Playing with bait

[ouchthathurt]

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! 

[Golden Paws]

I had a mate who was into making his own bait and he pointed me in the right direction. For a while I started producing my own bait but a blank session had me wondering if the bait was the problem and I went down a bit of a rabbit hole!

Now I buy my bait off one of the bait barons! They sell a fair bit of the stuff and plenty of people seem to catch on it and that's good enough for me. Admittedly there isn't the same satisfaction of catching on a bait you made but the trade off is that I don't now blame the bait I buy if I blank!

That said, I've caught over 80% of my fish (155 in 2026 so far) on a change bait as I started to think that carp were treating all boilies with suspicion. Instead of following the crowd, I decided to mix it up and do something different to all the other anglers on the lakes I fish.