Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Easy Homemade Carp Baits For Big Fish And Saving Money

By Tim Richardson

We fishermen pay lots of money for readymade fishing baits! The fact is that if they were so wonderful, companies would not have to keep on offering new baits all the time! Just the same number of fish or more, can be caught as a result of making your own unique baits and this will save you bags of money too!

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.

Now I'm not saying that you will produce a wonder bait which fish simply jump straight into your net and beg for! Even with the very best baits, all the usual skills of fish location, bait application and skilfully playing your big fish are still required. But on your own homemade baits, the rewards and joys of catching your personal life time best fish on your personal secret bait formula is just incredible. This is why it is so important to exploit the massive fish catching factor of making your baits very unique.

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.

Popular baits in many ways do have a shelf life in terms of longevity of effectiveness. Top bait manufacturers will tell you that even in a stock pond which has never been fished, when a new bait has been fished intensively by a number of anglers successfully, their results can slow right up even literally to the point of no more fish being caught on that bait. (This is no exaggeration, for example Gary Bayes of the international bait company Nashbaits told me of his experience of this!) Many baits exploit highly concentrated flavors in order to affect bait pH to stimulate fish. Others use the biological nutritional value approach and call their baits food baits for this reason.

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.

As I said, round baits are not needed. Things have changed drastically in the last 3 decades. There are many methods which introduce free baits well over 100 metres accurately, including ground bait slings, spods and PVA bags and nets etc. So you do not need to ever roll your baits. To make a starter effective bait you need only use one ingredient or a couple like soya flour and semolina, add enough eggs to bind them together, and make a dough to use as bait (and every bait can be different!) These might be used as paste or cut or divided into many different shaped and sized bits which you might scald with water or boil for a few seconds to harden them up to make them more resilient.

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.

When your dough is ready you can use it immediately, or put it labelled plastic bags for later use. Store baits in the fridge or freeze them. It is best to make a note of the ingredients and levels in each individual bait mix. To make around a kilogram of bait it takes about 6 eggs with your dry powders. But this is a very rough guide and every mix can vary widely depending on ingredients, their solubility etc.

Having the knowledge to be able to consistently make homemade baits for a mere 3 pounds or 6 dollars per kilogram, instead of 12 pounds or 24 dollars is stunning. Just think of the saving on 10 kilograms costing 120 pounds or 220 dollars! (90 pounds or 180 dollars is a giant saving and is literally homemade made money!)

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.

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