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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.

Hi Elmo . I would offer to be a field tester for you , but that would mean I have to get off my bum and actually go fishing 😁 . Your pink boilies look very tempting . 😃

I always used the richworth pop up mix when I rolled bait. Not sure if its still available but it was good in my opinion.

Will say having used a couple of pop up mixes in the past, the best I found was BAF before they stopped selling it. AA would be my choice if I ever make any more though.

Well the end of the year has gone well. The koi are doing great and still feeding most days due to the elevated temps. The nets/covers are now off since the leaves are gone. The water clarity is insane.... you can see every little detail on the deck in 2m. The temporary floating skimmer has worked a treat. I picked up a pond vacuum a month ago and gave the bottom a good clean at the weekend which means there's no detritus for any nasties to hide in ready for the spring. It's a real shame I can't post vids on here as I have some great footage of the koi milling about. So now I need to plan for spring which apparently is the most tricky and dangerous time of year. Parasites wake up before the koi so it's essential I do everything I can to keep their immune systems working as well as possible. If you lose your water parameters early on, you're chasing your tail all year, so I have to be bang on it to stay a step ahead of any issues with algae, weed, DO, and ammonia, nitrite, pH etc. Really enjoyed the last few months and looking forward to my first full year with the pond. Looking to feed heavily next year to get some good growth, while maintaining the water quality. I'll keep this thread updated from time to time for anyone that's interested.