If you are into boilies, it may be that sharp location skills teamed with an instant attractor bait might be your first choice. Highly coloured and flavoured ones include the popular n-butyric acid pineapple ones but so many others are effective or little used apart from the ‘favourites.

Try Tutti Fruitti, Scopex, Strawberry, Cranberry, Banana, Peach, Plum, Prawn,  Shellfish, Crustacean, Squid and Octopus, Salmon, Fish and Caviar, Chicken, Liver, Spice, Butter, Milk, Maple, Toffee, Chocolate Malt, Vanilla etc are well proven. Others to try are Bunspice, Megaspice, Secret Agent, Addicted, Ham, Monster Crab, Mulberry Florentine, Mango and Banana, Maplecreame etc.

Try using more than one flavour in you attack or even mixing flavours together. Try a high ‘tone’ or ‘sharper’ smelling one like Tutti Fruitti and compare it to a lower ‘tone’ more soothing type like toffee for example. Using different flavour baits on the same base mix on different rods is rarely used but can very easily produce catches when just using the single flavoured bait at the one concentration level might produce only ‘average’ results or even a ‘blank’ session.

On heavily fished water you can take advantage of the baiting of others if you cannot afford lots of bait yourself. If you can discover the current successful bait you can ‘top’ it by adding a different flavour to the ‘normal ones’ and even use different flavours in different levels. If you can use 4 rods, it makes sense to use 4 different flavours initially to discover flavours the fish immediately prefer. It might be that the pH of some flavours make certain flavoured baits more immediately stimulating. It also might be that you test a number of usually successful flavours and just do not get the catches you’d like, and perhaps you simply have not tested and applied the correct dosage to your hook baits.

When ‘topping’ a bait which is being used in huge amounts by competing anglers an a high financial cost, (or not so in the case of ‘sponsored’ anglers or ‘field testers,’ it makes sense to fish single hook baits. The idea is to have your bait approximate the base mix of that being used to dominate catch results, but alter its volatility and stimulation and perhaps pH characteristics so it really stands out as a lone single hook bait. Fantastic ‘instant’ catches can be achieved by ‘piggy-backing’ and exploiting on the larger resources or quantity of baits applied by other anglers.

A very basic simple method of topping a bait is to obtain some and put 100 boilie baits into a plastic bag. (Average sized of 14 millimetres for example.) Now add a flavour at perhaps 3 milliliters to 5 or 6 milliliters poured into the bag. Hold the top of the bag and blow into the bag as if you were blowing up a balloon.

Now shake and rattle and roll your baits around until the flavour is well distributed. Freeze the baits so the baits swell up and their structure changes and opens up to allow the absorption of the flavour (or flavours etc) as the baits are defrosted. You can now use them. By using a flavour at 4 different flavour levels you will discover very quickly which concentration is most successful to the water and fish.

This principle can be applied to pellets and many other types of baits including luncheon meat and fish cut baits. Particles like hemp seed and peanuts also benefit from cooking with adding stimulators flavours and attractors. Adding n-butyric acid, amino acids supplements, essential oils and their extracts, mineral salts, betaine hydrochloride, vitamin and mineral supplements, molasses, Talin or concentrated sweeteners, corn steep liquor, (CSL) liquid yeast and marine halibut oil, winterised (emulsified) salmon oil for example, all improves stimulation and can be added at the same time as your flavour; the choice is yours!

Packet soups and gravy granules like 'Bisto' or 'Oxo' cubes can be great edges; many taste enhancers are used which really work on fish and us! Another good dip is Miso soup, fermented soy which is very rich, a well proven.

Citric acid has been used much in the past as a food acidity regulator and as a boilie preservative. Low pH does do the trick, but there are many other acids which help lower the pH of your bait to help it stand out perhaps for example in a silty bottomed lake. Betaine hydrochloride in high doses for instance. If you want to raise the pH of your bait instead, then using very high levels of certain crustacean compounds help.

One aspect of high protein baits is the amount of acid pH ingredients used as compared to a more carbohydrate based bait. The pH of your bait in certain temperatures has complex implications regarding how effecting the fish may react to various elements of your base mix, and additional stimulators, triggers, flavours, extracts and so on, solubility being one and effects of relative bait density and bouyancy too. The difference between a baits success in summer compared to winter can be extreme. Manipulating readymade baits so they are more volatile in water compared to the standard baits others are using can be a huge advantage...

Alternative bait enhancing methods can be easy, instant and cheap, (like using flavours type dips) or complex and very scientific (like boilie fermentation and enzymic methods.) Even used as short-term dips on the bank or boat, these soaks make all the difference. Adding a couple of ounces of certain extracts per kilogram of base mix, or even just 1 gram of a particular ‘stimulator’ or ‘enhancer’ can also make all the difference to an average or bad season and the best you’ve ever had. There’s so much more to exploit than most fishermen will ever dream!

By Tim Richardson.

* For a really massively comprehensive look at vital fish feeding triggers, incitants, flavours, bioactive components, making homemade flavours, effective bait formulation, palatability, hormones, chemical, electrical and pH effects, fish senses including: olfaction and chemoreception exploitation; and reasons fish pick-up your baits - (including fake baits!) get this secrets volume:

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