'Homemade' can mean 'simple or basic', but when applied to making carp or catfish bait, the subject certainly deserves far more explanation for optimum results and catches! 

To begin with, your bait really has just one main function; to get the fishing hook into the carp’s or catfish’s mouth, so giving the opportunity for it to be hooked! To achieve this, the bait needs either:

* To emit a recognizable carp food signal, or stimulate carp curiosity. 

* Be representative of, or a mimic of a natural food source.

Carp are curious and will examine any new potential food item they come across. Whether ‘packbait,’ paste / dough or boilies, it needs to be resilient enough to be put on the hook or ‘hair’, for it to withstand the fishs’ attention and enter the mouth.

In the UK, ‘Boilie’ baits are the more scientifically proven kind that have evolved from the days of the ‘Specials’ baits. These were often based on ground - up dog, cat, fish foods and farm animal foods in pellet, biscuit and tinned form. They were bound together with eggs, and fished as pastes. In the 1950 to the early 1970’s these were often fished ‘free lined’ with big hooks, with no weight, and individual baits could be the size of an orange, in order to deter bait-whittling smaller fish!

In the States this is still practiced with more advanced dough balls made from layers of different mixtures to breakdown and release attraction at different rates in different conditions and seasons and can be very advanced (as advanced as any UK baits.) Many competition carp anglers are truly expert at this approach and some even come from 4 generations of this practice so they really know what they’re doing!

In the UK, other common ‘kitchen’ type ingredients were also incorporated to enhance paste effectiveness, like minced tinned fish, curry powders and various spices, bottled condiment sources, yeast powders, milk powders, grated cheese, salt and pepper, herbs, yeast extract, cake baking flavours, whole - wheat flour, corn flour, bird foods, ground fish meal pellets, and animal / pet food pellets, shrimps and prawns, beans, peas, seeds, and many food oils have been used; many of which have proved themselves to be consistent carp catchers.

It is important to note that many, in original or extract form, are still used in commercial boilie baits pellets and ground bait mixes today. This is important because it demonstrates some points which can help you. It means that the less refined more economical ingredients will catch fish again and again for decades. It shows that even the most basic of bait recipes will keep catching fish too for decades with just attractor substances constantly being altered or substituted to create new baits.

This shows that anyone with access to any basic kitchen or pet food ingredients can make cheap very effective big fish baits without having to resort to buying the most expensive more refined proprietary fishing baits offered today, nor the over-priced base mixes available either; you can do it all yourself and apply the SAME PRINCIPLES AND INGREDIENTS TO VARIOUS GROUND BAITS TOO.

Scientifically proven and catch proven over decades carp data, on the carp’s dietary preference mechanisms and baits designed on this basis, resulted in more highly nutritionally balanced baits (and also many which work using other principles too.) These in theory provide carp the maximum energy and dietary requirements, for the ‘least cost in energy’ in location, digestion etc. Having said that, even low protein, high carbohydrate baits have been catching carp for years, but it is a proven fact that despite carp digesting these baits to a degree, there is a definite limit to the actual amount of energy these baits provide carp (as carp are basically ‘diabetic’) and in the aquatic environment carbohydrates are scarce and carp derive the majority of their energy from various forms of proteins (amino acids) fats and oils in their natural diets which are the most potent energy sources. (Think algae and plankton as the most basic but extremely rich stimulating basic foods.)

(NOTE! Scientific data is only a very ‘abstract’ part of successful carp bait formulation as genuine field testing in angling pressured conditions over a long period is the only certain way to prove a bait is a consistent success.)

The successful use of carbohydrate not protein based baits is evidence that great attractors and flavours are all you need in so many fishing situations and the great variety of attractors such as flavours underline this point. However it may also be noted that there are many substances used individully or as components which may actually effect the water rather than the carp receptors directly which induce some form of feeding response or preliminarly change in behaviour.

If you need an indication of just how powerful some flavours are, just take a look at certain ‘E – numbers’ in childrens’ candies and their effecting hyperactivity; then transfer that to carp! (Metabolism stimulation is a core feature and effect of very many of the most well-proven carp bait ingredients and flavour components and many show very high potent antioxidant effects also – this is the central issue and effect covered in much of the flavours secrets ebook; it’s that crucially important!!!)

When it comes to creating very successful and consistent baits the real missing ingredient, for very many carp anglers, today, is in having even a cursory understanding of why a carp eats any of these carp ‘boilie’ or pellet foods at all. And why carp can actually seem ‘prefer’ some baits to the exclusion of all the rest at times! Always remember that carp are described as ‘slow-suction’ feeders, and they can alter their gill raker food-filtering systems to exploit the most numerous or most nutritionally rewarding foods and they have natural preferences in regards many aspects of bait ingredients and their properties...

There are so many aspects of carp that you can exploit through your bait design, and making baits different is not about changing a flavour or ingredints at random, but about maximising your baits impacts on fish by design. This is where knowledge of fish and bait substances is a gigantic edge over competing anglers without this kind of competitive advantage! In fact you can even make homemade baits that will alter the palatability-recognition wihin fish to the degree that they stop feeding on competing baits and uniquely on your own  - to a massive degree, by design!...

By Tim Richardson.

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