Making Fishing Boilies For Seriously Big Carp And Catfish!

If you are a beginner or experienced homemade bait making angler there are always new exciting things to discover to improve your results and keep ahead of the fish - and other competing baits! To make baits that work the very most consistently for big fish it takes a deep knowledge and long experience both in designing baits and in refining them to ensure they perform most consistently - and no-one knows it all! This article is about making a big fish bait - so let us look at a few background details first.

The concept of making little round balls of food for fish like carp and other species has a very long history and even back in the sixteenth century and beyond there are historical references to such activities utilising various protein-rich ingredients, binders, sweeteners and enhancers and so on. In the UK Fred Wilton pioneered the modern version of making baits that delved much deeper into essential fish dietary requirements in order to exploit them to make baits that fish would find many highly attractive and stimulating reasons to consume to the effect that the more they ate the more they would want them! The HNV or high nutritive value bait approach is just one angle - these baits are rich but other baits can also hook fish although they may be far less nutritional as in the case of over-flavoured baits for instance; but readymade baits did not always exist and various other approaches to homemade baits work although usually you need to be a better angler to keep catching on instant baits compared to HNV baits!

There was a time when caseins were the basis of high nutritive fishing baits, backed up by other caseinates plus other ingredients and additives to supply a broader range of nutrition and additional stimulation and attraction, such as liver and yeast powders and so on. Very many anglers were hooked on the idea of using baits based on milk protein ingredients, from the sixties until the rising popularity of fish meal baits utilising soluble fish protein etc that occurred around the middle of the early to the mid nineteen-nineties - at least in my area of the UK which was Essex. Fish meals were more in favour in part because they were much cheaper than the increasingly costly milk proteins, but also because things like the cheaper bird food baits prove that you do not need to spend a fortune to make highly successful HNV or balanced nutrition baits.

Although fish meal baits came more into prominence in the nineties, bird food and milk protein type HNV baits were not the only forms of nutritional baits as there are endless variation, and the success of flavour over-dosed baits and fake baits show that many other options also exist. Fish such as carp or catfish can be trained like dogs or humans for that matter to come back for more food when it is introduced to them regularly; where baits contain particularly stimulating nutrition and bioactive factors then baits can be extremely successful - even if you are only an average angler. HNV type baits can be an excellent leveller of results even against better more talented and experienced anglers when you regularly apply them over time - which is a major reason I prefer to make my own unique economical ones and because this is a long-proven big fish tactic for both big carp and catfish and other species too!

Maybe as a beginner you have heard of a few baits and ingredients but the very best point to begin your bait making designs from is the fish. Learning about fish might sound boring until you know a bit more and seriously begin to appreciate the massive power it can give you in your fishing even against better more experienced more talented anglers - for the rest of your life. Like in the old saying knowledge is power, but in this case knowledge of fish senses, internal processes and how bait substances can exploit and manipulate and boost such things like digestion and energy for instance is extremely well proven to lead to catches of very many big fish that make other anglers jealous!

Once you have discovered a great deal about fish and their inner needs and workings then selecting bait ingredients is much easier and you can choose how you design your baits will masses of confidence because your baits will be built on what fish response strongly to and not just your personal preferences and guesswork! I began making homemade baits in the early seventies when literally everybody else was too and it was very hard to get information about the internal workings and interactions of bait substances and fish but I enthusiastically pursued this passion for decades to the point where many bait company bosses ask me for ingredients and bait reviews, articles on their products and for my bait secrets ebooks and personal advice. Things are much easier today in terms of finding uniquely stimulating ingredients and additives because the internet has provided endless suppliers of ingredients, additives etc; some can from bait companies but many substances come from other sources and using what bait companies do not sell is a very serious edge indeed in making homemade baits from particles, ground baits or pastes and boilies etc!

In the old days milk protein baits were used very sparingly by most anglers because for one thing they were very high in protein so the fish did not need to eat many before getting full; and anyway, they worked instantly on the vast majority of waters. When fish meal baits came into prominence it was the relatively new tactic of dumping many kilograms of boilies into a swim to draw and hold the fish. Please do not get the idea that you need to make hundreds of kilograms of homemade boilies to catch big fish because just a handful of extremely potent homemade baits are always be just as good as any pricy readymade bait when you fish them in the right spot with a suitable rig!

In making homemade baits and adapting established ready made baits to give them a new lease of live and improved performance takes a good degree of knowledge not just of the insider secrets of bait substances but of the fish - and the water also; such bait-making information leads to being able to artificially create unique fish feeding opportunities that lead to multiple captures of big fish -even against more experienced or more talented anglers! As in my ebooks my homemade baits have now caught me 4 UK lake records including a leather carp over 46 pounds and a mirror carp of over 49 pounds plus over thirty catfish caught in the UK weighing between 68 pounds and 120 pounds; homemade baits really work and this is why I am so enthusiastic about getting the word out - plus they can save you a fortune and give you even more confidence and satisfaction than any readymade bait ever will! Now for some homemade food bait recipe ideas to get you started on the road to bait-making success that has a few alternative features and performance benefits - for big fish!

The bait below is not a complex one and anyone can make it - or versions of it with confidence when aiming for big carp or catfish for instance. This bait is based primarily on highly digestible fish meal and not caseins to keep costs low and there are additions in it that you may or may not utilise to boost effects and performance and make your bait especially unique. When making baits it is an art and not just science so bear in mind that levels and ingredients can be adjusted to however you like and this bait although digestible and highly nutritionally attractive is not as optimised for digestion as is possible looking at this recipe form a scientific standpoint - but your fish will not mind at all!

7 ounces of low temperature fish meal. 2 ounces of calcium caseinate. 1 ounce of 90 mesh casein. 2 ounces of CLO. 1 ounce of blood plasma. 1 ounce of hydrolysed poultry protein. 1 ounce of blue cheese powder. 1 ounce of chopped fennel seeds.

You can make baits using liquid eggs or other binders but add liquid foods such as hydrolysed worm extract, stabilised maggot juice, liquid Belachan, CC Moore Red Venom, plus a low volume dose of oil - such as evening primrose oil and cod liver oil for example; many anglers like to use flavours, or mixed palatants, enhancers and appetite stimulators etc - you might try CC Moore green-lipped mussel or Belachan flavour instead of the usual Scopex, pineapple or chocolate malt so currently familiar with pressured fish; you might even add a citrus extract or liquid spice extract in unusual combinations and levels. CC Moore figures quite a bit as a supplier in these suggestions and ideas; of course you get what you can and certainly I source many really potent bait substances that are not found in bait company product listings - so keep an open mind! (For much more detailed further information on homemade bait making and design, and boosting and adapting your readymade baits see my dedicated website Baitbigfish right now!)

By Tim Richardson.