Making Potent Homemade Carp Baits Using Belachan Fermented Paste Plus Shrimp And Krill Meals!
Boost your big carp and catfish catches with these tips on potent shrimp and krill products and advice on using them to best effect. Belachan and fermented shrimp products are extremely productive but what these are and how you can use them are very good questions so read on discover more and catch more big fish using them!
Belachan is basically naturally-fermented shrimp paste block or powder and it is even available as liquid extract. It used to be a much-whispered about additive known to the privileged few in certain carp fishing cliques but not any longer! Belachan is a strongly pungent Malaysian food additive that adds and enhances flavours and tastes to cooking of many kinds today - including in the making of fishing baits for carp, catfish, and many other specimen sized fish!
The small shrimps are drained of water and packed with salt and placed in containers to ferment. The shrimps break down by bacterial enzyme action and the resulting mass of slat and broken down shrimp forms a paste. This paste is milled to mix it thoroughly and ensure even processing and extruded into sausages and air-dried. The product quickly absorbs water from the air being so hygroscopic and having a salt content in excess of 20 percent so the product is placed in bags before it turns to mush. This is where the shrimp carries on fermenting again before milled yet again and then air-dried in the sun. This natural air-drying depends on weather so times vary. Product colour varies according to species of shrimps used.
Once the Belachan dough is semi-dry it is packaged away from moisture and stored to retain its freshness and full characteristic flavours, aromas and nutritional value. The dough is cut into 250 gram blocks for sale all over the world. One of the big secrets of the incredible attraction of Belachan is the way the protein in the shrimps is broken down into soluble polypeptides which fish find irresistible enhanced by the salts, added to the fact that both the feed-triggering peptide mixture and salts are highly water soluble and are therefore very easily detected by various fish sensory systems. Belachan is a great enhancer of other bait ingredients too.
Belachan block is not especially high in protein but the way it acts in water is of paramount importance as is the profile of the amino acids it supplies which are both attractive so drawing fish to baits but also truly incite intensive feeding behaviours. As an added bonus Belachan is a fairly cheap product and although it has less protein than many cheap soya bait products for example at around 30 percent, it has no digestion-inhibiting compounds unlike soya! It has a low oil content of only 3 percent and is about 70 percent fermented shrimp; the proteins of which have a high percentage of digestibility and this is an extremely important factor in its success!
But Belachan is not the only product of its kind and European fermented shrimp products can also be purchased, for example from Ccmoore. Their fermented shrimp powder product is in many ways far superior to Belachan having a protein content of 56 percent and containing a higher percentage of energy-delivering fat content of around 9 percent. The salt content is much lower at only 4 percent so for value for money you are getting much more feed-triggering protein compared to Ccmoore Belachan powder and block! (Another benefit is that comparatively fewer anglers use the European fermented shrimp in their baits so fish have far less cause to have any reason to be cautious of it as opposed to Belachan!)
Again, European shrimp powder is highly water-soluble so it works extremely effectively having a much higher proportion of free or water-soluble amino acids present; the proportion of digestible protein is beneficially high! In fact not only does it supply an awesome list of essential amino acids but it delivers high concentrations of other amino acids which incite true fish feeding and this again is very significant part of its success. This means that it can be used to boost and enhance stimulatory effects of baits and other ingredients in many simple and more complex ways.
Compared to Belachan and European fermented shrimp powder, the related whole protein products namely krill and shrimp meal are quite different in many effects in both bait synergy , their action in water and other factors, but these of course have their own unique beneficial contributions to bait success (some not even related to nutritional stimulation or nutritional values at all! Including both soluble fish protein and fermented shrimp products in baits for many species of fish is very productive not just in terms of long-term nutritional baits but very instant baits too! When taking a good look at the attractive and stimulatory amino acids profiles of each you can straight away see why!
Structurally-speaking, both shrimp meal and the related krill meal are insoluble but very much add to the benefits of fermented shrimp products enabling the matrix of baits to continue to have stimulatory attraction long after the more soluble bait substances have leached out. In practical terms for resilient long- lasting baits when immersed in water for longer periods of time, the proportion of soluble substances in boilies for instance is often best at around 20 or so percent. Personally I go for more and softer baits prove their worth time and again!
Shrimp baits which include high levels of soluble shrimp additives plus krill meal will have many extra levels of attraction including a very attractive level of highly bioactive omega 3 oils. This example of a specifically oily soft buoyant bait rich in low molecular weight compounds like nucleotides and various amino acids like so many very successful are highly palatable. It is obvious that combining shrimp and krill products is highly successful and I hope you see a little more of why this is.
Using Belachan gratings and fermented shrimp powders and liquid extracts in boilies and pellets are very well proven edges. These can of course be enhanced and differentiated themselves by other additives and ingredients however! Creating softer baits that are short-lived in water before dissolving are extremely effective but that whole area is another big subject in itself! (For more information see my website and biography right now!)
By Tim Richardson.
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