So how do you begin to formulate a homemade bait that will compete with all those expensive ready made baits? This is a long piece on this subject that will give you a practical insight into the formulation and impacts of using highly successful economical homemade baits against more expensive ready made baits - so read on!
Many anglers seem to get the completely wrong idea and actually begin with thoughts about flavours and ingredients instead of the most powerful and obvious starting point, the one that will guarantee success! When your starting point is the fish themselves you are thinking much more closely like a fish than like an angler who has all kinds of personal preferences about baits which very frequently bear very little relationship with what carp senses most respond to in terms of feeding.
For instance, I went on a rare trip to a commercial water last week and using my own homemade baits, I out-fished the 15 guys fishing during the period fished who were literally all using popular ready made baits. So what does this say about the thinking and fishing approach of the average carp angler? Some of the guys either side of me were getting very frustrated with their ready made baits which had cost them in some cases over 10 pounds a kilogram. Also the baits they were using have been very successful in the past on a range of waters including this very one fished and some other ready made baits other guys were using were newer to the water than the longer-established ready made baits. My baits which had never been experienced by the fish before did so well for many powerful reasons.
I even showed my baits to some of the other anglers. I explained that my free baits and hook baits were quite savoury and sweet tasting at the same time and had a taste that lingered on the tongue with only had a very subtle smell. The guys did not seem impressed with these which is a shame because they certainly out-fished the fruit flavoured ready made bait someone had given me to field test which these guys seemed to like a lot more even though it did not perform as well!
Ideally you will begin with the fishes essential dietary requirements because by doing this you are guaranteed to give fish many reasons to eat your bait. But in a competitive fishing environment where many baits supply quality nutrition many other factors give you the edge. For example if your bait actually performs better in water at pulling fish into your swim for instance, or at improving the amount of bait fish are willing to repeatedly swallow even beyond the amounts they would usually feel full up. You might have palatability improving additives that increase the likelihood that your baits are actually consumed instead of merely being mouthed.
It is a fact that you can make your own homemade baits so potently stimulatory that carp will actually rub their bellies and fins on them to get even more of those goodies out of them. Such potent over-dosed baits are ideal for pulling maximum numbers of fish into your swim while you can use under-dosed hook baits that fish will devour instantly. (Note in this example I am not referring to over-dosing using flavours.)
There are so many incredible secrets about baits. The way baits interact with water is absolutely vital and the leverage of the substances of your baits is severely limited by your skills at feeding free baits in the right volumes, regularity and patterns and so on to suit every fishing situation.
Altogether too many ready made carp baits are simply too indigestible to offer very many competitive advantages over better designed baits and many ready made baits offer so many bog standard ingredients that carp have been force-fed on for decades that they simply do not need to eat them as the essential requirements they supply have pretty much been permanently satiated.
One of the biggest secrets is to offer your carp something different and preferably unique to you alone. This might be just one ingredient or additive or the actual omission of many of the more frequently used ingredients and additives. The fish really know the difference and I know that this is a very strong reason for some of the big bait companies to use a product called Cypry Spice from a bait company called Willis Worms in Wales to replace the old very familiar Robin Red.
Just one way you can achieve this is in the unique and purposely differentiated ratios, levels and combination's of ingredients and additives in both powdered and liquid forms that you apply in your baits (and ground baits) within digestible and practicable limitations. Personally I prefer to source unique additives and ingredients and natural flavour components that all enhance the impacts of each other as much as possible to induce repeated carp feeding for as long as possible. Experiencing this in action while actually fishing is such a great buzz of confidence and this is one of the most exciting things about preparing, making and using homemade baits
For example for my session last week I made up a large volume of extremely cheap bait based mainly around a combination of a liquid fish protein (not the all too familiar L030,) and fish oil, and a high PC lecithin used in very high levels. This was added to a very simple base mix which contained the basic dietary essential carp requirements and had a very good and practically proven digestibility. This means that this bait is eaten and digested comparatively quickly at relatively little energy cost to the fish compared to so many other baits. This also means that the fish get to instinctively feel all the components and benefits of eating this bait and very quickly are ready to consume more of it which as you can imagine is a huge advantage when session fishing!
