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Many thanks all! 3wks in and the sleepless nights are starting to catch up! well I took the new aforementioned banana baits to a local club water the other day for a quick few hours while my daughter was in nursery, I had 3 out to 21lb so that’s the biggest hurdle crossed when making your own bait, knowing it works!

on the deck at the end of the sesh

few quick hours while the girls at nursery

Six egg mix ready for the pan, I’ve dusted them with dry base mix to prevent them sticking togetherafter boiling for 1min 45secs, (timed once the waters actually boiling) they are left in the garden to air dry for half hour or so, giving them a shake every few mins baits bagged and ready for the freezer

The base attractors, 20ml salmon oil (free with the basemix) 2.5ml belachan and 2.5ml shellfish sense appeals. Couple of oz robin red and a heaped tablespoon of blood powder added to 6 eggs, then enough supermarinos basemix to mix into a slightly sticky, tacky ball. (just the basemix, oil and shellfish SA on their own would keep the cost down and still produce a decent bait, the basemix has robin red in it, so it’s not essential to add more) the flavour shelf in the shed! white basemix is the protein bird food, the reddish sacks are supermarinos

Afternoon all, so my fishing has taken a back seat for the moment with the birth of my youngest son 2wks ago, so to stave off the carpy withdrawal symptoms, I have started to play about with a few things to keep me busy… for a while, I’ve been thinking about bait, specifically something for the winter when realistically, I’ll be able to get my rods out again (my choice, a new baby is hard work!) my usual bait, consisting of premier supermarinos basemix, with cream palatant, belachan flavour at 2ml per six eggs, shellfish sense appeals at 2ml, a dribble (0.5ml) of monster crab flavour, 20ml of salmon oil, added haiths robin red, and a dash of blood powder to help harden the baits (the resulting baits are a tad soft for hookbaits without the addition of blood powder or egg albumin to harden them up - I don’t want to boil the granny out of them!) has for years been all I’ve ever wanted from a bait, it catches carp wherever I take it, so what more do I need?? well in the depths of winter, I felt that the bait might not be for the best, so I wanted something different… but what? now “back in the day” my go to winter bait was good old Richworth banana ester readymades, an awesome banana aroma, bright yellow in colour and something a little different to the usual pineapple baits most were using. Going to the big one show in Feb sparked the memory of banana baits when I brought a limited edition pot of banana pop ups that took me back to my youth! so why not just buy a bag of banana readymades and be done with it? Because I freely admit to being a bit of a bait snob, and would rather roll my own baits than buy a bag… (yet I have a bag of krill bottom baits for quick sessions and theres no bait in the freezer! I am a contradiction in terms!) i wanted a bait that would be a nice high leakage banana flavoured, yellow bait like a readymade, but I didn’t want it too in your face and I wanted it to have a nutritional value, so I wanted a readymade that isn’t a readymade, that hit you with a banana aroma but didn’t… in short I didn’t quite know what I wanted!! turning to premier, I ordered my usual 10kg of supermarinos basemix and also ordered 10kg of premier milk protein/birdfood basemix which they recommended for winter use. Tony also threw in a free bottle of monster crab/shellfish sense appeal blended flavour free of charge as he knew I use it - legend! now, I knocked up a quick mix of the birdfood mix with 5ml of CC Moore banana flavour - which smells exactly as I remember the old richworth bait to smell like, perfect! I used 10ml of salmon oil, which didn’t sit right with me, it didn’t quite match if you know what I mean! initial thoughts? The basemix wasn’t quite as “predictable” as the fish meals I'm used to rolling, I found the mix dried out and shrank, making it harder to roll and squeeze out of the boilie gun, some baits also split on rolling, so some work was needs there getting the mixture right. The resulting baits turned out ok, the flavour profile felt right to the nose, but I felt I could improve on the mix. when I first started bait making, I used carp company fruit frenzy basemix with essential bait fruit factor 6, which had a lovely “zingy” flavour, I then in 1998 discovered premier Aminos basemix with green lipped mussel and richworth boiled ham flavour or rod Hutchinson mixed herbs flavour - that was a killer flavour! I’ve used premier base mixes ever since. I was straight onto essential baits for a tub of fruit factor 6, I also found a bulk oil, “fruit seed oil” a blend of vegetable oils and fruit esters, that felt more in keeping with the bait then the salmon oil, so that went into the basket too, finally a bottle of thaumatin red (a fruity intense sweetener) also ended up heading my way… bring on the bait making! so this time, I added 1/2tsp of fruit factor 6, 0.5ml of thaumatin red, 20ml of fruit seed oil and 5ml of banana flavour to six eggs then added the milk protein/birdfood basemix slowly until I got it to the point that the mix was still slightly sticky. Giving it 10min to rest left it in the perfect state to go through the gun and roll nicely without any splitting. the baits were given a 1min 20sec boil that gave them a nice skin with a slightly rubbery texture, and to the nose they have a lovely banana/fruity undertone. They are a nice pale honeycomb shade with birdfood flecks. so have I achieved the “readymade/not readymade” bait ready for winter? Who knows!! I’ll give it a go on a few waters during quick 3-4hr sessions whilst my daughter is in nursery to see how acceptable the concoction is to my local carp, if they like it, then I’ll start trickling it into the winter waters to get them used to it. (Do we even need to do this anymore? I still do anyway…) my next project?? I have 20 x 2m black 28mm rigid conduit pipes, a can of expanding foam and a baiting spoon to see if I can fashion a DIY baiting pole for around £40-50… It’s amazing where your mind goes when you’re bottle feeding at 3am!

the “screw fix sausage” gun with nozzle cut to 12mm (ish - I’m not that accurate!) my eBay rolling table with sausage ready to go rolled 12mm baits