nutty squid

I no longer use shelfies, a look at the ingredients tends to put me off. I've been making my own for a few years now. I got lucky with a spice blend, that suits both fishmeals and bird food baits. I have noticed a reduction in flavours for cat/ dog biscuits lately. I used Aldi chicken and liver in a mix for barbel, but 100 mile round trip to unfishable small river put paid to that. Must haves imo are milk powder, yeast and seaweed/ spirulina.

I've never been happy with braid hooklinks, or inline leads. I nearly always use a lead clip set up. I use 1 to 1.5 oz leads on silty venues, going up to 4 oz on hard bottomed lakes. I use size 6 or 4 hooks. The only mouth damage I recall was slippage from a curve shank kd rig, an 11lb common, 3 oz leads at distance. I think the hook didn't set properly. I tend to use barbless hooks.

In the early 90's, I used boilies made of mostly ground go-cat.They air dried rock hard, and were also hard to hair rig. I caught a few carp and tench on them, but shelf lifes got the better of me. Now I still sometimes use powdered cat biscuits, but at no more than 25% of a base mix. I only fish short sessions, so a softer bait suits me.