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Friday, December 11, 2009

Making Homemade Carp Baits Using Cheap Sausage Meat!

By Tim Richardson

Big carp and catfish have been caught on very cheap but extremely effective sausage meat baits for decades. Homemade sausage meat baits and ground baits are enormously cheaper than many shop-bought baits and expensive popular luncheon meat and Pepperoni products. Let's see how to make yourself some big fish baits that really save you money and catch big fish!

Obviously sausage meat is great being so cheap and readily available without rapidly depleting marine resources as much as many other bait ingredients so such meat baits and ground baits are more ethical too! Sausage meat is best bought fresh or fresh frozen and is extremely economical like this. Sausage meat baits are not part of modern bait fashions at the moment and can really give you a great edge over many wary big fish!

Sausage meat is very simple and easy to use and you can either mince it up or use the minced product. The nutritional value of pork sausage meat is very stimulatory to both carp and catfish and has a fair proportion of those important fish stimulators; amino acids and oils. Pork sausage meat is often made with bread crumbs and it is very simple to make a bait by simply mixing it with eggs and very cheap wheat flour for example, although other more nutritional binding flours and meals are very numerous, to help bind bait into a dough.

Making one of the cheapest protein based homemade baits is simple, fast and very easy to do:

For example, using half a pound of minced sausage meat, mix it in a bowl with about 3 to 4 large hens eggs and around 2 table spoons of ordinary cheap wheat flour (or more if required) and kneed this into a stiff pliable dough. This can be used as fishing bait immediately as paste, or you can bag it up in bags with a tie to make the bag air tight and store in the fridge or freeze it for use next session. This bait is pretty much instant on most carp and catfish waters even though various meat brands and grades may very results and although very basic and simple will produce lots of fish.

Pre-baiting with a new bait is definitely a good edge putting things far more in your favour. (This is not totally necessary with this bait though.) I got a friend to do this for me in a swim (not such a clever move,) and I never got in the swim as incidental catches by other anglers meant it was too popular as a result of the baiting; so bait less obvious swims! Even just introducing a few pounds of bait in golf ball sized pieces the day before fishing can make a big difference!

When you pre-bait fish will obviously get a smell and taste of it without getting hooked so be more confident when you do try it on the hook, so do it! You can use sausage meat baits as part of your ground baiting or with other meat baits like chopped spam, meatballs, luncheon meats if you want the extra expense; sausage meat and cheap rolled oats is fine! Scald or boil or steam your baits if needed where smaller fish prove a bother, but add some paste to your bait on your rig or on the hook to boost more soluble attraction...

As most commercial rolled baits have uniform shapes, your homemade baits in odd shapes have the advantage over more wary fish by disrupting their reference points! Boilies are just made by placing your dough baits only a handful at a time in half a pan of boiling water in a pan for a couple of minutes; this makes a resilient skin when they dry-off on conveniently placed absorbent towels or trays etc. keep your water boiling at all times by not adding too many baits at once and keep taking baits out after around 2 minutes or so.

The proteins in the eggs in the boilies coagulate more with more boiling to make your baits harder, but you might add other substances to harden or toughen your baits; such as blood powder which also adds valuable stimulatory nutritional attraction. The choice of other additives, ingredients, flavours etc is vast, but choosing these is very much a science and art! Anything you add is better based on a little investigation of what truly triggers fish feeding and what has not already hammered your water, rather than a quick trip to the local bait shop first as this can end up costly and even counter-productive to your financial goals!

Really cheap homemade sausage baits might mirror Pepperoni products and you can add herbs and spices to improve attraction and stimulates fish digestion and general metabolism which is extremely valuable thing to do! You might simply add yeast powders, or Marmite or Vegemite to improve your stimulatory nutritional profile or use various matured cheeses which are rich in stimulatory salts and bacterially predigested proteins. Save money by adding a proportion of liquidised liver instead of more expensive liquid protein amino acids supplements for instance to boost nutritional stimulation.

