Making Homemade Carp Fishing Boilies Taste And Smell Irresistible To Your Fish!

Many substances have traditionally been used in carp baits to improve palatability. Technically-speaking bait palatability is akin to our sense of taste although carp senses differ in many ways. In fact in the case of many substances, if you can taste and smell them easily in a bait then they are probably over-loaded!

Many such substances include palatants and taste enhancers. Palatants are an often over-looked part of bait design but believe me when you test carp responses to them you will be in doubt as to their effectiveness; and the same definitely applies to so-called taste enhancers and appetite enhancers too! For many years I have used very obvious taste enhancers, including a range of gravy powders packed with potent flavour-enhancing compounds.

Of course a huge number of taste enhancers, appetite stimulators and palatants and other substances are available to the modern carp angler. Often it is over-looked that just one substance can enhance and provide the dominant taste, smell and aroma of a bait or simply bring out the augment and boost the profiles of additives, ingredients and flavours etc naturally in bait ingredients, quite apart from any added flavours of course. Often it is very productive to mellow or smooth out tastes and smells using more bland substances to reduce their impacts quite so much.

Liquid foods or liquid protein type products with high levels of attractive and stimulatory amino acids, mineral etc are also very effective enhancers, flavourings and taste factors. Synthetic flavours are obviously a very popular and dominant aspect of carp baits and very much characterise baits containing them and they are easily over-loaded! Many bait companies strive to have formulated their own unique versions of flavours and new unique flavours often bring established baits a new lease of life. There has been an ever-increasing increasing trend towards the use of nature-identical flavours and natural flavours are very fashionable now too although these can be rather pricy compared to solvent-based flavours.

Many carp anglers actually prefer not to use any additional flavours in their baits at all; after all if you design your bait well no additional flavours or labels are needed at all. An old favourite type bait like this is one made using yeast powders with added mineral and vitamin complex supplemented with a minor percentage of more soluble concentrated yeast powder, or enzyme-treated yeast powder or good old yeast extract for example.

Of all substances used to improve or alter bait palatability honey has to be the most traditional and longest-used. Many sweet substances and savoury substances can be used to produce a range of impacts. Many substances are used not specifically used to flavour bait but to make the bait unique or differentiated in certain ways. Other substances may just act as an identification label for instance. Some substances used in very low levels really change the impact and entire flavour, smell, aroma and palatability of a bait. Liquid and powdered palatants are often used to this effect although many very familiar ingredients and additives can do this too. In terms of over all enhancement of baits below are just a few items you may consider that can make all the difference to results even when using cheap 50:50 base mixes:

Lactose concentrate, soluble fish protein, liquid salmon protein, pure and enzyme-treated liver powder, grated and powdered Belachan, fermented shrimp powder, liquid kelp, kelp meal, Robin Red, curry powder, 5 and 7 spice type mixtures, black pepper and chilli pepper powders, dark pure maple syrup.

Of course the choice is legion, but the aim is obviously in part to make the most of all the flavours, smells and aromas your bait ingredients, additves etc contain naturally so that together they stimulate carp appetites and feeding responses in various ways simultaneously making your bait as irresistible as possible. Also you would be wise to also ensure you are offering a unique bait exploiting many competitive edges when fished against other competing baits. Betaine and betaine HCL of course is also used as an enhancer and has more forms than you might imagine; so why not be creative with your baits?!

My first memory of bait enhancement was around 1975 when I used to prepare bread past for small carp and crucian carp for fishing at weekends. As I only had my pocket money to spend this meant buying the cheapest ingredients I could find. After many memorable experiments and catches using bread paste it became obvious that although bread paste caught fish it could very easily be simply used as a carrier for lots of potent goodies. Ordinary wheat flour was used to bind the bread better and various forms of bread were used to find the ones with the most yeasty aromas for example.

Not so surprisingly I used anything in the larder and fridge to experiment with, so things like the following were incorporated individually or in various combinations to good effect:

Strawberry jam and marmalade, Marmite, Bovril, peanut butter, lemon curd, porridge oats and Alpen muesli, honey, evaporated milk, whole milk powder, coffee whitener powder, semolina and rice flour, dark brown sugar, golden syrup and black treacle, Oxo cubes and their like plus many other things. Trout pellets were used of course and I used yeast powders and semolina with these to start with.

