More and more carp anglers are making homemade baits! There is now especial interest in making homemade hook baits for winter and for single hook bait fishing for wary carp and for long range fishing where highlighting a hook bait is vital to success! To get some totally new unique expert tips on such baits from someone with decades of bait experience read on and catch more big carp this year!
Many of you reading this on your home computer or iPad or other device will be wondering how on earth do I get more bites when I go fishing, and some of you will even be wondering how on earth do I avoid yet another blank fishing. Some of you will be more focused and are aiming for target fish, perhaps the biggest 5 carp in a lake, or at least want to multiple numbers of bites to more efficiently work through the smaller fish and catch the biggest. Answers to all these and more are part of the bigger picture to consistent carp fishing success at the highest level possible!
I get questions posed all the time regarding topics such as these: Homemade boilie recipes, advice about home made single hook baits, cell boilie ingredients, carp boilies recipes with salt, how much citric acid to use in carp baits, sour carp baits, why carp like vinegar, what to do with waste left on your boilie rolling table, amazing pop up bait recipes, correct levels of flavours to use, etc. I have made it my goal to answer all these and endless more, in technical and scientific terms, and in actual fishing reality proven catch results proven terms.
I have aimed to cut down on variables as much as possible within real fishing testing so I can be really confident that what I discovered will work for anyone not just me, as long as a solution is applied in a refined way, a creative way, as that is the nature of various fishing situations, differing lake conditions, seasonal changes, individual genetic differences between fish sensitivities to different substances.
Fishing is definitely in part about creating new unique experiences for fish regarding bait so that they drop their natural wariness and angling bait-conditioned caution and test a hook bait with its mouth. This is to induce them to actually mouth baits instead of using other structures and senses such as fin and belly testing of baits and lateral receptors, eyesight, using their tail to physically wash water around baits to sort baits which are tethered or move in ways baits usually do when attached to a hook, which may mean a hook bait being too heavy, or too light for example!
Lots of anglers are wary of the subject of bait because they see it as beyond them, which is where I used to be, in a place where years ago reading articles in carp magazines on amino acids for example just turned me off! But bait is not about this, it is about getting the big picture, far beyond all the commercial bait hype and flashy pictures of fluorescent boilies and Goo which are really great visual stimulatory marketing devices that make bait company profits.
In the bigger picture such things pale into insignificance. No-one needs to be dependent on readymade baits, ever! In fact more and more anglers are simply going their own way and have zero reason to ever buy another readymade bait ever again. The fear you see in some anglers faces when asked about changing from a brand of bait to another is astounding and this just shows how powerful the constant conditioning, hypnotizing of the masses has warped anglers thinking!
The Korda and Mainline partnership has many anglers thinking that that is carp fishing. I admire the marketing skills of such companies, but it means so many anglers simply do not even realise that the truth is that you can catch just as many if not more fish using no branded equipment and completely unique paradigms of homemade baits not designed along readymade bait made for profit thinking! If you do not believe me then I can tell you that I fished some of the same waters as Zenon Bojko, and Danny Fairbrass before they were known, and these guys were not using Korda tackle or Mainline baits. It is really very funny!
John Holt designed the Grange bait, upon which Mainline was founded, and was one of the founders of Mainline. I met him last year and he asked me loads of questions why I make homemade baits in ways and using processes so different to him and commercial bait makers. I answered because I ask those awkward questions, the ones that highlight how limited and ineffective, inefficient readymade baits are in so many ways, in truth! I aim to make bait better, in every possible way. And many of these ways cannot make a bait company profits. This is the difference.
I give very powerful completely new paradigm unique personal bait tuition, based on highly evolved new bait thinking (beyond food baits and instant attractor baits,) and my students results are so massively consistently better immediately following that huge paradigm shift it gives them! It just works when you really get to the truth that literally everything that is bait, and everything about bait, can be massively improved by intelligent design! Everything can be simplified by simple step by step demonstrations which cover so many potent scientifically-based aspects without even mentioning them!
My aim is to help anglers beat leading brand readymade baits. And that is very easy when you remove key characteristics, features, functions and most often used processes and substances used within such baits.