The choice of ingredients, additives, flavours, taste enhancers etc not only bewildering for most anglers, but often expensive. It is a giant money-saving edge when you know what you are really adding for exactly what direct or indirect purpose in stimulating fish digestion, or to enhance responses at fish receptors and the brain to induce more intensive feeding for instance. Whatever you use, be it a bioactive flavour complex, or simple monosodium glutamate or anchovy source, often keeping things cheap will provide many hidden edges over anglers commercial baits which may already have peaked as it were...

The options are limited only by your imagination; but using proven fish feeding triggering substances and metabolically stimulating substances are among the best proven substances when you look at bait components... Homemade sausage meat baits (and ground baits) for big carp and catfish are well proven against any popular modern baits (even enzyme-active ones,) and I've proven this myself (although my baits are sometimes rather more complex than here.) So give them a try and you might decide to get much deeper into making your own homemade baits; but beware - they can become addictive!

By Tim Richardson.

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Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Carp Fishing Robin Red Bait Secrets!

By Tim Richardson

Few carp anglers have never heard of the world famous carp bait additive called Robin Red which has been an enormously important bait ingredients for both homemade and readymade baits for decades. Find out more about how to exploit this wonder bait here...

Robin Red is an original formula from Haiths based in Cleethorpes UK. Included in their best-selling items are these well-known bait ingredients: Hempseed, Carpticle Mix, Multi Mix, Super Red, Prosecto Insectivorous, Robin Red, Red Factor, Nectarblend, soft Bill and Red Band. Having many years in producing leading specialist bird foods, this experience and such products and many others have been extremely productively applied to catching carp!

Anyone in the bait business will be familiar with Robin Red as has a track record that stands out a mile but of course the other products mentioned are in many ways superb in their own right and all have taken their place in the hall of carp fame today. There are other bird food products that this company and other companies sell which are also very well proven and Hinders is another company to investigate products from. In fact, many carp bait companies have refined and adapted and even blended formulations and recipes of extremely successful and new bird food products with huge success proven by their customers catches and Ccmoore is a shining example with 12 generations of animal feed and nutrition experience behind them.

So many commercial ground baits and readymade boilies and pellets contain Robin Red that it may be that using a homemade bait without it means your personal unique homemade bait is the only bait that does not contain it at your water! Using a bait with very low levels or even no Robin Red can even work in your favour as carp might well regard it as an indicator of potential danger these days on pressured carp waters. In doing further research on this product you will discover ways to incorporate known components of it into your baits and make your bait effective while avoiding using robin Red itself...

Ways to incorporate Robin Red and apply it in homemade baits, spod, method, particles, pellets and boilies mixes are legion. Just dampen your boilies using a mixture of liquid foods and Robin Red... Or try pre-soaking your pellets in any liquids you like and add Robin Red to produce super ground baits, method mixes or spod mixes for example for both winter and summer use.

So exactly what is Robin Red; after all it certainly colours up the water attractively and even stains your hands a distinctive red?! The recipe of Robin Red is shrouded in mystery, controversy and endless speculation, and perhaps all you can say for certain, is that is does not contain Carophyll Red, (but this does not exclude it containing cantaxanthin perhaps...) Robin Red certainly does contain many bioactive components and substances, including antioxidant pigments (plumage colour enhancing agents highly stimulatory to carp!)

Homemade boilies benefit even form just an ounce per pound of dry base mix of Robin Red, and even the cheapest soya and semolina mixes are boosted significantly by the highly nutritional stimulation of Robin Red. To boost your pellets, wet them with any liquid even water, and add Robin Red; the red clouding of the water around your bait will certainly improve results when fishing for sight-feeding carp too. Haiths have a mix call Super Red incorporating Robin Red, (which can even be applied in PVA products in neat dry form,) and it contains the following great ingredients:

Super Red has aniseed oil, teasel seeds, crushed Carpticle mix, crushed hempseed, Red Factor, robin Red, peanut granules and crushed tiger nuts. This combination is only one of countless others you could try in making your own boilies, pellets and ground baits and to maximise this and more and to save yourself an fortune in bait costs why not now read on...

