Think about it - how can you exploit flavours uniquely to catch more fish? These unusual answers will surprise you and will describe the kinds of unique details that do not necessarily make bait companies any money; but they will definitely open your mind and empower you to catch more fish!
We can all catch more fish by exploiting flavours but flavours are such an incredibly diverse array of substances and they are certainly not just limited to concentrated or natural flavours, essential oils or nature identical flavour components. I was asked this by someone the other day because he had been using a Rod Hutchinson mango flavour in his homemade baits and found that he caught a 5 to one ratio of mirror carp compared to common carp in his lake in spite of there being 5 times more common carp in his lake.
Yet he used a different flavour and the result was that he caught 5 times more common carp compared to mirror carp. Now I know from long experience on very many waters that many common carp strains grow comparatively more slowly compared to mirror carp in the same water. The question is whether you wish to use flavours to select more mirror carp, or more common carp. But how is it you can exploit flavours in this way?
Think about it; each carp like every individual human is unique genetically. Humans are descended from teleost fish and so we share an incredible number of physiological attributes, internal biochemical processes and so on. Many of these biochemical processes and pathways can be easily identified and once reviewed can yield many possibilities of substances we can exploit in baits that can be harnessed to catch us more fish through our unique homemade bait designs.
The ways mirror carp were selectively bred hundreds of years ago and how their genetic diversity dispersed along and west from the Danube and so forth and also due to more recent breeding in this century by the Polish and Dutch for instance mean that genetic diversity among carp even within a single water can be extremely significant.
When you realise the importance this has in terms of response to palatability of bait, flavour levels and fish sensitivity differences it is only a matter of experimentation before you discover most fish can be caught on certain baits while some will still remain uncaught often for many seasons. Due to genetic diversity and of course individual fish genetics that can alter through the life of a fish and exposure to all kinds of outside and internal influences and experiences individual fish can act even more uniquely in a carp water containing fish from one year class or from different origins.
Of course certain fish will be more sensitive and will be more wary in the ways and modes of how they feed. This is not necessarily all due to exposure to all the rigs and baits under the sun and negative prior experiences associated with them. Some fish really are just more sensitive and so appear to be more wary and more difficult to catch. In contrast some fish are much less sensitive and get hooked more often but it is not that these are so-called mug fish. Give them some respect please! Many such fish are stuck in a water filled hole in the ground with anglers baited hooks present at all times and it is good to know such fish do not get hooked every day because if they did they would soon die of the stress of it all! See the bigger picture!
Many larger fish have unique genetics that requires them to feed in ways or frequencies that make it far more likely they will get hooked. Some fish may have more difficulty absorbing certain vitamins, or synthesizing certain amino acids and enzymes and other substances that must be made in the body. Such things can lead to fish being hooked more often as their deficiencies leave them more vulnerable.
Team this with maybe an increased sensitivity by exposure to particular flavour components and enhancers that make repetitive feeding far more likely and fish can become almost programmed to be caught on certain flavours associated with the kinds of food sources they can actually utilise efficiently enough to gain benefit from. Or alternatively flavours will simply act as a label fooling fish receptors because they approximate closely enough to a potential nutrient source perhaps, or even none, but still induce a curiosity feeding response.
Each fish will be more or less sensitive to a massive range of substances. So some fish will be easier to catch being more sensitive to certain flavour components, for instance thymol (thyme essential oil - in particular the terpene fraction which is highly thermogenic, and has very high antioxidant potency. Fish like humans genetically instinctively detect such a substance at whatever concentration in partial solution in water and their specialised extremely diverse receptors monopolise on a potential essential or highly beneficial nutrient or energy source. In fact ALL food is used ultimately for energy. Any well-informed diabetic knows this, and so is very aware not just of his or her sugar intake but that of oils, and proteins not just carbohydrates!
Many flavours often contain a similar profile of the most significant components in familiar foods such as berry fruits, and protein-rich food like fish and meats for instance. Obviously in the case of more artificial type flavours the ratios of natural components the concentration and levels of these may be quite different and using solvent base has quite some bearing upon the true impact of a flavour on humans in an air atmosphere compared to carp in water!
Some genotypes of carp will cause more sensitivity to different flavours, maybe to the level of a significant flavour component, perhaps a bioactive polyphenol in a natural citrus or cranberry flavour, or maybe an alkaloidal substance in a nut type flavour, or diacetyl, butyric acid and methyl ketones and in butter and blue cheese flavours for instance. You will taste raspberry ketone in real raspberries as well as in synthetic raspberry flavours. Again like as in wine tasting different people are more sensitive to certain substances compared to others and a large reason for this can be due to individual genetics of any individual person.
I find writing my special carp food column in Crafty Carper magazine is a challenge because there is a certain pressure to lead anglers towards products and this means towards fishing bait companies that provide certain products and I feel very uncomfortable about this aspect of fishing today. I always aim to write purely about what works best and not plug products from companies just because I get free samples. Much of what I write about can be found outside of the fishing industry altogether and I really do encourage you to look for unique products that the herd do not use!