Another factor is removal of potential reference points. If you simply give fish a load of free bait of any single format or recipe of boilie, even in mixed sizes, then you simply give carp a standard profile, standard machine rolled density and other features and characteristics that dynamically help them to identify hook baits! The magazine adverts do not happen to mention that but it is so very significant a point to make.
If you want to make catching fish much harder, then give fish free baits that are just one profile, one density, and one shape, the same as your hook baits! Carp these days in pressured carp waters do not feed naturally at all. They will use indicator fish to sort dangerous baits, and will move in and out of a baited swim and perhaps just take one or two baits and vacate the area again, then return half an hour later. They very often with waft away any boilies, and feed only on formless baits breaking down.
When you see such behaviours first hand as I have then you immediately see that it is readymade baits which are making catching fish harder! Think about how the common features and characteristics are all potential reference points for carp to learn by association, and develop over time, by repetition, by picking up thousands of various machine rolled chops, dumbbells, round baits, cylindrical extruded cut baits etc. carp became carp directly by the presence of potential nutritional sources within their environment, becoming progressively more and more sensitized to them. Think about how much carp are sensitive to your machine rolled baits and how carp regard these all as potential danger the moment they hit the water.
This is part of the reason I very deliberately stopped using bait rolling tables back in the early nineteen nineties. But also rolling bait is a complete waste of time. You have zero reason to waste time extruding and rolling dough into all shapes or cylinders with smooth surfaces, which happen to be major reference points to help sort hook baits. You can create baits 5 times quicker by not using this dinosaur age old out dated thinking and extra totally obsolete boring ineffective steps!
Some anglers complain that other anglers appear to have golden balls; that their baits, or something about their thinking or tactics, awareness etc mean that they seem to catch big fish wherever they go. And this appearance may well really show up when times are hard such as winter and spring when the fish feed far less and when truly effective baits created just for such conditions are so vital at this time!
As a result of my person comparative analysis homemade bait testing in recent years doing reality testing of baits side by side using different levels and combinations of substances in totally new and unique ways I have discovered countless invaluable insights. This testing really backed up what I already knew that truly great bait is a leveler of angling skills and experience even if you are lazy or inexperienced or beginner carp angler fishing for big carp. I discovered time and again that if a hook bait is potent enough it can induce multiple approaches by a wary carp and may well even hook that fish even if your rig is not totally refined to suit the way the fish is feeding or the fishing situation!
This might sound crazy to some of you but then again if you have seen what I have seen regarding how carp can change they way they feed when in the presence of bait substances in levels and combinations that overcome fish feeding caution then you would be as excited as I am about this entire subject of refining baits! So many times I have watched as some very unusual new unique homemade bait substances in paradigm shift forms of combinations, have induced seriously exciting fish behaviours on free baits and indeed hook baits.
My personal aims of discovering why baits work, and how to improve feeding responses beyond those normally expected from carp baits have led to many discoveries over the past 8 years of working on this full time. One aspect I would like to clarify is that just as in practice in refinement is useful but aiming for perfect practice is far superior, so is refining the exact questions you ask, based on your perceptions of carp behaviours witnessed in the presence of not merely rigs but free baits.
When fishing over a big bed of bait and hooking a fish very quickly after baiting up for instance one simple question to help you refine you entire approach would be to ask why did that particular fish home in on your hook bait instead of eating all the free baits up first before finally taking your hook bait. After so many years of following old fashioned nutritional value and balanced nutritional value concepts, and using purely attractor bait principles, and combining nutritional and attractor bait concepts and principles together within homemade baits of extremely unusual bioactive potencies and water reactivity, I have found myself at an interesting level of understanding regarding so-called food baits especially!
There are various bait, water reactivity and fish sensory system and biological dynamics and other factors which have brought me to the conclusion that food baits are not necessarily the ultimate bait, and indeed can be anti-productive. Part of this conclusion is related to the way that there is a tipping point with nutritional readymade baits where very many companies use the same range of substances and when these in food baits are introduced in volumes by so many anglers, there comes a point where the fish simply have very little requirement for that food.
