BoatDealerOnline

These days saving money on fishing is very important and anything you can do to get better results for less money is worth doing and making your own unique homemade fishing baits is a fantastic example and need take very minimal time! There are a few basics to know about making baits and once you have these you can go ahead and make very unique and successful baits economically for the rest of your life. Making your own baits will save you're a shocking amount of money and not just in the long-term; so imagine what else you could be spending your hard-earned money on instead!

For the more technically minded fisherman, carp do not get their energy needs from carbohydrates but mostly protein and also fats and oils in their natural diet. Being aquatic they are extremely well adapted to extract far more energy from protein foods than humans on land. The very basic protein requirements of carp are extremely significant in terms of making effective baits because these are composed of basic building blocks called amino acids, some of which carp essentially need to consume in order to survive.

Protein ingredients are used very much in carp bait making because they contain stimulating and dietary essential amino acids. Of the 10 or so carp essential amino acids some of the most important ones are: Lysine, methionine, valine, leucine, phenylalanine, histidine, isoleucine, threonine, arginine and tryptophan. Using protein ingredients in your carp baits can very much determine if fish actually eat your bait or not!

It may be no surprise that both humans and carp have evolved in part due to the energy providing foods available for us to exploit in our environments. We can exploit how these foods are detected by smell and taste for example, by boosting the levels of the most highly stimulating substances within our baits. These may consist of natural food sources of soluble amino acids, flavors or even using specialist hormone preparations etc, but there are thousands to choose from!

In fish experiments the essential amino acid requirement of very few fish has been established, but those of carp are known and can be exploited in our baits to good effect. But you do not need to know how to create a balanced profile or high protein bait to catch fish. It does help to use protein foods like hens eggs, fish meals, caseins etc which are high protein sources, because they provide many essential amino acids and are extremely well proven bait ingredients.

In the UK many fishermen have the attitude that carp baits not made from very expensive protein ingredients are crap baits and catch few big fish, but the truth is that you can catch as many fish on carbohydrate based baits if you know what you are doing and have enough experience of other ingredients and how to fish such baits well and save yourself a fortune, which is what I have done successfully for decades. You just keep adjusting levels and types of stimulatory and attractive substances to create new baits regularly, so keeping ahead of the fish; and many big fish often fall to new unfamiliar baits with good reason...

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!

You might wish to use things like bird foods which can be used both as binders and cheap but nutritional ingredients and just add eggs for example to help bind and can boost your bait protein and nutrition considerably despite carp digestion limiting effects in low temperatures especially. Bait making does not need to be rocket science and the simplest and cheapest of bait recipes catch big fish regularly for decades if fished well. Although carp love proteins for there amino acids particularly, stimulatory and attractive substances are so varied that you will never be short of a new effective homemade bait or alternative potent and unique readymade bait dip; all you need is quality know-how...

By Tim Richardson.