Most anglers have heard of the success of luncheon meat for specimen carp, catfish, barbel, chub and other species but over-look many alternatives to the obvious readymade baits and tinned meat baits. This article describes different ways to exploit nutrient-rich meats in many different ways to make cheaper homemade big fish baits!
When carp, catfish, barbel and chub angler think of meat they all seem to immediately think of luncheon meat. But hold on a second, just what are the ingredients and special additives that make it a nutritional and attractive food item to both humans a and fish, because this is extremely important! In relation to luncheon meats what about all those different brands and types of pork products that we can also exploit for bait use in diverse ways? There is Spam, Pork Grill, luncheon meats, salamis, sausages and sausage meats and even pork meat foods in tinned and frozen forms for pets like dogs too plus many other alternatives.
I have found that utilising the big pre-formed rolls of pork meats intended for pet consumption make very good bulk protein bases for carp baits and baits for many other species too. Many people know all about the success of using simpler chunks of luncheon meat, or cylinders of Pepperami, or Matterson sausage and so on, but far fewer realise all these can be formed into even better unique baits in conjunction with many other highly attractive ingredients, additives, flavours etc. Big fish catches mean much more than some special meat punch tool or ready-flavoured tinned meat!
Of course many anglers use tinned luncheon meat from the tackle and bait shop made specially as fishing bait with added coloured dyes and flavours; like Strawberry and Scopex. But these are still come out of the tins in the familiar sizes and shapes, textures and feel of standard tinned meats of this nature. Carp will often unfortunately already be extremely familiar with these forms of baits, and they will be able to resist or pull baits off rigs or consistently whittle down or mouth hook baits without getting hooked! (All this goes on all the time often with anglers never comprehending the queue of fish that sample the bait and never get hooked!)
Of course you might use a cylinder of Pepperami or luncheon meat next to a pop-up boilie perhaps or combine a tiger nut or a pellet and a piece of meat together on a hook rig to try and do something a little different. I have spent about 35 plus years in carp fishing experimenting with all kinds of bait formats. I have obviously exploited the of out-side flavouring all kinds of meat baits and soaking them in all manner of substances in order to boost their performance.
After all this I now prefer to utilise pork and many other meats different ways and forms of baits that really are unique every time they are used and of course, half of their success is their complete uniqueness of both bait characteristics of shape feel, shapes, taste and smells, colours, densities and buoyancies, nutritional profiles and so on.
Now in these days of recession it is certainly cheaper to get pork and often many other meats in larger quantities for much less money from pet food outlets and even wholesalers wherever possible. If you want a more lazy method the raw sausage meat from supermarkets is a good well proven fishing bait protein source! The tinned stuff in conventional sizes in supermarkets is obviously probably the most expensive way to buy meats but they are instantly available to most people.
Using the tinned brands gives you a chance to try out various brands in straight from the tin form to find the most productive ones for your species of fish (which often turn out to be one particular brand and product just like the super sweet sweetcorn specially grown for Green Giant for example! In my carp fishing I have found that the concentration of natural sugars in this specific tinned version has very often out-fished many other cheaper brands and even lesser strains of fresh sweetcorn too.
Now this might seem obvious to some of you, but what if you combined such attractive sweetcorn with the most productive or cheapest but still productive pork meat (or other meats) to make very economical homemade baits? Strictly speaking ideally you will do your homework on bait substances and fish senses that most stimulate them before choosing ingredients first.
As the saying goes think like a carp – not an angler and success is sure to follow!
Ideally you will find out the essential nutritional aspects of the daily dietary requirements of carp or wels or even blue or channel catfish for example. Each species has great lessons in nutritional requirements and substance-specific sensitivity that can also be applied and exploited for different species. This is exactly what I did in terms of designing unique homemade baits to target for big carp. I then moved onto designing unique homemade baits for catfish.
Because I studied the 2 species in great depth and detail I could extract specific parts of their sensitivities and dietary requirements; and discover levels of substances needed to produce intense and prolonged feeding. This was all put into practice in my fishing and led my captures of over thirty sixty to one hundred and ten pound catfish caught in the UK, plus to fifteen of my twenty captures of forty-plus pound carp in the UK too.
OK, so here is a very quick taste of a just one very simple method and approach to a homemade bait that will catch carp and catfish. It makes a small quantity and this is a lesson in taking a measured recordable approach so that each and every recipe of bait you make is repeatable and you can compare your catch results on each bait to refine your baits so they become better and better!