This situation occurs at various times but is most apparent by late summer autumn winter and spring when fish can basically live off their natural biological stores within their body, and simply get by on natural food items, filter feeding on plankton and algae, filtration feeding on bloodworm, and will tend to avoid the vast majority of carp boilies altogether.
Such fish may or may not top up their diet in a different feeding phase in perhaps December or January, or just before spawning or post spawning, or maybe for a brief moment in the autumn. Fish that just seem to get caught just once or twice a year on readymade baits pose the carp angler many questions and rightly so in that if these baits are so great then these fish would definitely be caught more often!
Certainly regarding boilie recipes far too many of the commonly used ingredients and flavour bases etc are used in commercial boilies. Despite appearances it is a fact that a great many commercial boilies catch despite being repellant to whatever degree, and only appear very successful due to the vast number of anglers using them!
One simple question to ask about readymade baits, especially in regards to winter and spring cold water conditions is why do bait companies boil baits? Are they completely mad? Those vital soluble and volatile substances plus a massive amount of amino acid and vitamin and other bioactive potencies of substances is simple damaged and washed out making an already seriously flawed bait concept even more laughable.
If all you do is fast steam your baits then your results in cold water will improve because your baits retain all those soluble stimulatory factors so vital especially in cold water conditions! You may be thinking OK I knew that anyway. Well if you did, and you use readymade boilies and pop up baits which have been boiled, why do you rely on these when you know they have been drastically reduced in their potency and realistic effectiveness?
I have even had guys say what about adding this or that to my boiling water to boost attraction; I mean do these guys actually get it yet, being so attached to old fashioned totally out-dated bait methods and ideas! Why boilie or steam baits when actually a correctly designed homemade bait outside of commercial made for profit type bait thinking, based on massively improved thinking, can last intact in water just as effectively as any heated bait! (The benefits are staggering!)
It’s about the bigger picture; bait is not solid. Bait is the molecules that react with carp sensory receptors, both internally and externally simultaneously, and the more potently you exploit these contact points and internal systems and energy release in cells of fish and induce special releases of substances internally that directly and indirectly make fish feed, then the more you will overcome fish caution and the more bites and the more fish you will achieve.
You are reading this to get tips so focus on the bigger picture and I will give you something to think about. The power of your questioning is crucial in evolving your own creative process regarding your baits and how you apply them. The vast majority of carp anglers cannot even optimise and maximise the readymade baits they use because they do not understand them; this is crazy. Why do you think you are advised to soak your bait in a soak or dip? This is basically because readymade baits are a format compromise of many factors. One of the most highly significant factors is that such whole egg sealed baits do not have optimum ionising potential, because whole egg in bait prevents baits freely ionizing because heated whole is egg insoluble.
Yet because whole egg has always been traditionally used as a binder, and whole egg is the cheapest form of egg readymade bait makers use this, because other egg products being more expensive make readymade baits less profitable which is the opposite effect that a readymade bait maker is aiming for!
Also far more truly effective baits that do not contain eggs and are freely soluble, which is why they are massively more effective, do not last more than 6 hours immersion, which is the entire point; that baits need to be soluble to release their components so they react with water more efficiently to trigger feeding, pull stimulated fish in an excited state etc.
But a typical weekend warrior type of carp angler expects to cast out and have a bait on their rig in the morning. But this expectation is ludicrous because it is ignorant and misguided thinking. It is merely a method, and a highly limiting one at that. Which would you prefer; a bait that is far more effective due to its increased water reactivity and solubility and can catch 4 times or more fish than egg sealed readymade baits, or an egg sealed readymade bait that because of its insolubility stays on the rig for a whole night?
You do not hear much at all unless it is usually derogatory ignorant or misguided and misleading comments about readymade baits being beaten by other baits. The herd mindset is controlled by the carp magazines and other media controlled by the big companies. It is not in the interests of tackle and bait companies and the advertising vehicles they highly influence, i.e. the carp magazines that profit from their advertising income, to promote bait paradigms they cannot profit from which are better, i.e. non readymade baits!
If you want to beat readymade baits then the very first step must be to remove the most common insoluble binder used in baits which also happens to be the most common danger signal to carp worldwide; remove whole eggs and aim to achieve massively higher solubility!
Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!
By Tim Richardson.