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Yep that does it. Think it was crayfish meal so same thing. Very light ingredient! to be fair they good alternative ingredients to make pop ups with basemix! Take some testing on inclusion levels though.

I use SHB pretty much exclusively for pop ups nowadays. Caught plenty. Probably would have caught a proportion of those on another brands pop ups. Do I believe they’ve caught me fish that I may not have caught on a different hookbaits? I’d say maybe a few. But I’ll never know. Have I blanked on them? Yes. Down to the baits? Probably not, my decisions on location, rigs, baiting approach, etc at fault. you’ll catch a carp on a lego head in the right place. You’ll blank using an all singing all dancing hookbait in the wrong place. I’d choose SHB above any other pop up though. As Yonny said it’s a confidence thing. Plenty of options priced similarly with much less to them. I’ve looked at making my own, similar but obviously not comparable as I don’t know his process in and out. I’m talking cork chunk pop ups with a curing process of my own. Doable but I don’t have the time. IMO buy with confidence but they aren’t a miracle worker.

I decided to start making bait for myself recently, now I've got a lot of the bits I needed I thought I would start with some hookbaits. Not perfectly round but good enough 😂 1egg, liquid preserve, 5ml creamy scopex, Betaine, milk B and butterscotch sweetener. Pop ups are mainline polaris dyed yellow and wafters are AA Baits pink wafter mix + a bit of tropamino basemix as I run out of wafter mix whilst mixing. I think the wafters turned out better and actually came out fairly round, both do what are they meant too when attached to a rig so that's good, now air drying and will give them a splash of extra flavour once they are dried,then all I've got to do another time is match the hatch hookbaits and start rolling kilos and kilos of boilies. Don't think I'll buy polaris again though will get some AA Baits pop up mix next time. I've also been using Copilot to make up loads of recipes, I've got 20kg of tropamino basemix to use up first though. But I've started down the rabbit hole.

yep, got my account banned on there during the scamdemic time, though i had no interest in shb at that time, i remember him really having a go at peeps big time for not getting jabbed, quite a few got banned for being so called conspirloons ..fast forward today and the truth is finally coming out, even in the msm.....

It will almost certainly be krill/shrimp meal. I've heard a few cases of this. Very buoyant stuff!

Yeah I think with egg albumen it would have made them less soluble and firmer but yeah I've learnt I'm not going to bother with cork dust,the AA Baits wafter mix seems pretty good so will use that if I need bright or alternate wafters but tbh i will probably just add some pop up mix next time to my basemix to make wafters. Keep it simple and all that. Is 50% sodium caseinate not too high? I just used Copilot and it recommented 20% max? I know it's AI but it does seem quite useful for stuff like this? I know it also might be wrong though 😂

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 used to fish some of the South Cerney waters many years, mainly Ham Pool, Bradley's and Hill's for the tench before Watermark took the last two over. The Bailiff they had then was a annoying old curmudgeon and he used to check my ticket every single time I was there. I think it was a 2 rod rule then and I had an old pike rod set up with Heath Robinson spod made out of an old washing up bottle. The good old days, if you wanted something, you had to make it, not like the kids of today........(better stop there, I'm sounding like one myself!) After he checked my ticket, he shouted that it was a 2 rod rule and so I fired back at him that it was a spod rod and he turned away laughing to himself - the old [censored] got me! One day when he was in a more agreeable mood he told me a funny story. At Ham Pool there was a club house and bar and it included a fruit machine and one of his jobs was to empty the cash from it. You could buy day tickets on the bank then and for juniors it was £1 in advance or £2 on the bank - I did say it was a long time ago! Anyway he came across 2 lads and they came out with the old "I've only got a £50 note trick". Quick as a flash, he went to his van and dumped £46 in pound coins on them! I bet they didn't try that again!

Thought I recognised some of the bait names in this thread. Got sucked in by the hype around these baits, bought some and instantly thought they looked rubbish - haven't given them the time of day tbh and won't be, massive chunks of cork, badly hand rolled, just over hyped, over priced. Would I have caught more on these than my bait matching pop-ups and NS1's, can't see it.

agree 100%! i'll tell ya my experience with the s2, a couple of years ago i was really struggling, and came across s2's and the info on that forum, got suckered into the hype and buying 2 pots, the reason i say this is cos i should of known better as i've been a home roller for over 30 yrs! i continued to struggle, it was just a period we all go through (blanking) at 1 time or another, AND it wasn't until another old-skool angler told me ya gotta just go through it, (blanking) ...anyway i was in Morrisons doing some evening shopping and they had "Bacon Grill" on special offer, i thought this was a devastating bait back in the day, what have i got to lose lol next trip 1 rod with "Bacon Grill" AND early morning the rod screamed off, lovey mid-twenty in the net! went back to my home-made caught a few up until winter (stopped using s2's & haven't used 'em since, as i have 100% confidence in my home-made) - posted similar to this and got banned at that forum! i agree for some it works and gives them confidence,great! but why can't you have a balanced discussion?