Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Easy Homemade Carp Baits For Big Fish And Saving Money

By Tim Richardson

The last time I bought baits to go carp fishing they cost around 10 to 12 pounds a kilogram and the cost of pellets soon adds up too! For an average weekend, the cost of bait can be just horrendous, putting a big strain on very many already tight household budgets. It really does make much more sense to make your own baits and save yourself a fortune! They are far easier and quicker to make these days with excellent information and equipment available. And I am finding among fellow anglers, a not too surprising rapidly growing interest in developing homemade bait making skills, which many of us honed some 30 or more years ago.

In fact when you have made your homemade baits despite any mistakes you might make, well over 80 percent of your recipes will catch fish and equal results on readymades with ease. The fact they will be fresh and new is a giant factor in this too. New baits will arouse far less care and suspicion for most fish as they have never even been hooked on your new bait before. One of the great things about homemade baits is that they can keep you well ahead of the fish and fellow anglers who always follow the crowd using readymades, giving you even better consistent catches and more big fish!

You just need to fish sensibly and thoughtfully as you would normally for any big wary fish in order to be consistently successful. There is such a special and unique thrill and great sense of satisfaction when you catch fish, especially big fish like carp, catfish, bass, tench or even pike on your own homemade bait. One crucially important point about homemade baits is that you have no chance of anyone ruining your own chances by also fishing using your bait.

Bait only really has a peak of effectiveness when fish feed confidently on it because they know they most likely will not get hooked and risk getting taken home for tea. Sure we put them back, but if you were hooked and dragged out of your safe air environment into a foreign one you would be wary of any bait that has led to you being hooked previously too! Making your own alternative secret bait recipes is such a great advantage over the masses who use readymades without a further thought to their never talked about disadvantages!

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 homemade bait is as hard as finding a bowl a mixing spoon or knife, a few eggs and some flours or other dry ingredients. Many flours about the house will bind to form a bait, from semolina and soya to maize and corn flour, and dried rice flour. For example, crack 5 or 6 eggs into a bowl and whisk them adding any flavouring or liquids additives you might choose, like ketchup or a flavoring from the baking aisle of your local store. Take 8 ounces of semolina and the same of soya flour and slowly add to your eggs until a dough the feel of putty is made. It is very easy and quick and with practice you can do this at lightening speed!

When your dough is ready you can use it immediately, or put it labelled plastic bags for later use. Store baits in the fridge or freeze them. It is best to make a note of the ingredients and levels in each individual bait mix. To make around a kilogram of bait it takes about 6 eggs with your dry powders. But this is a very rough guide and every mix can vary widely depending on ingredients, their solubility etc.

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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