Making Homemade Carp Fishing Baits And The Power Of Addictive Ingredients!
Nut, seed and pulse baits for carp have always been outstanding. With so many carp anglers using mollusc and crustacean, fish, and meat and poultry product-based baits (among many others so popular today,) why not try a nut based homemade bait or ground bait instead? Read on to discover more about how to drive your carp wild!
One of the simplest ways to make a nut bait is to make a 50:50 semolina and soya base mix and add your nut ingredients and additives to this. Ccmoore soya is a very impressive 45 percent protein and teamed with their full-fat (yellow) semolina will provide more nutritional attraction than lesser products which could be of dubious age. Two of the most well proven carp bait nut ingredients are tiger nut meal and roasted peanut meal (technically tiger nuts are not actually nuts but nut sedge tubers.) The options for making endless forms of unique nut baits are very exciting, and offer many varied effects, special nutritional properties and other beneficial characteristics.
You could perhaps try beginning by using any bait mix with around 50 percent or more of nut ingredients. Technically speaking, nuts are not as ideal for carp nutritionally as many other ingredients and additives like LT94 fish meal for instance, but they have many factors that fishmeal does not contain. Apart from digestible proteins, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals and soluble and insoluble fibre etc provided by various nuts, why not look at the bioactive substances in such items. Have a good look at anything from peanuts and almonds, to pistachio nuts, Brazil nuts, hazel nuts, sweet lupins (seeds,) tiger nuts and many others, and see if you can spot the more attractive special and unique substances they offer to us humans - and to Mr Carp too that directly and indirectly make us both like them so much!
It is a good point to consider that we humans are long-lost descendants of carp which belong to the ancient group of teleost fish. We share many biological and physiological aspects with carp, which relate to us both in regards to effective food components and fishing baits although this does not mean our severely dulled air-based senses and perceptions are the same as carp in water although in many structural and biochemical ways so similar; as in taste buds and taste adaptation for instance!)
You might save a fortune and make a basic soya flour and semolina base mix with your nut ingredients plus eggs to help binding, or perhaps add additional CLO, egg albumin and whey gel, or even add just little wheat gluten for instance. Of course for those wishing for a more nutritious and more digestible bait, very many options and combinations are possible to create a bait totally unique to yourself. For example, with the addition of Vitamealo, sodium or calcium caseinate, lactalbumin or whey protein concentrate, soya isolate, caseins, enzyme-treated yeast, corn steep liquor powder, various predigested fish proteins and so on.
How many anglers might think to combine predigested fish protein with tiger nut meal for instance; with tiger nut extract and tiger nut oil, instead of trout and halibut pellet oil or pure salmon oil for instance? Why not experiment for yourself and discover many edges and tricks that provide you with more of the kind of great competitive bait breakthroughs that many anglers just dependant on cheap ordinary readymade baits straight from the bag (and halibut pellets,) would never dream of?!
The Ccmoore bird food ingredients including Sweet Meggablend and Meggablend Red, the gritty maize protein product Supergold 60 (60 percent digestible protein and nutritionally good enough to replace fish meals,) are just a sample of excellent ideal additions to nut based baits. You can turn your baits into a really unusual and different ones by combining some more diverse various nutritionally valuable and very attractive ingredients which you may not have heard of used in combination before. For example using crushed tiger nuts, tiger nut flour and crushed hemp and adding krill meal, spirulina powder, vanilla extract meal with and tuna oil and over 100 millitres of Salmon and Krill extract per pound of bait for instance.
If you want to cut your costs you can use maize meal or maize flour for up to half your bait to bulk it up. Carp love maize all year round even in winter, despite it not being the most nutritional nor digestible ingredient for cheap bait bulking-up applications; but it simply works! (It does naturally contain betaine and other bioactive antioxidants among other important factors.) I find using maize meal in combination with full fat semolina produces a bait that is easier to roll if cost is really an issue, however I would very much prefer to use highly nutritionally attractive ingredients with far more to turn carp on. When budgets are tight though, maize products make excellent crumbled free baits; especially when boosted with liquid foods like Ccmoore Feedstim XP which is an amazing nutritional feed triggering substance - and not just for carp either!
