Carp fishing and catfish fishing are expensive sports and this article will help you avoid having to keep on paying for costly water soluble PVA products to bait up with - and will show you how to make much cheaper baits especially for winter (or all year round!) So read on for the very cheap and effective carp bait recipe ideas that are revealed here!
We humans are all very familiar with carbohydrates as land based forms of life; and nutrition from wheat grains, maize and sweetcorn kernels and rice for example are vital staple sources of food around the world and these offer minimal amounts of protein and other essentials required to sustain life. Cheap carbohydrates are also used in farmed carp feeds too. Proteins are obviously an important factor in carp feed design as carp utilise proteins to such an incredible degree, and these can be incorporated in unusual ways in cheaper forms of carp bait formulas and you will see!
Many carbohydrates are useful binders and in carp baits these are usually bound by eggs to make pastes and boilies etc. But this particular bait is aimed at producing stimulating effects by ensuring that the bait is not sealed up like conventional boilies for example, but breaks down quickly to maximise all of its attraction fast!
This method of bait design and application has been used for decades in the UK by anglers doing their own unique thing and this method of baiting is one of the mainstays of carp fishing in the States where chumming and fishing with free baits in swims is most often banned! Due to this reason American carp and catfish anglers use forms of baiting that provides free bait while fishing but without hurling kilograms of free baits into swims and this often means packing free bait actually around the hook bait and hook. Once under water these so-called pack baits quickly break down in just a few minutes so baiting- up the immediate area around the hook baits; and this method is very effective!
So let us look more at pack baits. For example you can begin by making baits based on individual binding ingredients or mixture of cheap bulk binders. Many carbohydrate binders are insoluble ingredients that bind pack baits together but also being insoluble, they provide fast break-down times when immersed. Grits, cracked corn and things like crushed hemp and buckwheat are useful - as is rice which is also a versatile cheap ingredient.
In certain ways in nutritional terms rice can have the edge over wheat flours and forms of semolina. Just in case you cannot get a handy source of cheap rice flour, you can use other cheap carbohydrates such as polenta, maize flour, potato starch, corn starch, yellow semolina, rye flour, wholemeal flour, etc instead. The levels of the binding gluten of course will vary in each but gluten is a very interesting aspects of carp baits as it is a protein-rich substance and so provides benefits and has been used in proven carp bait recipes for decades despite it having certain limited digestion effects like untreated soya that contains digestive enzyme inhibitors.
The make-up of various carbohydrates and their starches, plus the protein contents, amino acid profiles and oil levels etc will vary too between products, so experimentation is always important if you want to refine your bait for better performance! What is described here is a very simple carp bait idea (yet it works.)
At the simplest level pack baits are basically carriers for all kinds of things, from simple and complex carbohydrates and sugars to oils, minerals and vitamins and proteins so do use your imagination to personalise your bait recipes in any way you like to always keep ahead of your fish and to improve their performance! This will take some in-depth knowledge of bait ingredients but just the addition of a low level of one additive can make all the difference to your catches!
With this popular American version of one of the most simple rice-based pack baits, all you do is mix up rice flour with a gelatine or similar type of high protein product that binds together when boiling water is added. Usually in American recipes common products like Jell-O or Kool Aid are referred to (these also contain flavours.) But you can also use other forms of jelly or other products instead. You can also add any sources, powdered or liquid flavours and other ingredients to add more attraction to your dough baits.
You simply heat up a liquid to boiling point; it might soup powders and water or tomato ketchup or some other condiment. When this mixture is boiling you slowly add it to your rice, stirring it in until all your powders is turned into a dough. Then you leave it to sit for anything from half and hour to 4 hours so the carbohydrate binds better and the ingredients get better soaked up and glued together and then it is ready to fish with.
To use this bait all you do is get a handful and bind it around your hook bait tightly so that it will not drop off when you cast. You can improve the bait binding properties and functions in many ways and even make baits break apart faster after being cast out. The formulas of various dough and pack baits for various times of the years can be very much refined; for instance for creating different binding or break-down effects. The types of gluten and starch impacts in different bread crumbs, flours etc, are the kinds of more refined secrets that many anglers have been busy refining for years!
For me one of the biggest bonuses of this great cheap well-proven fish catching method is the fact that it provides free bait right where you need it; and it is a very flexible and personally well-proven method of pulling fish to your hook baits! A really big plus is that it avoids the inevitably expensive practice of having to use water soluble polyvinyl alcohol bags and nets and string etc to bait up around your hook baits. All these are dispensed with completely when using this method - I am very pleased to say; and this is a great winter method! By Tim Richardson.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
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