Fishing bait from fishing shops can really make going carp fishing an expensive passion! Many anglers are now so conditioned to using readymade baits that they have never seriously considered the huge advantages of making very unique baits for themselves, but they will catch as many if not higher numbers of fish than commercial baits. The fact that homemade bait will cost you a fraction of the cost of readymade baits and over the days and weeks shocking savings can be achieved with no less fish (in fact quite the opposite!)

Every time I have used a homemade bait that is different to the popular baits on a water, big fish have appeared and this is one of those definite points about carp which you can exploit using homemade baits. Fish learn by association and will find your new baits much harder to resist than popular readymades that already have been exploited. This difference is often the factor that decides if you get a run of big fish, or just average results, or series of memorable personal best fish sessions or lots of blanks!

Now I'm not saying that you will produce a wonder bait which fish simply jump straight into your net and beg for! Even with the very best baits, all the usual skills of fish location, bait application and skilfully playing your big fish are still required. But on your own homemade baits, the rewards and joys of catching your personal life time best fish on your personal secret bait formula is just incredible. This is why it is so important to exploit the massive fish catching factor of making your baits very unique.

This is a point lost on most readymade bait users! The great edge of bait is being different to ones fish wary of already as a result of previous hooking and captures on it. So make your baits as unique as possible as frequently as you think your results indicate you may need to.

On the point about fish learning by association, you will also find with readymade baits that they frequently have to be changed to new ones because they get over-used and fish associate them with danger of hooking or capture. Whereas with homemade bait this rarely happens because you alone are fishing your bait so it cannot get over-used so intensively as readymades. This means your baits will remain effective very likely indefinitely which means you can focus on your fishing and have complete confidence that your bait is always working to best effect and has not blown! Some baits get based around flavor attraction on a carbohydrate ingredient base mix. Many others utilise to a greater extent a food bait approach using nutrition as the fish feeding triggering mechanism.

I could not believe how easy and simple it was for me to make baits that hooked big fish straight away literally while still hot, even using the most basic of ingredients. Homemade baits can be just amazingly instant and fill you will so much confidence. I do not even bother to make baits that have a round or barrel shape or an even skin at all and I most often do not even boil them to make them resilient boilies either. This is because your greatest edge with bait is their difference. Therefore if you bait feels different, has a different shape, colour, texture, buoyancy, density, firmness or softness or permeability or solubility for example, then it is far more likely to out-fish readymades with ease! That is why making homemade baits is so easy.

As I said, round baits are not needed. Things have changed drastically in the last 3 decades. There are many methods which introduce free baits well over 100 metres accurately, including ground bait slings, spods and PVA bags and nets etc. So you do not need to ever roll your baits. To make a starter effective bait you need only use one ingredient or a couple like soya flour and semolina, add enough eggs to bind them together, and make a dough to use as bait (and every bait can be different!) These might be used as paste or cut or divided into many different shaped and sized bits which you might scald with water or boil for a few seconds to harden them up to make them more resilient.

Making homemade bait is as hard as finding a bowl a mixing spoon or knife, a few eggs and some flours or other dry ingredients. Many flours about the house will bind to form a bait, from semolina and soya to maize and corn flour, and dried rice flour. For example, crack 5 or 6 eggs into a bowl and whisk them adding any flavouring or liquids additives you might choose, like ketchup or a flavoring from the baking aisle of your local store. Take 8 ounces of semolina and the same of soya flour and slowly add to your eggs until a dough the feel of putty is made. It is very easy and quick and with practice you can do this at lightening speed!

You can use your dough as paste bait immediately or if you are making bait for later use, then form some into individual baits and air dry them or steam or boil them, dry them overnight on suitable paper or towels and bag and store them in polythene bags. Freezing seals in bait freshness which is very important. If you remember to write which ingredients and levels each bait was made with, then you will never forget how to make them again! Normally it takes 6 large hen eggs to produce about 2 pounds of finished bait dough to use, or produce paste or air dried baits, steamed or boiled baits etc. Some baits will break down faster or slower than other mixtures depending on the number of eggs you use; the more soluble the ingredients and the more of these used, the faster your bait will dissolve in water.

Considering you can easily make very economical baits even with better food nutrition value than just carbohydrate baits like the one described, it is still shocking to work out just how much money you can save. You can produce very effective big fish baits for 2 or 3 pounds or about 6 dollars per kilogram compared to shop prices of 5 or 6 times this cost. The total cost of 10 kilograms of readymade baits can be 80 to 120 pounds, while your homemade bait can cost you just 20 or 30 pounds, saving you 60 to 100 pounds for every 10 kilograms of readymade bait!

homemade baits can look very unusual to a readymade bait user, but then when a fish encounters it is very much more likely to take it into its mouth, than a more conventional bait it sees 24 hours a day with a hook in it. This is why so many homemade baits catch so many big fish compared to very many readymade baits as the biggest fish have least reason to reject them out of conditioned fear through being hooked previously. Homemade bait makers might appear to get lots of beginners luck with big fish and this is no coincidence; unusually consistent big fish catches are very easily possible with a little more knowledge of bait making!

By Tim Richardson.