For more nutritionally stimulating ingredients than just semolina or maize, maybe use pure liver powder, poultry protein meal, or calcium and sodium caseinates and blood powder, lactalbumin and whey protein concentrate for example. Egg albumin is a great highly nutritional binder and is often used in a fifty percent combination with whey gel. I personally find that when I hand roll my hook baits and make them very dense by lots of rolling, often my baits get harder and heavier and my carp have to work harder to suck them to the back of their mouths; and my catches improve when compared alongside many popular readymade baits! Do not forget you can make harder (or softer) hook baits using such techniques and ingredients, by adding them to great base mixes like the legendary Ccmoore Odyssey XXX, Meteor and the really addictive Live System mix (which is now a big favourite of mine!)
Wheat gluten is a another well proven binder where bait digestibility is less important and of course, with such effective binding ingredients you will find it much easier to use more coarse ground nuts, hemp, and kelp ingredients for instance to make baits with truly unique textures, practical resiliency but with excellent leak-offs too! The milk powder products Vitamealo and Lamlac are very useful in aiding binding and soya isolate is another high-protein ingredient I have found really works over decades of bait making.
Ccmoore pre-ground CLO is an outstandingly proven attractive nutritional bird food based ingredient that helps bind other ingredients together and with a great track record; ideal for cheap but effective homemade mixes. (You can include perhaps up to 8 ounces of Ccmoore CLO per pound of dry mix. If you use semolina it is a good idea to use only up to 7 ounces of semolina per pound of dry mix and ensure you improve the nutritional attraction of your bait intrinsically by adding other choice additives and ingredients.
With cheap semolina and soya base mixes why not add as Robin Red, corn steep liquor powder, vanilla extract meal, molasses meal, Ccmoore dried insect meal and shrimp type products for instance. Of course the old favourite shrimp powder is well proven but krill meal is a seriously potent ingredient and when teamed with Marine Amino compound and the simply awesome (soon to be legendary) Ccmoore Salmon and Krill extract liquid, you will not go far wrong!
The choice of bait ingredients and additives is bewildering until you get to know a little more about just how potent they are and how they can seriously enhance stimulatory impacts upon carp senses (directly and indirectly,) and even exploit individual fish preferences of taste, smell and dietary needs. A natural-product based bait will keep on catching far more successfully than a cheap bait which is not a lot more than a simple flavour-carrier; the difference between a highly nutritionally stimulating bait and a high-attract type carrier bait is just massive.
In fact I can state with certainty that a nutritionally stimulating carp bait that is exploiting as many of the carp senses and behaviours as possible will well and truly out-fish an instance high-attract concentrated flavour bait again and again if you are an average week-end angler! In fact it is more often the case on very much pressured waters that high attract baits can be known to fail almost completely to get a bite when fished against nutritionally stimulating baits by average anglers.
I used to fish cheap semolina and soya based baits with a variety of variously based concentrated flavours for years and flavours obviously do work very well with these and similar low nutritional value baits, although I would boost nutritional attraction in various ways, usually with liquid foods. But I frequently caught smaller fish compared to those I caught on my nutritionally-based baits. Indeed, I believe you need to be a more talented or knowledgeable and skilled angler to really exploit high-attract baits when in competition with exceptional quality nutritional value baits.
I was catching many good twenties on single or double pop-up fluorescent white hook baits fished on their own without free baits at long range, back in the mid 1980s. But I fished like this for tactical reasons (fish location and away from heavily pressured areas among other reasons.) However right up to today I find I catch far more fish over a bed of crumbed nutritional boilies that have been pre-soaked and packed with soluble liquids and additives of the kinds that carp naturally find in their aquatic environment. These liquids and other substances are predominantly ones that carp are very easily able to detect even in lower concentrations due to the specialised evolution of their internal and external receptors, and which carp are drawn to instinctively.
