Make Carp fishing Bait And Save Money And Catch Better Fish!
These days saving money on fishing is very important and anything you can do to get better results for less money is worth doing and making your own unique homemade fishing baits is a fantastic example and need take very minimal time! There are a few basics to know about making baits and once you have these you can go ahead and make very unique and successful baits economically for the rest of your life. Making your own baits will save you're a shocking amount of money and not just in the long-term; so imagine what else you could be spending your hard-earned money on instead!
For the more technically minded fisherman, carp do not get their energy needs from carbohydrates but mostly protein and also fats and oils in their natural diet. Being aquatic they are extremely well adapted to extract far more energy from protein foods than humans on land. The very basic protein requirements of carp are extremely significant in terms of making effective baits because these are composed of basic building blocks called amino acids, some of which carp essentially need to consume in order to survive.
There are around 10 basic essential amino acids that carp need although there are a few others, but let's keep things as simple as possible for now. These include: lysine, methionine, arginine, phenylalanine, valine, tryptophan, leucine, isoleucine, histidine and threonine. Carp eat foods containing these amino acids because they are essential. Using almost anything that a fish basically needs to survive can give you the edge you need to get bites although exploiting fish nutritional needs are not the only way to get bites; in fact, far from it!
It may be no surprise that both humans and carp have evolved in part due to the energy providing foods available for us to exploit in our environments. We can exploit how these foods are detected by smell and taste for example, by boosting the levels of the most highly stimulating substances within our baits. These may consist of natural food sources of soluble amino acids, flavors or even using specialist hormone preparations etc, but there are thousands to choose from!
The fuss made about protein carp baits is fair because exploiting dietary essential, particularly highly stimulatory ones such as amino acids is very significant for good results. But just because amino acids are popularly exploited by using protein ingredients does not mean you have to use protein ingredients at all in our baits, and there are very many other angles and approaches to take which are very economical indeed and even wheat, rice or corn flour based baits made with some know-how work a treat! All you need to do is manipulate and exploit any of a range of attractor and stimulator substances, many of which you can add by way of proprietary liquid dips and soaks etc.
There seems to be some snobbery in regards to protein based baits compared to using cereal or carbohydrate based baits for example based on wheat or semolina or soya flour. In fact many very economical baits can be made from these ingredients which will just keep catching carp on many fisheries for years. All you need to do to keep catching carp on many waters is to keep changing your attractors regularly as in flavours, various specialist protein extracts, and proprietary fish stimulants and so on.
Often artificially stocked fisheries contain fish which now treat anglers baits as natural food and these fish literally live on them as opposed to just natural food which may or may not be readily available. Homemade baits will catch on the easiest overstocked or richest or under-stocked waters; what do think the early bait pioneers used? Why keep buying readymade bait for 10 pounds when you can produce your own unique baits for a fraction of the cost and very little time or effort when I've found over the last 30 years that you can catch against any readymade bait using homemade baits no matter what they are based on!
Many carp fishermen get confused between the nutritional aspect of bait as opposed to the stimulatory aspect and assume that a bait absolutely needs to be totally nutritionally attractive and stimulating as a complete food in order to do the job, but this is just not true. Many perceived simple ingredients may have very surprising nutritional attraction in any key aspect whether it be vitamins, or minerals, oils or some other aspect like simulating something which carp naturally eat confidently (many flavours do this but have zero nutritional value.) It is a fact however, that amino acids rank among the most highly feeding stimulatory substances for carp and so exploiting this aspect in your baits is advantageous, but then you have endless other possibilities and combinations to choose from, to save you money and hook you those dream fish; all you need is to know a bit more about bait!
By Tim Richardson.