Monday, June 1, 2009

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

By Tim Richardson

Fishing bait from fishing shops can really make going carp fishing an expensive passion! Many anglers are now so conditioned to using readymade baits that they have never seriously considered the huge advantages of making very unique baits for themselves, but they will catch as many if not higher numbers of fish than commercial baits. The fact that homemade bait will cost you a fraction of the cost of readymade baits and over the days and weeks shocking savings can be achieved with no less fish (in fact quite the opposite!)

Every time I have used a homemade bait that is different to the popular baits on a water, big fish have appeared and this is one of those definite points about carp which you can exploit using homemade baits. Fish learn by association and will find your new baits much harder to resist than popular readymades that already have been exploited. This difference is often the factor that decides if you get a run of big fish, or just average results, or series of memorable personal best fish sessions or lots of blanks!

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!

The funny thing is, most carp anglers never stop to think and see that by using readymade baits they could be cutting their chances by well over half. This is because at any point in time you will be fishing against an unknown number of other anglers who may all be using the bait you are. Your readymade bait has no more chance of catching fish than the next guys. But if you know how to adapt them or make your own, you are putting your baits catching potential in a different league to Mr Average! With a different bait your chances can really skyrocket and it pays you back enormously many times over repeatedly for making minor effort with your bait!

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.

You might have read about making homemade baits and had the impression it has to be difficult and time consuming despite being more economical by far than using commercial baits. However it is in reality so easy to make homemade baits that catch fish over forty pounds that a 12 year old can do it and that is the real truth. There is no obligation for you to make baits anything like resembling commercial baits, all smooth, round barrel shapes perfectly formed and so on. In fact to copy them would lose you many hidden advantages that are not lost making very different baits! You do not even have to roll baits into balls at all or even boil them to produce boilies and there are very easy ways to avoid any time consuming parts in making baits.

You do not have to make individual baits in round shapes. Why not roll out a bait paste made of eggs, liquid additives and dry powders made into a dough and simply cut this into little odd shaped pieces? You could pop these into a pan of boiling water for about a minute or so to make boilies.

Making baits is very easy. You merely need a large container to mix your ingredients in and a knife or spoon to mix the materials to form a practical bait dough. First just get a handful of eggs and a teaspoonful of cake flavor and mix together well, then add your dry powders, etc a bit a time until a firm dough is reached.

Now you can use the dough as fresh bait or opt to label some sealed plastic bags and store it in the fridge for a few days or to freeze it in advance of going fishing. You most likely will forget what you made your baits out of so it is best to write this somewhere so you can remake your winning baits repeatedly! It is possible to get a ball of dough weighing about a kilogram from a 6 egg mixture; this will obviously vary depending upon the various ingredients you choose to include and their levels. Some ingredients will hold water better than others while some might dissolve readily in water, and the practical advantages of each kind are easy to exploit depending if you want hard baits which break down slowly or ones which dissolve and spread their attraction very quickly.

Considering you can easily make very economical baits even with better food nutrition value than just carbohydrate baits like the one described, it is still shocking to work out just how much money you can save. You can produce very effective big fish baits for 2 or 3 pounds or about 6 dollars per kilogram compared to shop prices of 5 or 6 times this cost. The total cost of 10 kilograms of readymade baits can be 80 to 120 pounds, while your homemade bait can cost you just 20 or 30 pounds, saving you 60 to 100 pounds for every 10 kilograms of readymade bait!

The best advantage of all is you can make your baits as different to normal as you like. Remember, being different is what really counts. Most frequently it is the most different and alternative homemade baits which tempt the very biggest and wariest of fish. You can start off with the simple bait here, but you might like to find out more if you really want to get cracking and hit the big-time!

By Tim Richardson.

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