You might find milk peptides unusual in this regard, but these are not so different -even if carp need help in digesting various milk products; carp obviously find them very attractive! Lactose is a milk sugar composed of galactose and glucose and of course plants use glucose as an energy storage medium. I think glucose and other sugar foods are instant energy hits that carp enjoy and various milk derivatives still contain lactose which will improve the eating experience! Many anglers forget carp also naturally consume aquatic vegetation to supply their essential energy and nutritional nutrient requirements and that molasses and betaine come from sugar-providing beets and canes.
Often I will include sugars not simply to aid bait palatability to encourage repeated bait consumption and an instant energy hit, (sugar is addictive - fact,) but to naturally encourage aquatic molluscs such as snails and many forms of benthic life towards my ground baits and free baits and another great reason to use Ccmoore fructose concentrate!
There are obviously many proven carp feeding triggers identified and exploited by us carp anglers and in aquaculture and many others yet to be identified in known fields such as health and body-building and the pharmaceutical industry and in the human and pet food and drug industries etc. The vast majority of true carp feeding triggers are found as naturally intrinsic components of the most nutritious (and the most digestible) natural foods in the carp environment. For instance, would it be any surprise to find that carp themselves are fairly rich in betaine (we are too!?)
With soya and semolina type homemade baits you really need to add extra feeding triggers and palatability factors that will encourage further intensive feeding behaviours. Carp feeding is a progressive series of modes of feeding and levels of intensities which can be encouraged by our bait substances - starting off with simple carp gulping and filter-feeding, before particulate feeding and then progressing on to larger items not filtered by the pharyngeal teeth, but broken down in the throat teeth themselves after passing through the mouth.
It has been proven that in the mouth betaine is an especially potent inducer of repeated food consumption (and Ccmoore super pure betaine of 97 percent purity is an obviously effective example of this additive.) Very many more carp ingredients and additives contain betaine than the majority of carp anglers appreciate. In one bait you might have nearly every ingredient containing at least low levels of it - and in different forms apart from the commonest glycine betaine form.
On a related point a really hush hush additive is the Ccmoore squid flesh meal, and the new Ccmoore squid liver extract; both are up there with the legends like Robin Red and Minamino and these days are perhaps even better edges! Enzyme-treated liver powder is another excellent additive as is enzyme-treated yeast powder as is predigested fish protein powder; the powerhouse of nutritional attraction found in so many of those high-oil halibut pellets for instance!
Pellets designed for fish other than carp often have higher levels of lipids than carp require and fish such as trout and salmon have a higher energy requirement in regards to lipids, therefore their feeds reflect this need. Wels catfish have a higher metabolic rate per degree in temperature increase than carp and the comparatively enormous energy value of lipids mean they respond very well to higher levels of lipids in homemade baits designed for them! Having caught thirty catfish between 60 to 110 pounds in the UK on such homemade baits rich in these (and other substances that support or even encourage high metabolic rates,) I can say lipids are extremely important. The Ccmoore marine amino compound is an especially interesting and effective liquid additive among others; such as the highly stimulating Ccmoore Red Venom liquid!
On a personal level based on my own perceptions as a human (and many multiples of thousands of times less sensitive than carp senses) I recommend the lactose concentrate B plus product from Ccmoore among many of their others, because it hits my senses and does not let go! This indicates to me that it is literally taking hold of my sensory receptors internally and making me feel hungry very directly via my biofeedback! (Bear in mind this is merely smelling a powder additive in air where particles pass over my olfactory cells in my nose, and not even in solution (i.e. when mixed with water and in contact with carp sensory cells directly!)
This just shows how potently impactful some carp bait substances really are in very low concentrations; hot chilli powders and turmeric are other great carp-catching examples that even us humans can easily be aware of even in quite low concentrations in our foods; sweating and a faster heart rate (and faster digestive rate) are just a couple of the more obvious effects although the true impacts go much further than these!
