Now we are in the grip of a world-wide recession we need to look for economical ways to improve our fishing results. As carp fishing has become such a cult sport the prices of products has risen often at the expense of genuine quality. If you want to use baits the quality of which you can be sure of and at a price that better suits your budget, and compete with far more expensive readymade baits, here is some sound advice on making your own. (By this carp angler of 30 plus years experience.)

Recently there has been a lot of bait discussion in the glossy magazines and elsewhere about the impact of protein (amino acids in particular) and bait digestibility. What this is all about is trying to maximise the ingredients and liquids in your bait to get the best feeding response from carp and to provide the maximum nutritional reward to carp for eating a bait as possible by the most complete bait digestion possible. 

The modern carp bait industry is crammed with bait companies who very often have recipes that work, but do not really know how to fully exploit the natural nutritional stimulation of the individual ingredients and complete biological value of ingredients when combined together. Of course all this can be very complicated stuff but really can lead to proven consistent big fish results. 

Instant high concentrated flavour level baits are another matter entirely; these will most depend upon your personal talent, developed skills and experience to most exploit these. True balanced nutritional style carp baits have the edge in that once established any beginner can expect to catch the biggest fish using them and results really keep coming for a long period of time compared to instant baits. Instant baits need to be changed when carp have associated one particular one with danger; it is not difficult at all for them to do this as the base and components of a highly concentrated flavour can easily be detected and instant baits might well have 30 millilitres of flavouring or more when compared to nutritional value bait which may contain 2 millilitres or none at all.

Natural feeding trigger-based nutritional bait recipes do not need flavours because the base mix and liquid foods contains all the stimulatory feeding triggers, attractors, taste-enhancers and so on intrinsically within the bait already. Many will be very subtle in smell and taste but even more effective for wary fish as a result. For example, anglers can tell you what the most effective amino acids are for triggering the olfactory system of a carp, and few can tell you which will trigger the gustatory system either – or say which ones trigger both or which combinations of these will trigger both. However it is pretty obvious that natural food items carp have evolved their digestive systems to exploit through evolution provide the most obvious answers to such questions.

Anyone snorkelling in an average lake will find a variety of carp foods; From caddis fly larvae and aquatic worms, tubifex and bloodworm (and countless other insect larvae,) to all kinds of molluscs and crustaceans; from shrimps, snails, mussels and so on. Carp filter feed much of their food especially at the warming spring period from the naturally incredibly rich soup of plankton and phytoplankton or algae abundant in the water layers. Carp senses are so sensitive they can actually hear the sounds eminating from concentrations of plankton and the fantastically fast wriggling of bloodworm feeding standing out of their silt holes.

When night feeding for example, such senses really enabling gorging upon what might appear to be invisible food sources. In fact often when it seems carp are not feeding they are feeding on the move and actively seeking out the highest concentrations of plankton; carp will harvest algae from everything suitable in their environment all their life – it is that rich!

Of course there are other foods sources including the base rock, mud, silt etc forming the lake bed, bacterially digested and fresh flotsam and organic matter of many kinds, and carp absorb levels of various essential nutrients directly into their bodies through their skin. For all too many carp angers still today, the question of bait is often raised regarding that of flavours. This is manifested most frequently in the bankside question of which flavour bait other anglers are using. Many anglers refer to the brand name of a bait they might be using too.

One factor that is telling is the digestibility of most very significant natural carp food items. For a start they have a high water content and being so hydrated are easier for the carp digestive system – it being evolved directly for maximising the digestion and assimilation of such food items. The digestibility of fly larvae, bloodworm, earthworms, snails, mussels, algae and so on, is extremely high indeed. The vast majority of boilies and pellets cannot boast a fraction of this level of digestibility and this in effect means that the majority of these baits is passed out of carp as undigested waste matter.

But now back to designing baits made at home! Well actually, if you do not want to make baits but want a bait unique to yourself, you could design and test a bait and supply your own unique base mix ingredients the ingredients to one of the excellent bait rolling companies available.) This way is even better some might argue than using an adapted or topped commercial bait company mix! This way you can be totally confident your bait is going to be exactly what you want, and work exactly how you designed it.

You will be secure in the knowledge that you know no-one else can ever compete against you using your mix and only you will know exactly what it contains that provides its edges over the carp and competing baits! (You have total control over your costs, quality and freshness of all liquid and dry ingredients and additives, etc.)

This brings us to the area of where so many carp anglers miss the wood for the trees. So many carp bait recipes seen on forums etc on the web and other places will work; but will they work on very pressured carp against even more potent naturally-stimulating baits? 

Often some of the first fish out of a water on a new bait are some of the wariest ones some of which will be the biggest ones. Actually some of the most outstanding bait flavours do have exceptional nutritionally stimulation and I really recommend these if you are using low biologically based homemade baits. All this talk about food has made me hungry! For more free articles and further information on money-saving effective bait-making  and formulating baits for big carp and giant catfish see further my unique electronic books on this subject plus much more!

By Tim Richardson

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