While fishing my session last week I was baiting up extremely regularly to combat the impacts of bait-robbing roach and bream shoals and still getting big fish rolling over my baits and seeing fish feeding on the baits along with accompanying fish catches. It got to the stage that the ready made bait guys fishing either side of me were scratching their heads and simply hoping for a bite. I noticed these guys only had 2 or three kilograms of bait and were introducing that sparingly, not even realising that the bulk of it was being whittled away within the hour by marauding roach and other smaller species!
Sure you can catch fish fishing small amounts of bait or single hook baits but actually controlling fish behaviours by leveraging the impacts of free baiting is one of the most powerful edges in carp fishing and is the cornerstone of top level match-fishing success! I used to fish with a guy who match-fished for England youth as well as a friend from school called Dion who match fished for England for many years and ground bait figured in the strategic thinking in many ways and although I was able to use this to out-fish them while carp fishing and sea fishing, they both taught me loads along the way and of course we never stop learning!
A very big part of their problem just how expensive their ready made baits were, after all few anglers can keep spending 10 pound a kilogram on bait added to high ticket prices, food, traveling costs etc, and be able to use enough bait to compete by actually leveraging bait to maximum effect. By making your own bait of course this is not a problem and in fact is the only way I can afford to compete with bait-sponsored anglers myself. On such waters the use of boilies really is important because the smaller species are very definitely not so small and will destroy a carefully introduced bed of particles or ground bait or pellets within minutes. When the roach reach 3 pounds and average 1 pound alongside other specimen tench, crucian carp etc the application of the correct free bait is crucial for outstanding success.
The big point here is the actual leverage of bait and being able to maximize its impacts on carp. To do this you need to sustain enough dissolved substances in the water in and around your swim to pull those carp in and keep them interested long enough for the biggest fish to compete amongst themselves and give you a very good shot at a multiple big fish catch - by design!
You simply cannot do this consistently when fishing on a budget with a only a couple of kilograms of bait on waters teaming with specimen-sized smaller species, be it giant roach, bream, crucian carp, single figure carp, specimen tench, nuisance catfish and others. The attentions of all these fish can be harnessed to actually attract more carp into your swim buy only if you use enough bait in the right way in correct situations to do it, (many top anglers really are masters at doing this!)
In fact many very consistent big carp anglers are not particularly technically skilled but have an incredible if not instinctive talent for maximising the application and leverage of the impacts of bait. I feel this subject is much misunderstood and is a vital leveller of talent, time and money between anglers of lesser resources who deserve to catch and not blank or suffer comparatively poor catches when exceptional catches are actually within their reach with enough knowledge put into practice!
I saw all around me guys using pellets, standard 14 and 18 millimeter boilies for example, ready made ground bait balls and method mixes that the big roach shoals were tearing into. A lot of the guys were reeling in with their ready made baits completely whittled off their rigs so you can imagine the impact of the small fish on their free baits!
By contrast I was applying 2 distinct types of baits to my swim to counteract the problem of smaller fish and also to allow the carp to get a smell and taste of my baits and leading them to making mistakes with my hook baits! By strange coincidence, much of the bait I had prepared had been designed to deal with the crayfish in another water I was going to fish and did not. In this particular case my boilies were of 2 types; soft semi-boiled boilies for free baiting, and rock hard super-boosted hook bait boilies absolutely packed with naturally potent triggers and other vital substances to provide competitive edges.
Many of my free baits were well over 25 millimeters in size and none were made to be round but rather all were odd shaped and were in fact not prepared by rolling at all. Only a small proportion of the free baits were of around the standard 12 or 14 millimeter sizes. These free baits were designed to dissolve within about 4 hours of immersion thereby doing the maximum work in pulling and triggering fish while not giving them much time to actually eat them! The vast majority of ready made boilies will not break down for at least 8 to 36 hours or longer so you can see how much their effectiveness is limited by their actual form; the preference of average anglers for durable hard boilies as free baits and hook baits has many drawbacks!
I have seen with my own eyes very big carp actually fanning away standard round boilies in order to be able to pick up smaller odd shaped baits in safety. (On the lake bed odd shaped baits are very often standard round boilies which have been in the water a while, long enough for smaller fish to whittle them down in size and shape and which wary carp view with far less suspicion as these hook them far less than whole round baits!)