I might suggest that the impact upon me is rather like the taste of monosodium glutamate in a Chinese takeaway (minus any nasty after-taste,) or the yeasty smell of fresh bread pumping from a bakery to attract customers! This seriously hooks onto carp (and human) sensory receptors and leaves you and Mr Carp wanting much more again and again! Another far less well known product is fructose concentrate. This relatively little-used edge is something that is extremely underrated and really yet to be really popularised as a true winner but one I have proven in my baits and ground baits too for many of my biggest UK fish over forty pounds. Fructose is a natural product like betaine and like Ccmoore Supersweet, is a sweetener that carp just love. It is worth considering how a carp brain operates and how various chemicals are released that cause behavioural effects we want in order to induce carp behaviours in our favour.
The impact of the key bioactive substance in hemp is one such example that you might term mind-altering, but when you think a bit further, anything that causes a change in brain chemistry in a food can be potentially harmful or beneficial from an angling perspective. Thankfully well over 90 percent of the most effective carp bait substances actually encourage healthier carp when used sensibly! It is up to us to be aware of the potential hazards when a food source becomes a threat; as in the case of drastic over-feeding with tiger nuts or peanuts in particular - but then doing that in certain fishing situations is simply ignorance of course. Hemp seed is a different matter altogether having some of the best quality digestible protein and fantastic amino acid and lipid profiles of the kind carp essentially need!
You will want to use super pure betaine as it has such significant feed-stimulating effects and enhances the impacts of other ingredients, additives and flavours too; it is a potent naturally bioactive substance that when used with liquids rich in amino acids will truly give its best being an amine too. Ccmoore Feedstim XP, Marine Amino Compound, mussel extract, salmon and krill extract, bloodworm extract, Belachan extract, crayfish concentrate and anchovy concentrate and others all benefit from use of super pure betaine to enhance them, along with a little dissolved rock salt for instance. Talin is a great additive for nut baits and used with betaine is very well proven.
The way your bait substances react and interract with other bait substances is very important in how they impact upon carp in many ways simultaneously, but the way your bait reacts and interacts with water is something very much worth much more thought! I enjoy fishing very soluble baits of the kind you might only be able to fish practicably for 2 to 4 hours immersion in water because I know such baits are literally joining with the surrounding water to maximum effect to pump out concentrations of stimulation and attraction ordinary boiled baits and even many pellets do not achieve. As a matter of fact, countless effective effects you might wish to achieve with conventional boilies you can apply to part-boiled and part-steamed paste and boilie style baits, readymade pellets and pastes and boilies made from them and even ground baits in most formats (stick, slop, etc,) and particle baits too.
By applying refined additives and other substances for the job you can multiply the impacts on fish feeding behaviours beyond many what most anglers would believe. By simply adding a solution of betaine, predigested fish protein, enzyme-treated yeast and Marine amino compound and a little rock salt to your conventional halibut pellet free baits, you can seriously boost fish feeding and your catches. However, I have discovered that Ccmoore pellets are especially designed for all year round use where optimum nutritional attraction and digestibility are hugely important factors in all temperatures. I really get excited about their Milkimin pellets and Cantax Red 365 pellets but then they have the Amino Green 365, uniquely digestible fish HDE pellets, their boosted mussel pellets, Belachan pellets, boosted shrimp pellets, bloodworm pellets and more to play with. Testing many of these as pellets and as quick scalded pastes (in various combinations with a little extra egg albumin for a longer-lasting bait,) has shown carp near them often come zooming over to investigate!
Ccmoore corn sweet syrup is one PVA-friendly product well worth including as a bait soak for instance. You can add all kinds of extras to this syrup for example when using PVA products it being PVA-friendly. Corn sweet syrup really helps to enhance carp feeding activity and can be added to many great bait substances including examples such as: corn steep liquor, betaine, green lipped mussel extract, Vitamealo, sodium caseinate with crushed peanuts, whey concentrate powder vanilla extract meal and even various essential oils, such as garlic oil, chilli oil, almond oil, peanut oil, (sweet garlic oil is outstanding,) or so much more.