Raspberry is the most used flavour in the food industry (apart from synthetic vanilla,) simply because in multitudes of trials more people express a preference for this flavour compared to others. As the food industry aim is to maximise profits that is why this flavour (albeit primarily in synthetic forms) is used so predominantly. You can use this type of trial testing by comparing different flavour levels in your baits on different rods for your water. I recommend this first before you go comparing different flavours as it will reveal to you so much about impacts of flavour concentrations in water and results!
Starter cultures are typically mixtures of flavour concentrates produced by one strain or mixed strains of bacterial cultures. Streptococcus diacetilactis produces diacetyl, (the flavor most commonly associated with flavored butter,) and it gives a yellow colour to butter for instance. Butyric acid is of course associated with butter and a well known carp attractor and my eBook writing is devoted to such substances because getting the bigger picture of how these work when in contact with carp and why certain substances disperse so well in concentration in water creates an inner awareness in anglers that is very powerful in catching many more big fish than average!
Diacetyl is the rich or heated note in butter flavour. It is unusual among flavours as it is a well proven true feeding trigger for carp and this is in part reflected in the success of milk, butter and cream type flavours used in milk protein baits and formed in milk protein baits when enzymes are included. This effect is quite apart from the obvious advantages that making milk proteins such as top amino acid profile quality acid and rennet caseins far more digestible and soluble of course! The outstanding success that Kevin Maddocks had at Redmire using milk protein butter type flavour baits is a great example that these flavours teamed with quality protein in baits work exceptionally well. It may well be that Scopex flavour has some element of diacetyl.
There is a very great case for using blue cheese and other cheeses that contain more short-chain fatty acids and more pungent aromas such as the potent methyl ketones in blue cheese powder, Parmesan and others. I really recommend CC Moore blue cheese powder as I have found it highly successful utilized in a very wide range of recipes as it really enhances palatability and nutritional stimulation and attraction among other factors. As a rich protein source blue cheese powder is a great all round ingredient for summer and winter use imparting loads of natural stimulatory nutritional flavour substances and enhancers. Of course teamed with this garlic oil is an ideal terpene-rich oil for any water temperatures above approximately 8 degrees Celsius. Mixed with some premium grade salmon oil from CW Baits plus their high potency high PPC liquid lecithin this combination is a really great nutritional edge!
There are two sides to foods, and you need to become aware of what your bait substances actually do when inside the body. An individual carp could well respond to all kinds of substances in a particular way differently to any other carp depending upon what it is the levels or concentrations used within baits. For instance the flavanols in cocoa are the claimed health-giving part of high cocoa chocolate that encourages nitric oxide presence in the body that reduces blood pressure relaxing blood vessels and by reducing harmful cholesterol. However I am too sensitive to cocoa to eat the stuff and in fact it is the theobromine content that is far more impactful; that is the part that will kill dogs if too much is consumed!
I am also sensitive to alcohol so it takes only relatively little to make me feel unwell. Ironically enough, both chocolate high in cocoa or not and alcoholic beverages increase your chances of getting diabetes, so avoidance is a good thing considering the number of anglers I know who are going to die from the results of so little thought about their drinking and eating habits!
So why do fish respond differently to conventional bait flavours for instance? It maybe some fish are more sensitive to alcohol, or more sensitive to glycerol used as flavour base. Or any individual fish, or related genetic year class of carp in a water will be more similar in their sensitivities and so for instance you could find maybe most of the commons will be caught on a certain flavour, or maybe a certain year class or strain of mirrors will fall for a different flavour.
Extremely water soluble flavours can seriously help carry less soluble bait substances out of baits such as heated boilies and pellets. Consider how to make your baits better perform. Many solvent based flavours actually suck water into baits, (not merely leach out instantly to attract fish.) This enables baits containing flavours to actually get working pretty instantly. Really great baits turn fish onto feeding instantly even without use of additional flavours, but then again such baits will have flavour components at work within their ingredients and additives, enhancers and so on anyway! Bait recipes and flavour recipes vary to such a degree and yet the only point of such components is to induce the taking of a fishing hook into the mouth of a fish in order to hook it.
So much is due to sensitivity of each fish, each particular strain of fish. For this reason when experimenting with flavours most often you'll discover that different species entirely can be caught on a range of widely ranging flavour levels. For instance in some levels you might hook more roach, or tench, or maybe a smaller year class size of carp, but at a different concentration level different carp completely may be hooked.
Not enough anglers experiment with a different bait on each rod. You normally have three rods or at least two that you can experiment with and to not experiment like this is just plain crazy as you miss out on discovering the ideal flavour levels for the most mature (i.e. most often the largest) carp in a water.
Doing this is just one of an incredible array of tools I can suggest that can be harnessed to catch you far more big fish than average mindset anglers. I hope you are the think for your self think out of the box type of angler. Too many anglers become labotomised by reading too many magazines so much they really do stop thinking for themselves and become a follower of fashion, a sheep, with a herd mentality instead a trail blazer of the type that sticks out because his catches are not average! 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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(The innovative bait and fishing author and bait consultant Tim Richardson is a big carp and catfish angler of over 35 years experience and has been writing, researching and testing material for articles and fishing secrets ebooks for 6 years full-time and helped anglers in 70 plus countries catch new personal best fish.)
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