Sunday, December 21, 2008

How To Make Carp Fishing Baits And Save Money With Homemade Bait

By Tim Richardson

The last time I bought baits to go carp fishing they cost around 10 to 12 pounds a kilogram and the cost of pellets soon adds up too! For an average weekend, the cost of bait can be just horrendous, putting a big strain on very many already tight household budgets. It really does make much more sense to make your own baits and save yourself a fortune! They are far easier and quicker to make these days with excellent information and equipment available. And I am finding among fellow anglers, a not too surprising rapidly growing interest in developing homemade bait making skills, which many of us honed some 30 or more years ago.

Having a unique bait is one of the greatest competitive advantages in fishing. This is very often the factor which tips fish over from the state of just testing a bait, to actually taking it into its mouth along with your hook, and giving a very desirable run. There is no doubt in my mind after over 3 decades of making homemade fishing baits, that they can compete against commercial readymade baits on any water or venue.

Of course it takes the usual fishing skills and application in order to catch any fish especially those bigger ones which are far less easily caught, but your unique bait is a distinct factor in producing for you consistent big fish catches. One of the most incredible highs is to land new personal best fish on bait you have made from your own recipe and knowing you are the one angler who is ever going to exploit your secret bait. You never have to compete with hundreds of other fishermen on the same bait as you!

This is a point lost on most readymade bait users! The great edge of bait is being different to ones fish wary of already as a result of previous hooking and captures on it. So make your baits as unique as possible as frequently as you think your results indicate you may need to.

Homemade baits often succeed far longer than many readymade baits purely because you are the only one using that particular bait! Baits for carp are often termed attractor baits or food baits depending on their nutritional value to the fish biologically speaking. High flavour levels and high concentrations if used are sometimes an indicator of a bait being more of an instant attractor type of bait much more than a food or nutritionally stimulating oriented bait.

I could not believe how easy and simple it was for me to make baits that hooked big fish straight away literally while still hot, even using the most basic of ingredients. Homemade baits can be just amazingly instant and fill you will so much confidence. I do not even bother to make baits that have a round or barrel shape or an even skin at all and I most often do not even boil them to make them resilient boilies either. This is because your greatest edge with bait is their difference. Therefore if you bait feels different, has a different shape, colour, texture, buoyancy, density, firmness or softness or permeability or solubility for example, then it is far more likely to out-fish readymades with ease! That is why making homemade baits is so easy.

Many fisherman overlook the advantages of not making their baits oval in shape. Remember carp remember, so using angular baits or non oval baits is a definite advantage. Just with a handful of eggs and a pound of semolina and soya flour you can make limitless different baits utilising any of thousands of additives and flavors, sweeteners and appetite stimulators and so on, or just one! Such a bait will form a protective skin if you drops pieces of such baits in water or scald them with steam. Why bother boiling your baits when bait which is merely dried in warm air are frequently more effective than boilies?

The easy way to make a paste or boilie bait base mix is to use about 6 hen eggs in a pot or bowl, whisked with about 5 millilitres of a cake flavor and 1 millilitre of intense sweetener. Then slowly add a fifty - fifty mixture of semolina powders and soya flour or maize meal or corn flour, until you have a workable dough, not too sticky and soft and not too firm to pull apart easily.

You can use your dough as paste bait immediately or if you are making bait for later use, then form some into individual baits and air dry them or steam or boil them, dry them overnight on suitable paper or towels and bag and store them in polythene bags. Freezing seals in bait freshness which is very important. If you remember to write which ingredients and levels each bait was made with, then you will never forget how to make them again! Normally it takes 6 large hen eggs to produce about 2 pounds of finished bait dough to use, or produce paste or air dried baits, steamed or boiled baits etc. Some baits will break down faster or slower than other mixtures depending on the number of eggs you use; the more soluble the ingredients and the more of these used, the faster your bait will dissolve in water.

I understand value like anyone else so making homemade bait for 3 pounds as opposed to buying it for 12 pounds makes great economic sense. This is startling especially when you think of the saving on 10 or 20 kilograms of homemade baits compared to commercially produced readymade ones. The saving can be in the region of 80 or 90 pounds for just 10 kilograms of bait. You will have been using many kilograms in a season so figure your savings on homemade bait, it could easily total you not hundreds but thousands of pounds so easily saved!

If having a different bait can produce such a difference in results you may as well have the goal of being as innovative as possible with yours as you create new versions for those big fish you dream of catching. The spooky thing about new baits on a water is that they very often produce the biggest most sought after fish within a short space of fishing time because they are fresh and new. Now this is as great a motive as anyone needs to take up bait making and is the icing on the cake. You can use simple forms of bait mentioned here, but you will discover that with successful baits comes the excitement of making more creative ones, and bait making can be extremely exciting, even an integral addictive part of your fishing, as you thirst for more information!

By Tim Richardson. - 16492

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