If you want very hard hook baits perhaps try using a ten percent inclusion of whey protein concentrate as opposed to simply using maize powder for instance. One cheaper option for better base mix binding is use of whole egg powder which makes baits tougher throughout. I have always found that the incredibly nutritionally attractive ingredients like lactalbumin and whey concentrate (WP80) tend to produce bite often faster after casting out than many other baits, obviously the soluble nature of these is central to this! So to make your baits break down much faster, perhaps radically increase your inclusion level of whey protein concentrate or other more soluble ingredients such as corn steep liquor powder or calcium or sodium caseinates.
Sometimes I make new homemade baits in a rush or make new baits without knowing exactly how much soluble versus insoluble ingredients to include in making a homemade bait that will both roll well and boil or steam without disintegrating and I get things wrong. (But do I really?!) You see my point is that every bait-making mistake is potentially a great solution when applied for particular fishing situations; all it takes is a little imagination! For example, when making homemade enzyme-active baits with too much whey protein they might not be able to be boiled or steamed without melting do to its water-solubility characteristics. At first what seems like a perhaps more costly but obviously potentially very good bait might seem a complete waste and be unusable, but think about it! When used as air-dried or fresh paste baits they are simply awesome, especially for short trips or over-night fishing trips; as I know from experience.
Just such an example was when I had a take on a popular winter water within hours of arriving using such baits in early February (soon after the snow melted in 2009.) Due to the low water temperatures most anglers visiting had been blanking for days and days so the unusual homemade bait approach proved itself under pressure! I suggest that softer more soluble kinds of baits are just the kind of baits many anglers failing to catch on conventional harder less soluble boilies can exploit for themselves. Fish find softer baits in many ways less easy to resist and less easy to deal with rig and bait-wise too.
One very easy way to produce extremely reliable baits is to scald some Ccmoore boosted mussel, shrimp, bloodworm or Belachan pellets etc, in combination with some Milkimin or Amino Green 365 or HDE pellets for example. This is quick to do - just cover the pellets with boiling water and leave overnight and then form your past. You can even make baits up your baits on the bank and add additional Feedstim powder, squid liver extract or Liquid Super Slop and so on to boost your baits and apply them in very many diverse ways in your fishing!
Perhaps try including more of that legend of carp bait ingredients; enzyme treated liver powder. Why not try this with enzyme treated yeast powder, and corn steep liquor powder? Or you might go for an old trick and incorporate bread crumbs or crunchy kelp meal, or krill meal with fermented shrimp and soluble fish protein?! The use of powdered ingredients and liquids of the same product means that you have the best of both worlds providing instantly soluble attraction plus more longer-lasting powdered attraction within your baits even after the more soluble fractions of your baits have been washed out.
One of the most exciting aspects of bait making is using substances and ingredients that trigger feeding when more soluble ingredients have gone, because this is often the time when very wary carp will feel safer in taking these baits instead of fresh ones at many pressured waters, and this really gives you great competitive edge over other anglers baits - and often more bigger fish too! Even the use of coarse kelp meal, or krill or shrimp meal or meat meal along with squid flesh meal and very generous helpings of green lipped mussel extract will boost a more usually bland soya and semolina high-attract concentrated flavour bait - and yes, why not mix cheap high attraction with premium nutritional stimulation too?! (Note; many flavours taste differently to their taste, but this is something Ccmoore has obviously taken the trouble to deal with in sourcing their flavours; try using Crab Essence with their Frankfurter Essence to ring the changes for instance?!
Now back to bait solubility which is so vitally important in ensuring maximum bait performance (and enhancing bait digestion too!) You might use whey gel and egg albumin together at about 10 percent of your mix and avoid the use of liquid eggs which include egg yolk altogether. This improves bait solubility (compared to using whole eggs) and provides extra bait capacity for adding so much more in terms of liquid foods for instance; so enriching your baits nutrition and so again, enhancing bait performance. (To improve your bait digestibility why not try the Ccmoore called the Key; it is something totally uniquely designed to be an extremely impactful nutritional trigger and proven digestive aid and is certainly a liquid I will be using more of!)
