rice pack bait

Question
how can you make a rice pack bait without using ketchup?

Answer
Hey ya David,

Thanks for the question.

As you may well know, perhaps even more so than I, carp fishing techniques are virtually unlimited and pack bait recipes are as well.

When you ask "how" can you make a pack bait without ketchup (Catsup) for the yankees out there...the quick answer would be...don't put it in! But lots of folks use it and it obviously works. So I say to decide "if" you need it, we need to ask "why" do folks use it?

First, it could be the scent, it could be the color (do carp have rods and cones in there eyeballs to see color?...hmm, I'd have to research that one...) But it seems to me that people forget just how sensitive the sense of "taste" in most fish, via "smell" (it can be far more technical than that, I know), really is. Most fish "smell" in at least, the parts per million range and even perhaps in the parts per billion range. (1 part smell to one million or billion parts water). That tells me that carp, known for their ability to detect the faintest of scents may be zeroing in on any number of the actual ingredients in ketchup.

I have mixed dough with vanilla, garlic, cotton batting (to keep it on the hook) and caught a few and know folks that have "secret" carp recipes with hundreds of ingredients.

One thing I can assure you the ketchup does, is to help bind whatever other ingredients you add to hold the pack together and/or control the breakdown...it's sticky and can be absorbed into the flour or rice or corn mush or whatever other chum you add to the recipe.

So how do you make a pack bait without ketchup? "Don't put it in" really is the best answer. But be certain to substitute something like a bit of corn syrup, molasses, maple syrup or any number of other binders. You could use egg whites or gelatin or you could get the gluten (that so many folks are scared of eating) going in a good wheat based dough and then add some of the other ingredients found in ketchup 'til you find the "one" that nobody else has figured out...heck then you could make thousands of bucks with "Dave's super secret carp slayin' pack bait!

Experiment and have fun! That's what fishing is all about!

Best of luck to ya!

-Mark

P.S. I plan on doin' my carp fishin' this year with a bow...kinda like cheatin' but it is fun in its' own right....