How to become a bait expert this spring

1 Out of the bag and into the pan

Sometimes you get caught out with pop-ups that need to be more buoyant, so here is a simple way of doing that. All you need is your frying pan and a sprinkling of cooking oil. Get the pan really hot and then add a few of your baits, at the same time swirling them around. They don’t want to burn and they will be just right when they start to clan.”

2 Top dressing

There are occasions when top-dressing your free offerings will provide a distinct edge and the best way to do this is to use natural additives rather than neat concentrated flavours.

Boiled food Take boilies coated in a combination of liquidized marmite and cod liver oil (CLO), it’s devastating as you are providing the carp with the vitamin B complex which they need but is quickly destroyed in boilies. Add the marmite to the CLO and liquidize until thin enough to cover the bait.

Carp pellers Pellets go from being bland to stunning with a good coating of Nashbait Crustacean Extract and being PVA-friendly it makes it ideal for bag and Stick work. Another one that is awesome is Monster Crab flavour added to either CLO or rapeseed oil; this stinks but the carp love it.

Spicy particles Add some hot spices to your particles; chillies really come in to their own and it seems the hotter you go the more the carp like them! An odd one this, but soak pellets in hot water until they are mushy, then add to your particles. It’s messy but lovely for carp fodder and it really does work well.

3 Making your tigers roar!

Most anglers think of stand-out alone hookbaits as being bright fluoro pop-ups, lures that are visually attractive which normally go hand-in-hand with elevated flavour levels. These stand-out alone baits have their place but why just highlight colour, why not be different and use the following?

Making bait soaks is interesting and fun and it means you can draw the fishes’ attention to a normally coloured hookbait without it being a blatant colour change. The other great thing is that this significant attractor pull can be made to your own personalised recipe, proving a great edge at times.

Take tigers, a great bait but why not make your tigers really roar making the hookbait that little bit more attractive than the free offerings? Simply take a small empty glug pot and fill it with about 50mls of Hinders Betalin or Nashbait’s Nectar. To this sweet solution add a selection of tigers, ensuring they are fully coated. These can now be left and used as needs be, and don’t worry, they will never go off as these solutions are natural preservatives.

Another nice little soak is for your plastic fake baits, which also means you can have a bi-functional flavour release from the hookbait if it is tipped with plastic. There are loads of things that work such as the aforementioned Talin-based products, but one of the best is Solar’s E12. On fake baits this is simply awesome!

4 Mixing liquids

We are often restricted to offering attraction in only one part of the water column, whereas what we want to do is have a stream of attraction rising and descending throughout the water column, dependent on depth.

Utilising various properties in liquid attractants we can achieve this with some degree of ease. What we need is something heavy and something light, mixed together so the light oil globules will carry the heavier liquid up into the water column, partially dispersing in the process. One of the simplest concoctions is cod liver or salmon oil and L030 at a ratio of 60/40.

5 Know your spices

Spices are nothing new in carp fishing but they are highly attractive either in a boiled bait or added to particles, spod mixes and pellets. Always remember to wash your hands after use!

Black pepper This is a medicinal spice and one which carp love with its inherent spicy back note and it makes a really good additive to boilies and pastes. Blend with rock salt fifty, fifty and add to your particles to give a different twist.

Capsicum This is hot and very spicy, so watch the eyes. A great additive to particles or in paste baits with low levels of MSG or glutamic acid. You can make a nice boilie dip by blending the capsicum in with chilli infused oil.

Cummin A smooth spicy top note that is a really good additive in boilies, particularly spiced fish based mixes. Use it in conjunction with coriander oil to give a balanced aroma to any bait, another one that benefits from the addition of MSG.

Ginger A really overlooked spice with a lovely underlying citrus note that can be added to most baits and yet works really well with citrus flavours or essential oils to give a nice taste profile. Ginger is a big fish attractant!

Onion powder If you haven’t used this then you don’t know what you have been missing, particularly when used in combination with rock salt or vegetable bouillon. This is an out-and-out boilie additive, which works particularly well in fish bases.

Paprika This is one of the coating products of roasted peanuts, so that gives you a clue! A long-standing additive which is good in birdfood base mixes or can be overcoated on luncheon meat and deep fried in a chip fryer and then recoated whilst drying.