You can begin any way you like but maybe start with liquidising a can of Green Giant Sweetcorn. I have an old food mixer-blender that takes the effort out of bait making and makes it far faster than most anglers ever imagine!
If you must have a flavour to boost your confidence you can add a flavour to your corn at any level you like. It is completely your choice to make your baits over-flavoured instant attractor baits or low-flavour more natural baits for instance. These days there are endless readymade fishing flavour liquids, palatants, complexes etc you can exploit; but many of these tend to be quite expensive even in larger volumes.
However it is true that certain flavours are well worth the money. Top flavours often cost far more than you might think to formulate, refine test and re-test, to source components, to bottle, label, package, and transport to sell at a profit for both the wholesaler and retailer.
I must admit I hate the cost of very many products sold in small bottles with expensive prices. It is horses for courses as they say and I have blown a fortune over the decades spent on testing and using such little bottles! Unfortunately some of the most stimulatory components of a bait bought from fishing shops as opposed to other sources can be very much more expensive, but you often do not need to use very much to get the vital effects on fish senses you absolutely depend on for success!
Just look out if you are on a budget for it is often far better to use a new flavour or slightly different version of a pure liquid extract than to choose very cheap flavours or cheaper copies of already legendary flavours for instance. I do not consider that many of the newer generation of the corn steep liquor and syrup-flavour proprietary fishing concoctions really provide value for money, when compared to other options for your baits that may take a little thought to source but which are massively more economical!
Warm mineral water and molasses or even white granulated sugar form almost the equivalent of the bulk of some of these types of products. A small quantity of a leading flavour added to the most active grade of CSL, (corn steep liquor) you can source plus an intense sweetener such as Talin plus a little betaine makes a good very basic homemade alternative.
So now you have your sweetcorn or sweetcorn and added liquids prepared. Put this aside and now liquidise 2 cans of luncheon meat for example. This meat may have less or more meat content and less or more fat and oil contents. You will find the cheaper brands usually contain higher proportions of fats and water compared to meat protein content. I go for cheap high fat, high water highly solubility meats for free baits, and the highest protein meats for hook bait use. (This also saves money!)
Now pour in your sweetcorn liquid and blend the meat and corn together. You can either add an equal volume of eggs to this mixture to bind or not use eggs to produce the most water-soluble baits. You do not need to use many eggs to bind liquids and other ingredients together anyway.
Many anglers avoid the use of whole eggs altogether because they although they contain all kinds of essential nutritional components fish are obviously going to recognise them from previous egg-containing baits plus eggs affect digestion in various ways. You can just throw out the yolk or yellow part of the egg and just use the egg white instead. Some anglers will be familiar with the use of many other binders to use including the familiar whole egg powder used in baking.
Now you have your liquid meat and eggs mixed together you need a dry meal or powder or combination of these to bind the liquid. The choices for this a vast but their different functional and stimulatory effects (and not just nutritional ones when used in combination) come into play; and are most significant here.)
If you were using sausage meat you might find your bait requires less binder as this might already contain sticky added wheat flour or corn or other starch fillers and other binders. I often use whole wheat flour and maize flour or gram flour (chick pea flour) for instance and add other binders and ingredients to seriously boost stimulatory impacts and for various other less obvious bait performance and structural reasons etc. Soya flour and hard durum wheat semolina is so over-used do be different because it will pay you big dividends!
Simply add your binder or binders already mixed together in whatever ratios your homework and practical bait-making experience leads you to use and get the old food blender or liquidiser going again. I often start my mixes like this and finish my bait dough by hand to achieve refined levels of hardness or wetness because I often let mixes sit for some hours in the fridge so the liquids and dry powders etc truly soak together before finishing the bait.
When you have a firm dough your bait is ready. Making even more potent and unique paste, pellets, boilies and unique particle baits from such simple and cheap ingredients is another step. Again, this can all be done in ways to achieve far better than average big fish results for big carp, catfish plus specimen barbel and chub. This is where doing your bait homework really pays off!
Getting the best bait information, doing rigorous fishing testing practice plus refinements based on your catches feedback will make all the difference. Why waste all your valuable time and money making and fishing baits that merely catch any carp or catfish big or small when you can have an economical bait that catches big fish very consistently that even out-fishes competing baits such as the many readymade boilies and pellets!) Visit my bait secrets ebooks and unique homemade bait making site Baitbigfish for more information right now!
By Tim Richardson.
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