How to make your own boilies

All the Dedicated Base Mixes at Mainline such as Activ-8, Cell and Hybrid are designed for all-year-round use, and here we show you how to use them to make your own boilies.

The options to customise these self-rolled baits is only limited by your imagination and the ability of you and perhaps a few (privileged) mates to confidently test any mix or recipe.

So to give you a head start with the confidence levels we’ve kept to a proven combination…

The recipe

Production time
Approximately 120 minutes.

Ingredients
2ml Hydra Sweet, 5ml Strawberry Ade, 5ml Milky Toffee, 5ml Sweet Plumb, 15ml Multi Stim, 5 tbsp Protein Plus Base Mix, 10 tbsp Essential Opal Base Mix, 10 tbsp 50/50 High Leakage Base Mix and four medium eggs.

Equipment
Mixing bowl, measuring syringe or pipette, fork, spoon(s), saucepan or strainer, plastic bag, bait gun, rolling table(s) and towel or air-dry tray.

Ready-to-use in…
Straightaway or air-dry for 24hrs before storing frozen.

Ingredients

Let’s start with the base mixes and as you can see, we’ve used three different base mixes mixed together: Protein Plus, which adds a creamy note and a little easily digested nutritional value; Essential Opal that contains birdfoods and a truly awesome fruit powder palatant and 50/50 High Leakage, which as the name suggests, aids flavour leakage and therefore attraction.

The flavours are Sweet Plum and Milky Toffee: two flavours that you just know will work together and a good tip when you are combining flavours is to actually smell them together. Remove the lids and hover your nose above the bottle – you’ll get an idea of the resulting aroma, but you’ll also get an idea of which flavour is the strongest and most potent so you can set inclusion levels accordingly.

You’ll also notice we’ve included a classic flavour in Strawberry, utilising the Strawberry Ade that will help palatise the bait, as will the Hydra Sweet flavour. And it’s all completed with the feed inducing attractor of the Multi-Stim to provide the bait with a rounded and balanced flavour taste.

If you’re unsure of what flavours to choose, simply keep to the recommended recipes on the reverse of the base mix packaging.

How to make your own boilies

STEP 1 Begin by mixing together the base mix quantities (as per the recipe) by adding them to a plastic bag.

STEP 2 Blow air into the bag and twist the top while inflated. Now shake the bag to evenly mix the base mixes.

STEP 3 The next step is to crack four medium eggs into the mixing bowl followed by the flavours listed in the recipe.

STEP 4 Gently whisk the liquids together so that the flavours will be distributed evenly throughout the baits.

STEP 5 Start to add the base mix a little at a time to build-up the paste – firstly with a fork and then by hand.

STEP 6 You’re looking to create an even paste texture that’s not too sticky or wet and not too dry and crumbly.

STEP 7 Now roll the ball of paste into a large sausage as seen here and simply lower into the bait-making gun.

STEP 8 Gun a sausage (you can roll two or three at once with practise) across your chosen size of rolling table.

STEP 9 Add the top section of the table and slide forwards and backwards on the lower part to roll the baits.

STEP 10 Once rolled the baits need to be boiled to create the boilie skin – boil vigorously until the baits float.

STEP 11 With the boiling process complete, transfer the baits to a dry towel and air-dry tray to dry and harden.

STEP 12 The finished boilies contain the perfect blend of ingredients and flavours needed for winter success!

Top tip

Give your pop-ups a fruit boost!

The fruit palatant used with the Essential Opal Base Mix is an excellent powder attractor that is a superb addition to your pop-ups. Here’s how to get the most from it…

1 Start by sieving a good handful of the Essential Opal Base Mix into a bowl like this.

2 This removes the bigger items and leaves the finer powders including the fruit Palatant.

3 Use one tsp per one egg Polaris Mix to give your pop-ups a longer lasting fruit flavour.