6 Floater cake

People tend to overlook floater cakes in favour of floating biscuits or pellets and yet they can be a devastating alternative, particularly if the aforementioned have been hammered. The great thing is that they can be cut in to various shapes and sizes. They also come into their own for stalking or where you can just poke a rod through a small gap in bankside vegetation.

Winning recipe
1 4oz Hi-Nu Val and a tsp of baking powder. Add dye if you want.
2 Beat three large eggs and add your flavours.
3 Add the dry mix to the eggs, mixing well until you have a smooth runny mix.
4 Thoroughly grease a 7/8” square cake tin and line with greaseproof paper.
5 Fill the cake tin and spread.
6 Preheat an oven to 300şC (Mk4).
7 Cook the cake for 40 to 60 minutes depending on how tough you want it.
8 Remove and allow to cool prior to cutting into pieces which can be frozen.

7 Know your warm water essentials (oil)

Essential oils are in their own right foods; carriers of natural messages which stimulate carp with their strong chemical stimuli, hence why they are often only used at very low inclusion levels in a boiled bait. They are invariably very good long-term attractors.

Asafoetida Known as Devil’s Dung, the opaque oil is very strong making it good in summer baits. A big fish oil that does need a little pre-baiting. This is not for the faint-hearted, though!

Geranium oil A beautiful floral note, old skool oil that has been forgotten with time and yet is brilliant. Very instant and can be used at levels of 1 to 1.5 mls per pound.

Black pepper oil This is a big fish oil that can be used all year round at inclusion rates of 16 to 24 drops per pound of bait. Being partially water miscible it is a perfect essential oil.

Ginger oil A stunning oil with a top note of spice and an underlying citrus note. This is a better summer oil due to the large droplet size. 6 to 12 drops per pound.

Mandarin oil Is extracted from the peel and smells of juicy oranges. Very instant, although long lasting. This works well added to molasses and natural sweeteners. 6 to 24 drops per pound.

8 Critical particles

Forget boilies, everyone’s using those. Try these ‘alternative’ particle hookbaits to give yourself a serious edge in the hot months

Almonds You want the floaters, so test in water. No need to cook, use straight from the bag and they can also be flavoured. A nice shape for fishing over debris, balance out with a small
shot. Excellent over carpet particles.

Brazils Probably the best. They can be made visual by peeling some of the skin. Soak in honey, mandarin oil and molasses for something special and this can be fished over ANYTHING! Soak for twenty-four and then boil for forty-five minutes for the perfect critical.

Dry roasted peanuts A great nut that is instant and which can be used straight from the bag, unless you eat them all! If you want to jazz them up then add a couple of drops of paprika oil to a small pack! A firm favourite of CARPology contributor, Jon McAllister…

Hazelnuts Another floater straight from the bag or soak and then boil for twenty minutes to get near criticals. Soak them in Sense Appeal and honey for additional attraction. A nice sized nut for fishing over carpet feed, including pellets.

9 Spod upgrades

Have you ever thought of bulking out your spod mix to make it go further and at the same time be economical and attractive? Well why not try some of these additives, if you have the stomach for them that is?! One of the best natural additives to use is pigeon droppings, full of natural aminos and clouding agents! If you are fishing near cows, try adding a few cowpats, the crusty topped ones that are older will have plenty of bugs for attraction. Another good bulking agent is molehills, particularly loamy ones, excellent visual content and cheap.

10 Woking up your carp food

We often take carp bait straight out of the bag and onto the hook/Hair, so why not be different? And there are loads of things you can do on the bank. Take luncheon meat or pepperoni for instance, cut into the desired sizes and then coat in either paprika or a pre-packed herb coating. Oil up a small wok and heat. When the oil is sizzling add the meats and keep moving until they are nicely browned.

A meat Stick/bag mix: Take some softer meat like corned beef and luncheon meat and mash it up until it is really soft. This can then be added with pellet and groundbait to PVA bags and Stick mixes. It’s packed with fats, salt and proteins - all of which the carp love!

11 Harden up for the stick

The easiest and quickest way of making your freebies hard enough for using in a throwing stick is by coating them in rock salt and L030 the previous day. Twenty-four-hours later and they will be ‘stickable’, sending out an attractive scent into the water column as an extra bonus.