Make Carp fishing Bait And Save Money And Catch Better Fish!
Saving yourself the cost of expensive bait is one of the most important factors in fishing success for many carp fishermen. It can take quantities of expensive readymade bait to achieve great results and if you have a way of making this very quickly and very cheaply then you can save yourself untold fortunes and catch as many if not more fish than on readymade baits. Once you have a few basic bits of information on making baits you are free to create unique economical baits for big fish for years to come and save yourself a real fortune!
Carp live on mostly protein based foods which contain essential fats and oils which provide most of their energy; in their natural water environment carbohydrate foods are rare. In contrast to humans therefore, carp do not use carbohydrates, but oils and proteins for their energy requirements and process these extrememely efficiently which is not surprising as carp have long evolved to do this. This is why making baits using protein ingredients is more beneficial from a dietary needs of carp perspective and also why protein ingredients and oils are so feed-stimulatory to carp too.
There are around 10 basic essential amino acids that carp need although there are a few others, but let’s keep things as simple as possible for now. These include: lysine, methionine, arginine, phenylalanine, valine, tryptophan, leucine, isoleucine, histidine and threonine. Carp eat foods containing these amino acids because they are essential. Using almost anything that a fish basically needs to survive can give you the edge you need to get bites although exploiting fish nutritional needs are not the only way to get bites; in fact, far from it!
Our bodies and carp bodies have evolved and adapted to extract energy in the most efficient ways from food found in our natural environments. With carp we can simulate or even boost the natural attraction and stimulation of substances found in their natural foods in our baits. The range of ingredients, extracts, liquid attractors, flavors etc we can use to exploit carp natural food detection senses is phenomenal and ensures we can always make unique homemade baits!
The fuss made about protein carp baits is fair because exploiting dietary essential, particularly highly stimulatory ones such as amino acids is very significant for good results. But just because amino acids are popularly exploited by using protein ingredients does not mean you have to use protein ingredients at all in our baits, and there are very many other angles and approaches to take which are very economical indeed and even wheat, rice or corn flour based baits made with some know-how work a treat! All you need to do is manipulate and exploit any of a range of attractor and stimulator substances, many of which you can add by way of proprietary liquid dips and soaks etc.
But protein based baits are not strictly necessary to get bites of course and a multitude of baits including those based on carbohydrates like wheat flour or corn flour will still catch very well indeed providing they are altered to keep them in effect new and different to previous baits. Many of the most economical bait recipes based on carbohydrate ingredients have consistently caught big fish for decades despite arguments raging over quality food versus crap baits and other theories. If you keep changing your attractors even just by using alternative proprietary flavor dips you can always keep ahead of your fish on any particular fishery; just remember to exploit what stimulates fish naturally and avoid over-dosing with solvent based flavours unless you are fishing single bait style.
Often artificially stocked fisheries contain fish which now treat anglers baits as natural food and these fish literally live on them as opposed to just natural food which may or may not be readily available. Homemade baits will catch on the easiest overstocked or richest or under-stocked waters; what do think the early bait pioneers used? Why keep buying readymade bait for 10 pounds when you can produce your own unique baits for a fraction of the cost and very little time or effort when I’ve found over the last 30 years that you can catch against any readymade bait using homemade baits no matter what they are based on!
Other ingredients like bird foods containing hemp and corn, crushed seeds and nuts etc, can be utilised to make very nutritious stimulating baits simply bound together with eggs to make a dough and boiled in water. You can combine these with both carbohydrate and protein ingredients to make any recipe of bait you so desire and bait making does not have to be rocket science to catch fish! However, if all you remember from this article is that carp love amino acids and it is recommended you treat your bait as an amino acid carrier, then you can leverage this fact in your homemade baits and readymade bait dips for the rest of your life; and for more consistent big fish catches!
By Tim Richardson.