When I used liquid foods like Minamino and liquid liver years ago the hearsay recommended levels were low; maybe up to 30 millilitres per pound of bait. Then I used them in liquid food and flavour mixtures and neat in bait soaks, and found them far more productive. Then I starting using them neat in my paste baits or at over 100 millilitres per pound of bait when I could afford it. As a result of this my catches improved significantly immediately and this was a good lesson in proving you can find great solutions (unique perhaps only to you) aside from the recommended levels, usage levels or applications of use etc. Any way the more you can pack liquid foods such as Feedstim XP or Marine amino Compound for instance into your baits, the better because these act like incredibly powerful magnets that pull (already excited) fish into your swim - before they have even found any of your actual baits!
Tiger nut extract with added betaine and Talin, is a well proven bait soak that is ideal for nut baits. You would do very well to use a lesser-known alternative Super Cherry Amino (a product not unlike the legendary Minamino also avaialable from Ccmoore. Why not add some liquid yeast and liquid molasses also for instance. Someone once asked me if I thought that using flavoured Minamino product would have its drawbacks in regards to the flavour but in my opinion the flavour is a big plus considering how many carp are all too familiar its more famous cousin.
Many common conventional flavours plus many unusual flavours are great used in nut baits. This includes some outstanding ones such as Ccmoore Creamy Condensed Milk Essence, Ultra Honey Essence, Ultra Chocolate Malt Essence, Ultra Scopex Essence, Ultra Maple Essence, Ultra Hazelnut Essence, and others like hemp, cream, butter, caramel or Pistachio flavours. Why not think about it; add a generous level of hot Chilli powders and use Red Venom liquid for a spicy bait for instance, with some black pepper essential oil perhaps.
You might make up a homemade spod or ground bait mix from molasses meal, roasted peanut meal, any of many milk powders and liquid foods including liquid yeast and Feedstim XP liquid and powder. Imagine the impact of all those fine particles spreading throughout the water layers and dispersing. So many wary and very pressured carp appreciate filter-feeding upon water-borne food particles before moving any more confidently onto larger food or bait items fished on the bottom or mid-water.
Nut baits work very well when fished with corn steep liquor pellets, Milkimin pellets and hemp pellets for instance. Your ground bait can literally make all the difference to your results because it can very significantly get excited carp further into stages of feeding modes and intensities; where even warier carp can make mistakes more easily.
To really liven up your particles and pellets and even to make a bait soak to pull more fish when using maggots, why not try mixing your baits and ground baits with the awesome Feedstim XP, Super Pure Betaine, Talin, tiger nut extract and tiger nut oil for instance.
Of course you can make many unique liquids and slop attractors with ingredients and additives that are water-soluble to various degrees, and of course even more insoluble ingredients can help pull fish when in suspension in the water column! It may be noted that whole insects, bloodworm and crushed tiger nuts, peanuts and hemp are not totally soluble but these certainly have many effective properties and characteristics!
Essential oils are very powerful additives and you might simply choose to add the old famous favourite aniseed oil. Or for something a little different, perhaps use a combination of cinnamon oil, thyme oil, and clove oil. These have some of the highest antioxidant potencies available in the spices and are extremely well proven (and not just in winter!) Aniseed oil and hemp oil are very effective in winter as most carp anglers already know. Why not try aniseed and clove oil with Talin, or cinnamon oil with 2 grammes per kilogram of Ccmoore Ultrasweet powdered sweetener in your base mix. You would do well to try 8 grams of Lactose Concentrate B in a kilogramme of base mix in a nut bait; with 10 percent pure liver powder with the added addition of maybe 2 percent super pure betaine. For much more see my bait secrets ebooks and free articles at my site Baitbigfish.
By Tim Richardson.
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