Many forms of pastes were good including crab paste, salmon paste, shrimp paste, and various meat pastes. Liver pate was another obvious choice and a wide variety of mashed tinned meats and fish and even vegetables etc were used with success including mashed tinned pilchards, mackerel, sardines, anchovies, crab, prawns, shrimps, mashed tinned sweetcorn, mashed picked onions, mashed garlic, curry spices and powders and mashed luncheon meats and Spam and tinned ham etc.

Unknown to my parents I used to try out wines ,vodka, Martini, Coke, lemonade, sherry, and various liquors too and strong beers too, although some of these tasted too strong for my liking (but the carp liked them!) Bait is ultimately a process of experimentation and learning from catches feedback, but using tiny quantities of baits each weekend for a number of years some very basic, but in fact highly nutritionally complex baits were found and my results were very consistent which is why I progressed to seeking bigger and bigger carp instead of giving up!

Years ago many times I added liquidised sweetcorn and mashed stewed and fermented wheat or pearl barley. I did not know about things like corn sweet syrup or corn step liquor, but it is not impossible to arrive at the same conclusions that such things work on your own, using your own original ideas and using homemade methods and equipment. (The same goes for things like making your own concentrated flavours using alternative fermentable substances for example.)

I was always keen on using strong mature and blue cheeses etc to enhance my baits and I have often used liquidised liver with these. Using cheeses is a simple enhancement method and it is an important area over-looked by very many carp anglers today. But I have had great results with cheese-enhanced baits with added aniseed oil for instance even in the coldest months!

An enzyme-treated yeast, cheese powder and garlic concentrate-boosted bait for instance with paprika and Robin red with eucalyptus oil and cinnamon oil is well worth a try this winter! Try adding about 10 to 20 millilitres of liquid lecithins from Carpfishingpellets (see online) to improve your bait digestibility and autumn and winter results!

I also highly recommend you try the accurately quality whey based Supreme baits and new enhanced CW Red fruit flavoured baits from CW Baits too as I hear they have been out-fishing quest baits on certain Essex waters for instance and are a truly competitive alternative to any commercial bait I have ever tested. (Last winter I tested the CW Baits to great effect when temperatures were consistently less than 6 degrees!)

These days I make my homemade baits based on lots of different inputs, including my past experiences with bait ingredients, flavours etc, information from aquaculture and koi feed designers, flavorists and research papers and scientific books, marine biologists, chemists and biochemists, various suppliers etc. Having built up a much more detailed knowledge of many substances really helps!

For instance what potential bait substances contain and how and why they impact upon carp senses in different ways and how and why they work together internally after being consumed by carp are very powerful questions that offer you tonnes of leverage over fish behaviours in your unique favour! Ultimately of course it is all a question of how deep you wish to follow the bait rabbit hole as it were! Incidentally, the greatest unseen benefit of finding out more about fish senses and physiology and bait substances is how it can all be applied to your diet and the choices you make when buying food and drinks for you and your family.

Many carp bait substances really are able to give you more energy, improve your resistance to diseases, reduce harmful cholesterol and balance and your blood sugar levels better. They can also keep you burning fat off more quickly and efficiently so you lose unhealthy weight including that excess hidden stored fat around your vital organs!

Ultimately carp baits are providing the energy for basic survival and balanced health. So the insights you get from getting into carp baits genuinely give you more natural vitality, help many people avoid or control obesity and diabetes, keep your joints and teeth healthy, and in the case of the minerals in molasses and kelp for example, these can help stop your hair from going grey - and even bring out its natural colours, tones and shine, (which being age 44 is in my opinion far more attractive!) All this may seem pretty irrelevant if you are in your twenties for instance, but the intrinsic power of many human grade bait substances is very much in the future prevention of imbalances by regular consumption of them instead of relying on a last-ditch kill or cure later - so if you value your future wealth and quality of life then potent carp bait substances are well worth pondering a lot further! (Can you really buy health?!)

Making baits to stimulate carp in certain ways that are unusual to them in their normal experience is something I am very keen on these days! This kind of bait design is obviously an on-going process of deeper, wider and more complex discoveries, but my own catch results and feedback from my many bait-making friends who are also utilising my madcap ideas show they really work! (For more information on bait secrets, bait-making, bait design and readymade baits boosting and adaptations see my unique website Baitbigfish for more free articles and my uniquely-proven ebooks right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

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