Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned bait maker there is always more you can learn and the potential to discover new secrets is always ongoing because even top fish scientists admit they are far from knowing it all! To improve your readymade baits or be able to make homemade baits that perform equally or even better than the vast majority of readymade baits takes technical knowledge and loads of field testing on a range of waters right through the year. But one thing is for sure – we all have to start somewhere; so why not start with big fish bait and read on for more!
The concept of making little round balls of food for fish like carp and other species has a very long history and even back in the sixteenth century and beyond there are historical references to such activities utilising various protein-rich ingredients, binders, sweeteners and enhancers and so on. In the UK Fred Wilton pioneered the modern version of making baits that delved much deeper into essential fish dietary requirements in order to exploit them to make baits that fish would find many highly attractive and stimulating reasons to consume to the effect that the more they ate the more they would want them! The HNV or high nutritive value bait approach is just one angle – these baits are rich but other baits can also hook fish although they may be far less nutritional as in the case of over-flavoured baits for instance; but readymade baits did not always exist and various other approaches to homemade baits work although usually you need to be a better angler to keep catching on instant baits compared to HNV baits!
There was a time when caseins were the basis of high nutritive fishing baits, backed up by other caseinates plus other ingredients and additives to supply a broader range of nutrition and additional stimulation and attraction, such as liver and yeast powders and so on. Very many anglers were hooked on the idea of using baits based on milk protein ingredients, from the sixties until the rising popularity of fish meal baits utilising soluble fish protein etc that occurred around the middle of the early to the mid nineteen-nineties – at least in my area of the UK which was Essex. Fish meals were more in favour in part because they were much cheaper than the increasingly costly milk proteins, but also because things like the cheaper bird food baits prove that you do not need to spend a fortune to make highly successful HNV or balanced nutrition baits.
Although fish meal baits came more into prominence in the nineties, bird food and milk protein type HNV baits were not the only forms of nutritional baits as there are endless variation, and the success of flavour over-dosed baits and fake baits show that many other options also exist. Fish such as carp or catfish can be trained like dogs or humans for that matter to come back for more food when it is introduced to them regularly; where baits contain particularly stimulating nutrition and bioactive factors then baits can be extremely successful – even if you are only an average angler. HNV type baits can be an excellent leveller of results even against better more talented and experienced anglers when you regularly apply them over time – which is a major reason I prefer to make my own unique economical ones and because this is a long-proven big fish tactic for both big carp and catfish and other species too!
Knowing how to manipulate and exploit fish behaviours and instinctive needs internally by bait substance secrets is the most powerful starting point in beginning to design fishing baits – and not just knowing a bit about a few additives, ingredients or flavours! Finding out about fish internally is really exciting because the more you know how to manipulate your fish using the leverage of baits substance secrets the easier they can be to catch! Knowledge really is power that leads to far better than average catches of big fish!
Once you have discovered a great deal about fish and their inner needs and workings then selecting bait ingredients is much easier and you can choose how you design your baits will masses of confidence because your baits will be built on what fish response strongly to and not just your personal preferences and guesswork! I began making homemade baits in the early seventies when literally everybody else was too and it was very hard to get information about the internal workings and interactions of bait substances and fish but I enthusiastically pursued this passion for decades to the point where many bait company bosses ask me for ingredients and bait reviews, articles on their products and for my bait secrets ebooks and personal advice. Things are much easier today in terms of finding uniquely stimulating ingredients and additives because the internet has provided endless suppliers of ingredients, additives etc; some can from bait companies but many substances come from other sources and using what bait companies do not sell is a very serious edge indeed in making homemade baits from particles, ground baits or pastes and boilies etc!
In the old days milk protein baits were used very sparingly by most anglers because for one thing they were very high in protein so the fish did not need to eat many before getting full; and anyway, they worked instantly on the vast majority of waters. When fish meal baits came into prominence it was the relatively new tactic of dumping many kilograms of boilies into a swim to draw and hold the fish. Please do not get the idea that you need to make hundreds of kilograms of homemade boilies to catch big fish because just a handful of extremely potent homemade baits are always be just as good as any pricy readymade bait when you fish them in the right spot with a suitable rig!
The major reason why you can have absolute confidence in your own unique homemade baits and recipes is because preferably you will have studied the fish in detail in terms of the many factors that you can potentially exploit to manipulate their feeding modes, feeding habits, feeding intensity and location and so on. I spent a very long time putting this kind of information all into my ebooks to make this far quicker and easier to understand, and to put into practice in formulating your own unique baits that catch fish again and again. Now I will provide you with a simple homemade bait recipe for big fish that will kick start you on the bait-making road – or will give you something a little bit different if you already have some experience!
This bait is not rocket science but explaining science behind aspects of it could be quite involved but needless to say this starter bait will catch big fish! The bulk of the bait is low temperature fish meal with a few binding additions and extras to boost other things such as nutritional value, bait palatability, improve digestion and bait performance, and to make the bait a little different to standard readymade baits! It should be stated here that this is not an absolute bait and it is flexible in amounts, used or other additions, or ingredient availability and according to your pocket (or your own preferences; it is certainly not optimised in terms of digestion for example, but it will catch big fish (of that there is no doubt!)
7 ounces of low temperature fish meal. 2 ounces of calcium caseinate. 1 ounce of 90 mesh casein. 2 ounces of CC Moore Meggablend sweet. 1 ounce of blood plasma. 1 ounce of hydrolysed poultry protein. 1 ounce of keramine soluble meat protein. 1 ounce of chopped fennel seeds.
You might make this homemade mix using eggs plus liquid kelp complex and shellfish extract for instance plus perhaps a small dose of triple-filtered pure salmon oil plus a little krill oil to boost internal impacts. You might want to use flavours, palatants, and appetite stimulators etc; try CC Moore Ultrasweet with corn sweet syrup for instance plus maybe some geranium essential oil mixed with eucalyptus and you might use a range of suppliers from on-line bait companies to your local health store and supermarkets and so on. (For much more detailed helpful information on making, adapting, designing and boosting all your baits see my dedicated website Baitbigfish right now!)
By Tim Richardson.
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