You can make carp baits as easy and simple or as complex as you want but one thing is certain and that is, for best results you need to make sure your baits are as unlikely to arouse as little suspicion in fish as possible. To do this you need to leverage the top rule with fishing bait; that of making your bait unique and different! A new different bait has the best potential to tempt big wary carp because even where a so-called food bait or nutritional biological value bait is established, once fish get hooked on it, then fish feeding behaviour on it can alter dramatically!

The purpose of a fishing bait is not to smell like a banana, nor be an eye-catching colour, nor shine in the dark like a beacon, or taste like a banquet. It is merely to get your hook in the fish's mouths for the split second it tasks to have the slightest chance of hooking a fish. Everything else is secondary. But many fishermen seriously cut their chances by using baits many others have caught fish on before, not realising how much harder fish on such baits unfortunately can be to catch; having been hooked on them previously! (So many overlook this top priority warning!) It should therefore make absolute sense that making your bait different to previously successful baits is a big key to consistent big fish success.

To prolong the life of a readymade bait or produce a new homemade one, you have an amazingly diverse fishing bait industry offering decades of experience and field tested products proven to catch fish. So finding new products and combinations of them you can trust is easy. But there are literally thousands of products which can be exploited which are not usually used by carp anglers and theses often have potent competitive edges over the most popular proprietary ones on pressured carp waters.

Many anglers love to use flavors and others steer clear of using them. But one thing for sure is that the majority of anglers are only aware of a tiny fraction of forms of flavors and flavor substances and components available to use in our baits. The concentrated solvent based flavors so commonly used to change the smell and taste characteristic of a bait are a minor part of what you can leverage for great results!

Your bait will have a smell and taste even though it may have had no flavors added. Every ingredient you put into a bait has some impact upon it and bait ingredients do not work in isolation but together synergistically and this is how they affect fish senses and fish digestion too. Fish are totally aware of all this and can even detect the components of flavors in their instinctive search for potential food that might provide essential dietary requirements or simply an energy requirement; energy is essential for all life. Intrinsic flavors and smells exist in baits long after our own human senses cannot detect them. Flavors will act differently in air compared to water and this is very significant for example in regards solubility, use through the seasons and rate of diffusion of attractors through the water to pull fish towards your bait.

Whether you prefer food baits or flavors or even artificial baits like plastic corn or pellets, all can lose effectiveness after repeated captures of fish on any particular water. This is why constantly tweaking or altering your baits in minor or sometimes major ways can extend your catch results on them. The fishing bait industry is all too aware of exploiting this by offering multitudes of new products every year.

When anglers think of carp baits most will immediately picture round boilies. These have succeeded for decades, but its is noticeable that round and now barrel shaped baits are being easily dealt with by wary carp and other new alternative shapes should be exploited! In the case of rubber and plastic baits, their many characteristics and lack of these too compared to conventional carp baits really gives them edges, but even these are not totally devoid of anything carp can associate with danger.

Food ultimately comes down to the supply of energy and its efficient use in our bodies and fish are just the same. Any aspect of bait which can provide more efficient use of energy, or at least appear to can be fantastic to use in baits and many are waiting to be discovered and exploited. As big fish have a greater energy requirement it stands to reason that these respond to such substances rather well. If you consider that oils, betaine and even amino acids have a tendency to promote growth and have significant relevance in the use or supply of energy, it is not a surprise they are potent fish feeding triggers!

The natural foods which carp have survived and evolved to exploit in their natural environments have had more than just impacted upon the senses which detect these foods. Even the carp body itself has evolved physically in order to best detect, consume, digest and extract the maximum essential nutrition and energy it needs for survival. Betaine is found in many natural foods from root crops like sugar beet to molluscs and crustacean and fish themselves and even we humans contain betaine and it is a real essential!

In fact I focus on betaine because it has an even more intense feeding stimulation impact on carp sensory systems than the fellow feeding stimulator, the amino acid alanine. Most anglers already appreciate the impacts of amino acids upon fish feeding but do not relate this intense feeding response to hardly any other substances. But just in the same way that betaine and amino acids are significant growth and health and balance promoters etc, thousands of other substances have very significant bioactive effects on fish we can exploit in baits for big fish.

From the active enzymes in hemp seeds, peptides in milk powder ingredients, theobromine and polyphenols in coco, sugars, flavonoids, ketones, acids, esters and enzymes etc in real fruit juices, even salts and acids in mature cheese; these are all potent feeding triggers and attractors. Next time look at the ingredients list of a readymade meal and count how many stimulate you and how and might be fish attractors and feeding triggers to exploit in your baits. These ingredients are often included for powerful bioactive and habit-forming reasons to get you and your body to crave for more… Whether your first priority is the fishing, hunting camping or just pursuing hobbies outdoors for recreation and sport, your bait will make all the difference; so the more you know the better your results will be for life!

By Tim Richardson.