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* You may not have considered making your own successful ‘homemade’ fishing bait, before – but there is a very simple and easy ‘short-cut’ that ANYONE can use! * Many fishing bait companies especially here in the UK, supply proprietary bait ‘base mixes.’ These are just a combination of dry powders that by testing and fishing trials have been proven to catch fish very well and consistently. When mixed with simply water or eggs, they will bind together and roll into bait balls well, and are designed to make highly productive boilies too. These ‘base mixes’ are absolutely ideal for a beginner to use, (with great confidence,) to start making their own homemade carp and catfishing baits! It is very easy indeed to use a packet of powders which just need the addition of water (or eggs if you prefer,) to make successful dough and paste baits, (and boilies,) or ‘packbaits.’ This way a bait making beginner need not know about bait ingredients flavours etc and still make their own bait that work successfully, but be warned, once you get used to making these and catching using them, you will want to know much more about making very effective baits! These baits will often have recommended flavours and other attractor ingredients listed on the back of the bag, that compliment the taste, smell and effects of the bait mix. These things have been tested so you know you can add these with confidence. When you have had a few tries in the kitchen mixing these baits and actually gone out and caught some good fish on them your confidence will grow fast! These base mixes with often come in a 16 ounce bag or 1 kilogram bag. Firstly, add the recommended amounts of dry added attractor ingredients to your base mix powders by placing these all in a large strong bag. Blow into this bag to fill it with air and tie the top! Shake the bag until the powders are well distributed. The powders will have a nice even colour. The easy way to mix these powders is to initially start with cracking four large or medium hen (or other) eggs into a large bowl or container. Then you add the recommended amount of liquid concentrated flavour, or and other additives to the eggs and whisk these well. Always add your DRY powders to the WET liquids. Do this gradually! It will be a very great help for future reference if you write down the actual amount of dry powders you actually add to the eggs etc to achieve a mouldable dough. E.g. 5 heaped serving spoons of dry powders might be required for a particular mix. Noting this means you can get very much faster production, because you can then just add your 5 heaped spoonfuls to your 4 eggs, knowing this combination is just right to make your dough. Knowing this from mixing the first bag of 16 ounce or 1 kilogram bag will also tell you how many pounds or kilograms of actual finished dough or boilie etc bait you can get from each bag, per pound or kilogram of dry mix. Also you can reduce the stickiness by adding more dry powders or if you run out, ordinary white flour, ground rice, maize meal or semolina will help. If your mix is too dry you can add another egg with a very small amount of flavour etc to the mix. It is best to make the mix into a ball of dough and put it into a plastic bag in the fridge and let it ‘soak-up’ the eggs, liquid flavours and attractors for a few hours, before rolling into bait balls. If you are making dough balls, just keep the mix in the fridge for a few days until using, or label the bait’s date, name and attractors and amounts used and freeze your bait. This may sound like work, but then if your new bait ‘empties’ the lake on your next trip, you definitely need EXACT details of the bait recorded or you might regret it! You may find your dough baits get eaten away by smaller fish than the big carp, catfish, bass or trout etc you’re really fishing and waiting for. ‘Boilies’ are a quick answer although there are certain advantages and disadvantages to actually boiling your dough balls in water or indeed steam, by reducing attraction and other factors. But boilies do last longer on the hook, and ‘free baits’ last longer in water and can be used for ‘pre-baiting’ perhaps feeding the swim the night before actually fishing, for example. Preparation is the key in making boilies quickly and with ease and the actual practice of making them will speed up immensely and there are many ‘short-cuts’ to help you. When you have a ready ball of dough and this normally will be about the size of a grapefruit (based on a 4 egg plus dry powder mix,) you can begin pulling off pieces and rolling these into balls. Boilies are often perfectly round but this is not needed. (‘Readymade’ boilies are rolled by machine.) The practice of rolling perfectly round boilies comes from the original use of catapults in the UK, used to fire round boilies out to ‘free bait’ swims at distance, accurately. A fast way to make dough baits prior to boiling is to roll the dough ball flat on a cutting board and then cut into small pieces using a sharp bread knife. This makes lots of small irregular shaped baits and these work very effectively! Another way is to pull of pieces of dough off and roll them into sausages about a centimetre in width. Roll 5 sausages, lay them parallel on a cutting board and use a sharp knife to cut through the 5 lengths at centimetre spaces so you finish up with numerous ‘pellet’ shaped baits. These also work very well! When mixing boilies by hand it is a good idea to put a small amount of vegetable on your hands if the mix is sticking to them. Rolling by hand is very time consuming and labour intensive. It is far better to use the above methods or obtain tools to speed up the process. Obtain an empty mastic sealant application gun, clean it well and cut a hole at the end of it to about 1 to 2 centimetres in diameter. By making your dough slightly softer and wetter and feeding cylinder shapes of dough into the top of the mastic gun and squeezing the handle, bait sausages in 1 to 2 centimetre widths can be extruded much more quickly than by hand. These can be chopped as above into 1 or 2 centimetre sized ‘pellet’ shaped baits, or hand rolled, or rolled using a specialist ‘rolling table,’ available from leading fishing tackle and bait suppliers. Prepare a large pan half full of boiling water. You can use the lake water from where you fish lake water, or use ‘filtered water’ which has removed your mains tap water chlorine, fluorine etc.) As it heats up you can stir in some dry mixture which will ‘flavour’ the water and add some honey, or molasses, or curry powder, or condensed milk, or fructose, or yeast extract, sea salt, or fish oils etc. Whatever you feel like experimenting with, at this stage can really boost results by making the boiled congealed ‘skin’ of your boilies much more attractive instead of ‘sealing-in’ the attractive goodies in your baits! The point of boiling is to create a very thin ‘protective skin’ and never to boil all the attraction out of your bait! Using a chip fryer speeds things up as you can place more baits into the boiling water at once and remove them all at the same time. This gives you much more control! This is very handy and avoids problems like your pan boiling over or having some baits floating about being boiled for 5 minutes while others get boiled for just seconds. If you are not sure, it is best to remove you baits the moment they begin to float! (‘Protein’ based baits are at their best when not boiled at all but they can be boiled for maybe 20 or 30 seconds instead of minutes.) Make sure you have lots of paper towels or clean towels or paper to lay your wet expanded baits onto to dry off your boilie baits. After about 6 to 24 hours depending on how warm it is where they are being dried, they can be placed into labelled polythene bags and used immediately or frozen for future use. I have found that freshly hot boilies kept warm in a preheated flask and used straight from boiling do seem more attractive... The author has many more fishing and bait ‘edges’ up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact on catches. (Warning: This article is protected by copyright, but reprints with a link are OK.) By Tim Richardson. ‘The thinking angler’s fishing author and expert bait making guru.’ For more expert bait making information and ‘cutting-edge’ techniques see the expert acclaimed new ebook / book: “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” SEE: http://www.baitbigfish.com
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