By contrast though, my hook baits and a proportion of matching free baits were of a totally different design and were super-boosted with natural triggers and were rock hard. These baits were of very small size and about as far from conventional machine-rolled shape, texture, density etc that you could imagine. These baits in large sizes where used in PVA bags and a very hard paste in large sized pieces were also used to very good effect.
This might all sound like common sense and to some of you like hard work, but I paid my money to fish the commercial fishery just the same as the other 15 anglers there but I spent less on my bait and still had better results despite them using the most popular brands of ready made baits. In part due to my 30 years in carp fishing, my own scientific research and long bait-making experience and my fellow BCSG friends my interest in bait and fish senses, metabolism, health, etc and my ability to improve my baits has come a very long way, and every week I get to learn new things to give me more competitive fishing edges and even more economical baits!
You may not be into master antioxidants, metabolic stimulants, bioactive flavour components or sorting the first to third limiting amino acids in your bait recipes. But I can assure you that just a few of the most powerful secrets will multiply your catches to the degree you will shudder at just how much time in hours and money in under-performing baits you will have wasted over the coming years in your possible ignorance. Having said that no-one knows everything about baits and most bait company bosses appear to have certain gaps in their knowledge.
There is are hard core of bait company bosses who by definition have been doing it for decades longer than anyone else and know far more in theoretical and practical terms as a result but even these top guys often have to compromise performance aspects of their bait due to the actual sensory and practical preferences of their human customers and their price sensitivity too! This gives the homemade bait maker enormous opportunities to out-fish very many popular ready made baits; certainly many of the most successful homemade baits I have made could not be offered commercially because buyers simply would not relate to them as conventional carp baits at all and would not buy them; unfortunately such is the mentality of the average angler and shows just how much they have been conditioned as much as carp! Having an open mind about bait is a definite advantage!
There are also very many bait company guys out there who are really just starting out with pretty limited actual working knowledge of even a handful of recipes of ready made baits they might be offering. Certain further gaps in knowledge might be in connection with various aspects of carp senses operations and in maximizing their exploitation potential, or in regards to how certain sweet substances impact physiologically to change DNA, carp preferences and taste cells cross adaptation impacts, or what to include to actually regulate carp blood sugar levels beneficially.
Significantly it might be some bait company bosses over-look completely the long-term (behaviour-forming) impacts of more obscure antioxidant additives on carp preferences, or the deeper aspects of enhancing impacts of certain non, semi-essential and essential amino acids for various effects using any of a whole range of substances, or even in regards to exactly how flavours work etc! (Many of the best flavours work well beyond simple potentiation of nerve cells. Never forget that as carp detect certain substances down to as little as 6 parts per million concentration, every single thing you put in a bait and in the swim can have impacts on results to some degree even if you cannot smell it!)
Every aspect of your bait can be used as a competitive advantage so attention to detail is of vital importance because it is this that can very seriously multiply your catches!
As a couple of quick tips, even if you have been making baits for a while, why not try out very high levels of Ccmoore Feedstim XP powder in your baits with their awesome Odyssey XXX liquid, or why not be very different and try this unique combination of premium grade salmon protein, high PC lecithin and pure Scottish salmon oil from my friend Phil at CW Baits and Carp fishing pellets. (This combination did fantastic last week and it also out-fished all the ready made baits it was fished against this past winter and was a combination I chose to exploit last week in my very cheap but successful homemade baits!) Phil started out as a premium koi food supplier and now offers some unique exceptional bait ingredients and very high quality very digestible baits (amino-sorted!) I know he is looking for some bait testers due to expanding his range of HNV baits so do contact him right away!)
I hope this makes you consider what savings you can make over the years and also the improved catches over your peers you are potentially missing out on right now! For much more information on making outstanding competitive homemade baits (and at a fraction of the cost of ready made baits) whether boilies, pellets, ground baits, boosted particles, meats, fish and natural baits etc, why not get my unique big carp bait secrets guides at my site called Baitbigfish and improve your catches and bank balance simultaneously!
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 Home of world-wide proven ready made and homemade bait success secrets bibles!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_F._Richardson