Everyone seems fixated by fishing flavours. Commonly the question asked is “What flavour bait are you using?” For most fishermen, what matters is that they like their smell of their flavour, which is an interesting point for debate... The fact is among the diverse multitude of flavours used in fishing baits are some which stand out more than others, but few fishermen know how or why this is the case.

It is easy to buy a cheap flavour at Wal-Mart or Tescos and us it in your bait. However, what you are buying is very often inferior to more expensive flavours. For example, vanilla flavour has a myriad of grades or levels of purity, freshness and various solvents may be added (even water) and extraction methods will vary. Pure vanilla bean extract is extremely expensive. The genuine extract depends on very many volatile components which help explain part of its success. But natural extracts also contain other very stimulatory compounds which are vital to a top quality flavour and are easily detected by humans and fish!

It is common practice for flavour producers to ‘cut’ pure extracts and natural flavours, using a solvent or solvents like glycerol or ethanol alcohol for instance. Many things can happen to a flavour! Indeed the ‘aroma profile of a flavour, and its taste can be altered many times in many ways before it is bottled and consequently unleashed upon your fish as part of your bait. One aspect that might surprise you is just how bitter tasting many ‘sweet’ or ‘fruit’ flavours truly are. (Many flavours produced for fishing baits include an intense sweetener like Talin, or concentrated lactose or fructose.)

Flavours for the food industry are not all ideal for use in baits; their molecules often behave dramatically differently in water than in air so their effects on the fish will differ. Can you imagine sniffing in natural garlic extract in water? For a start you would not smell that distinctive garlic aroma as you would in air, as this is the result of a reaction with the air, not water. This also points to a deeper level of how many flavours or natural extracts work. They may also have hidden properties that you may not have realised. They sometimes have metabolism and circulatory stimulation properties, significant antimicrobial properties, preservative properties (low pH and alcohol for example), immunity stimulation, or even simulate or closely resemble nervous system or brain chemicals. (Even betaine HCL has antioxidant properties and citric acid has been used in many baits for years.

Yes, there’s so much more to flavours than meets the nose! Leading bait manufacturers have had to get increasingly innovative and technical to keep the effectiveness and standard of their products high against fast expanding competition for market share from smaller companies. Flavorists and food nutritionists, even marine biologists and fish scientists are employed for their skills. The use of fermenting sugars and esters is common.

The addition of amino acid products, palatants, and oils of savoury and fruit extraction in combination with natural fruit extracts, with new generation flavour enhancers and sweeteners in combination make many modern flavours a different class to most from the food industry. Combining different fruit esters to produce attractive flavours is a common practice, these days other solvents and substances are often added.

Among other ingredients, various acids, nature identical and synthetically produced flavour components identical to natural ones are combined with synthetic flavour components to produce a preferable profile and taste. The funny thing is that many flavours may be initially synthetically produced with synthetic and nature identical flavour components and then have the natural extract added to give it a more natural smell or taste. The cost of natural flavors can be extreme compared to synthetic and natural combinations. Volatiles like aldehydes and benzoates and hexanoates are included in many flavours. Some ‘volatiles’ you’d normally not dream of putting into foods of any kind except poisons! Many of the so-called ‘E-numbers’ are included and many are linked to mood changes in children with hyperactivity and so on.

Fishing flavours are all about your own personal confidence and real bait testing. If you think you have the very best of a type of flavour, you never know, there might be one that will catch you even more fish. Commercially available fishing flavours are evolving at an incredible rate. Even the ubiquitous “Tutti Fruitti” or “Scopex” or Strawberry variations are being challenged by cranberry and pineapple today with good reason. It is interesting to note that strawberry flavour ingredients can be reproduced synthetically using all the ‘volatile’ flavour components in natural strawberry, but which now can be synthetically reproduced. However, the additional aspects of natural strawberry such as its healing properties among others, will be absent.

The flavour possibilities in fishing are endless. For example, when you investigate flavours that are used in combination with ‘liquid food’ additives, to boost the nutritional value and ‘food’ signals of pellets, boilies, ground baits and even meats and live baits like maggots and worms... These days even sweetcorn, hemp, bread, worm and bloodworm flavours are available and used to even boost the taste and attraction of the real thing and may include real extracts of that food too!

The author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges’ up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact on catches. (Warning: This article is protected by copyright.) 

By Tim Richardson.

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