeable that anglers using fresh readymade boilies straight from the bag struggled to catch many fish and blanked approximately 70 percent of the time when doing sessions of 12 to 60 hours duration.

In this situation I being a resourceful type of angler who always tries to utilise what I observe to best effect came up with many innovative alternative bait options that worked tremendously well but I never publicised what I was doing because that would have given other lazy anglers an edge they did not deserve!

The biggest carp I caught during this period was a leather of over 48 pounds, which I did not photograph as I had no camera, no sack and no mobile phone – you will learn why in a moment! I happened to hook this incredible fish on a homemade catfish rod which was the only rod I had left after someone had stolen pretty much all my gear the previous week when I had generously offered to go to get some more supplies from a local super market for a new friend who turned out to be a thieving you know what! It appears that the moment I left he began packing up my gear putting it straight in his car for a clean get-away. (Therefore going back to that water the following week was very strange with only one rod – and I really deserved that big fish!)

Later around that same period I hooked the fish called the little leather at Darenth Big Lake but lost it at the net so getting photos of forty pound plus leather carp has yet to be achieved – but who knows what the future holds! All through my fishing ever since the seventies I have kept aiming to observe how fish are behaving in response to angling pressure and change tactics, strategies and thinking. Before everything else a change of thought is needed so trying to keep an open mind is an essential asset.

Years ago I noticed I would hook very little-caught commons on small square hook baits as opposed to the round boilies that were very standard at that time in the eighties. This really got my thinking and it became obvious that anything that made fish less suspicious would produce more fish. One excellent idea from the early nineties that I came up with one day while helping a beginner on an Essex lake was this:

I noticed few fish were being caught on whole round readymade boilies straight from the bag. I had been messing around with crumbed homemade boilies since the mid-eighties and this idea occurred to me to help this new guy catch much quicker than normal. All I did was cut a few round 21-millimetre boilies to remove their outer skins so the baits were about 10 millimetres in diameter and square in shape.

Removing the outer skin of a boilie is one of the very best tricks to improve performance as the entire bait can more fully interact with the water in pulling fish to your hook. The extension of this is of course to soak these small square baits in whatever additives you wish. I think in the case in point, to help this guy I had made up a soak using LT94 fish meal, Marmite, halibut pellet powder, and crushed betaine pellets, plus a little Nash peach and strawberry oil palatants.

People who have heard of me for my ebooks consider that I am a homemade bait fanatic but in fact I am just as passionate about innovatively utilising readymade baits and bait substances applied in creative new ways. Making readymade baits become super-charged with potency with impacts that fish will never have experienced in such ways before is an area I am truly passionate about – because it is within the reach of every single angler to very seriously improve his or her catch results by doing this!

Creating your own homemade bait soaks as opposed to just buying them is a very exciting thing because you are literally creating new unique baits immediately and changing their nutritional profile, smell and palatability – all of which can be massive breakthroughs in hooking those elusive big rarely-caught fish that all anglers dream of catching!

The result of applying this bait soak treatment for a few hours on the small square baits previously mentioned was that after I had helped the new guy set up his gear he shortly afterwards hooked one of the very few linear carp in the lake at a great new weight of 27 pounds – and he was not surprisingly over the moon with joy because apart from being a stunning fish it was a very rarely-caught fish and was a new personal best fish for him!

This example proves a point about the fact that wary carp definitely fall for creative new and alternative bait ideas that offer different features and characteristics to standard baits. Note that at the time of this capture other anglers using round or barrel shaped readymade baits straight from the bag and also in dips and glugs were doing very poorly – yet this new guy caught just 2 hours after casting out on a new lake for him.

Of course there is a massive number of further ideas and insights that could have been adopted at that time but it really was a case of doing something there and then that was quick and easy so that this guy could use the idea himself in the future – again and again with success but also adapt and customise the idea and create new ones for himself! This is where I am coming from because so many anglers ask me for a recipe or even readymade bait to improve their success when what it vitally takes is creative thought that comes from observing your fish and their responses to standard and alternative baits and baiting and methods, learning about fish senses and bait substances (and why they induce feeding behaviours of various forms,) and creating practical new alternative baits and bait formats and different refined methods to overcome fish wariness all to great effect!

Now you might think that soaking boilies or pellets is a neat trick and of course many anglers do simply soak their baits in neat Minamino or whatever. But I like to cover nutritional attraction especially in multiple ways by creating homemade dips that carp have never experienced ever before; some that have metabolic-booting effects, some that are particularly enzyme-active, or some that are far more prebiotic, or probiotic for instance. Some ingredients and bait additives have come onto the market just in the last 5 years that have tremendous impacts upon fish feeding and attraction responses but many are not sold by bait companies so you need and eye open and do your research like me!

Ultimately you do not need a degree in nutrition or marine biology to catch fish, but even finding out just one new bit of information that exploits an aspect of how fish detect bait or digest baits better or see baits or hear baits or suck-up baits better, will definitely make all the difference to your catches. Fisheries are getting more and more competitive all the time so you need to exploit any edges you can create for yourself because these will most closely solve the problems and challenges you are faced with on your water! It takes experience, ability, insight and imagination as well as a sound understanding of fish to do this and not just the convenience of simply buying newly advertised baits off the shelf!

The vast majority of readymade baits are massively under-performing due to many reasons including their actual format and adsorbent or absorbent capacities and ways they transfer water from outside the bait to the centre of the bait so pumping out bait substances.

For one thing commercially made baits have to make a profit so they just do not contain the levels of substances they really could potentially contain – to far greater impact on multiple carp senses! But in adapting your readymade baits in special ways or even making quite simple but massively potent homemade baits (and highly economical ones too,) you will multiply your catches like so many others for sure! 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 multiply your big fish catches for life with this unique series of fishing and bait secrets 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 the home of the world-wide proven homemade bait making and readymade bait success secrets bibles and more original articles!

Fishing Tips

Protein Carp Bait Ingredients – High Biological Nutritional Value Hnv Baits

‘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.

For the unique and acclaimed new massive expert bait making / enhancing ‘bibles’ ebooks / books:

“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”

And: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” (AND “FLAVOUR, FEEDING TRIGGERS AND CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS”) SEE:


http://www.baitbigfish.com


Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait-maker, and proven big fish angler. His bait making and bait enhancing books / ebooks are even used by members of the “British Carp Study Group” for reference. View this dedicated bait secrets website now…