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Something else that sticks with me is Elliot Grays description of what he wants his hookbait to achieve and that is to give the fish a choice of whether to take it or not. He makes his hookbaits a blatent pink pop up or wafter and by making it the most clearly visible highest attraction bait in the swim. The fish then has the choice. I can see these pop ups doing the same sort of job.

If you like a garlic bait, Urban baits - absolutely stink and very reliable bouyancy, great baits - was using these with the Premier Aminos Garlic and Tuna. MEGA!

You made the discovery that cork dust absorbs water, and expands allowing the bait to break down. I pretty much just stuck to pop-up mix, or with standard base mix adding around 50% sodium caseinate after sieving it.

Many premium brands as @yonny has said are pop-up mix and flavour, that could be any brand, although there are some that have that something. Garlic is one of those additions that can really put fish on the bank, but it is finding the garlic that works; in pop-ups I never found powdered versions work, possibly not enough smell, and I am not scientific enough to work it out, but in a food bait they may work well. Oh those coatings can be fun to make, can be as simple as rolling dried baits in egg, then rolling in powder. Funnily enough I have caught far more on a food bait equivalent than on a yellow pop-up on most waters. The yellow pop-up produced fish on 'small fish' waters, but not on big fish venues, although the past couple of years did produce stocked fish rather than original fish on the syndicate. Thinking back to various 25lb+ commons I have caught, none came on yellow baits, all but one were on snowman baits, food bait with an identical coloured pop-up (not necessarily same flavour), the one that didn't was on a single 15mm food bait. As an add, I did remove the 'disagreement', not going to have it get nasty. Express an opinion, give your point and don't have a go.

I agree with the common thing they do seem to go for yellow a lot and I don't use yellow much and catch mainly mirrors, gonna use this as I actually want to target a big common this year. Underwater vids aside, I just wouldn't consider using brights after spring on a busy water where they see everything all the time, 90% anglers on brights with ronnies all year round says to me AVOID THIS I think you'll catch more over a season on match the hatch, just my opinion though👍

I think that was his go to for a long time but the underwaters have definately made him question it a bit.But I can't speak for him. Thing is Kev without a camera we probably won't know half the times we get done or a carp won't take a bait. We can only go onthe ones we catch. (or not 😂) so the more you use a bright or match the hatch one the more you will catch on them 😬 Another thing I gleaned from a podcast was to change hookbait colour depending on whether you were targetting a mirror or common. Now when I look at my big common captures they have been on a yellow pop up. Maybe to catch the bigger mirrors I need a match the hatch or duller bait. The theory was that commons are more sight feeders than mirrors. Again Just a theory but I might use more match the hatch type hookbaits this year as I want to catch the big mirrors.

I agree Elmo 👍

I've not used them myself, they do seem to catch some decent fish though if you look at the catch reports. Now I am making my own bait I know I will probably get into making up some "specials" with coatings and crusts etc at some point, and can see how the process they use makes them the price they are. They seem well thought out IMO and have learnt it's not usually the bait that is the reason for not catching it's usually location, application and procrastination are the main factors for blanking.

I should talk about my recent failure with pop ups 🤣they looked and smelt nice I wanted to try and make some super buoyant match the hatch type pop ups, so I went with 50/50 mix of base mix and polaris, then added 10% cork granules, my flavour combo was banging btw 5ml scopex, 20 drops each of black pepper and bergamot essential oil. Very happy with that. But they didn't really pop up that well and also after 12 hours in water they went soft like a pellet 🤣 I have since bought some AA Baits super buoyant fishmeal pop up mix and my next batch will use the same flavour combo Do any of you add egg albumen into a pop up mix? I think my last mix needed it but I've gone off cork dust so will just be using the pop up mix next time(although I have read this mix can take up to 30% regular base mix and still pop up so will experiment) Just as an FYI I've now made a couple of mixes of the AA Baits Tropaminamino boilies and now they are dried they are still quite soft and smell like a proper carp catcher, I'm starting to really enjoy the process of baitmaking, need to get set up to upscale it a bit but I'm going to have bait no one else is using and that's exciting to me.

Err.. I have a few more than two…