When you need some powerful advice on designing carp and catfish baits and recipes for boilies, pastes and pellets, here is some very practical advice that really works on big wary fish and easy small fish, that will not merely help your catches right now but improve your understanding of how to achieve better results in summer or winter for years! These bait tips will work for anyone; so read on and reap your big rewards now!
Many anglers want a bait recipe. But how is this going to really help when still fail to create opportunities that are possible to catch more fish, or fail to maximise situations that result in potentially great catches being missed! What is important is that you really get to understand far better what fish are really about and how and why they do what they do in their watery medium. I say this because the watery medium aspect is totally vital in improving your success equation OK!
So many anglers merrily put out free baits and expect miracles. A very big part of fishing success comes down to ground baiting or free baiting skills, knowledge and experience. But remember one key thing. Fish can be excited or repelled by what you put out there and even if your bait is a popular and previously successful readymade bait it can actually work against you or reduce your chances if you do not realise what that bait is doing in the water, how and why it impacts of fish, and why it may make them excited or make them unduly suspicious.
Familiar ingredients additives and flavours can all be a turn off for fish for many reasons right down to simply not requiring the nutrition from a certain bait because they have been filled with them for so long, quite apart from being afraid of familiar baits and their potential dangers of hooks and capture etc.
One thing most anglers must have noticed is how many anglers us the same format of baits these days. Boilies are so commonly used in big carp and catfish fishing, and certainly they catch the majority of big carp around the world. But part of this is because so many anglers use them. I make my own pellets because they are different to standard boilies and unique baits in the presence of very wary fish can be a massive advantage and this is well proven time after time.
Whether you use readymade baits or homemade baits here is one thing I advise you to consider OK! Consider how hard and how well sealed your baits are in water, and how long it takes for the majority of soluble material and liquids to become soluble and become solution as part of the water column – thus attracting fish and inducing feeding type of responses that we require in order to most efficiently hook them.
So many readymade baits are hard, even if they sit in dips or bait soaks for a long time. Such baits might be useful in situations where nuisance fish and crayfish abound but even in such situations I have always found it far more effective to use soluble baits that break down pretty quickly –say within 5 hours as opposed to 12, 24 or 48 hours plus! Ideally what I want is my baits to actually become part of the water and not sitting there as a bed of baits on the bottom.
Even in stronger currents of rivers I aim to have such baits constantly breaking down and pulling in and triggering feeding. For rivers I might make baits square or disc shapes or rectangle odd shapes and make them using certain heavier ingredients but note in such baits you do not have to compromise on bait impacts and you can easily add things like crushed egg and oyster shell to add weight to soluble mixes OK! Crushed finely these kinds of ingredients are great too for when you want to launch hook baits and free baits into the distance.
In fact fishing moving water situations is an ideal place to seriously hone your bait effectiveness skills. Many barbel anglers have benefited from my experience of combining refining baits adapted from carp and catfish recipes, and used in search of river chub and other species where baits get washed out very quickly in moving water.
Imagine the power of being able to refine the impacts and potency of your bait in moving water, and then using those skills in the pretty still waters of lakes for instance. The impacts of such refined, so well adapted baits on fish and fish responses and feeding is hugely increased – by comparison to conventional baits, and catches differ very significantly! This is especially when compared to boilies made using eggs and the boiled or steamed; thus sealing inside the baits the vast majority of more water-soluble material and liquids within these baits!
I like countless anglers used to boil lots of my homemade baits. In fact I regard boiling as very detrimental to your baits in so many ways. All you need to do is compare the amount of stimulating bait material left in the water baits are boiled in, to realise that you are losing loads of potential catching ability of the baits – by leaving it behind in the boiling water!
I noticed my catch rates using homemade boiled baits really improved when I used to boil my baits in water that was first treated with additional soluble substances. Sure some of these lowered the boiling temperature of the water, among other effects but they really worked to improve my catches. For instance you might add condensed milk, evaporated milk, flavours, enhancers, marine and vegetable extracts, Horlicks powders, milk powders, milkshake powders, honey, chocolate source, raspberry puree or tomato puree, salmon, shrimp or crab paste etc, condiments of many kinds, sugars, sweeteners, syrups, yeast powders, enzyme-treated fish or liver among an endless list of others I know work.
The list is endless, but I advise you to look into hygroscopic substances and form you own personal list! But I would not only add these to water if you want to boil your baits, but soak these into readymade baits freshly defrosting, and to air-dried baits and also to particles, pellets, meat and marine baits, ground baits of many kinds including stick mixes, method mixes, spod mixes and so on! Take good note of this and you will reap big rewards! 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.
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