By Tim Richardson.

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Monday, December 7, 2009

Spincast Reels "A Buyers Guide To Freshwater Fishing Gear"

By Bill Keller

Buying freshwater fishing tackle can be an intimidating experience for the beginning angler. One can get totally lost when browsing an online web store such as Bass Pro Shops, there are 10s of thousands fishing reels, fishing rods, lures, line types and fishing accessories to choose from.

Once I started reading up on the subject and found it really wasn't so bad, a little bit of education was all I needed. This series of articles will help other beginning anglers to weave this jungle to make an informed choice of fishing reel, fishing rod and even what line, bait and other accessories you need for the type of fishing you plan to do.

We will begin with the most important part in my opinion and that is the fishing reel. There are four categories of reels and each has its place in the freshwater fishing world, there is the baitcast, spinner, fly and the reel we will review today the spincast reel.

The spincast reel is a great place to start you fishing experience. It is also perfect for children or the weekender who is not interested in cast and retrieving their line all day long. It is affordable and very easy to work.

If catching bluegill, crappies, catfish and other small pond fish are what you are after then the spincast reel is definitely a good place to begin your fishing adventure. Can it be used for larger fish? Absolutely, especially with the newer and stronger lines that are coming onto the market, these are just our opinion on the most efficient use of this reel.

The Spincast reel has a covered line spool, this feature was designed to reduce the main problems of the spinner reel which was twisting and snares of the line and backlash or "bird nesting" where the line comes loose from the spool and makes a tangled mess of line (like a birds nest.)

Use of the spincast reel is simple. Just press and hold the button on the back of the reel, cast your line out while releasing the button and once your line has run out to your desired location or depth just press the button again to lock the line in place. To retrieve your catch just turn the handle until the fish is in your fishing net.

The primary drawback to spincast reel is shorter casting distances caused by the drag on the line as it rubs against the side of the reel as it leaves the opening. Also due to the limited line capacity of the spool you are limited to lighter lines, this limits the size of your hook and bait setup and ultimately the size of fish that can be successfully landed.

The Zebco 606 Spincast Reel is a good example of this type of reel, it is priced right at under $18, has a smooth and dependable action and chrome plated cover with a tough ABS housing and a built-in Hook Keeper.

The most common freshwater reel in use is the spinner reel and this will be our next article in the series which will be titled "Spinner Reels - A Buyers Guide to Freshwater Fishing Gear.

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See you on the water,
--Greg

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Cheap Homemade Carp Fishing Baits for Big Fish!

By Tim Richardson

The best thing about making homemade baits is the control and incredible satisfaction they provide in terms of control over your costs and catches and actual ingredients and so on you might choose to exploit to best effect! Most anglers discuss baits in terms of their favourite flavours or brands with very little focus upon exactly how such baits really impact upon fish senses which is a great shame (this aspect is a massive advantage lost on the majority of average anglers!) So if you want to know more about the truth about the real power of homemade baits and need help in designing and making them fast " just read on!

Of course it is no surprise that homemade bait-making is making a big come-back; the advantages these can very much out-weigh the financial costs and over-inflated expectations associated with constantly buying popular readymade baits which simply do not produce outstanding catches for the average angler. Regularly on a range of different waters I and my friends have fished with economical homemade baits against anglers using all the well-known brands of readymade baits - and we have held our own or out-fished the more expensive baits very many times. Our catches along with those of other homemade bait-makers over the past 30 plus years prove that they are potent and economical edges in carp fishing; in fact the bait company bosses of today mostly started-out at their own kitchen tables or in their own garden sheds!

To date I have caught forty pound plus carp from only 3 UK waters and my tally for fish of this weight is currently twenty; the fact is that if your goal is to catch big carp you must be fishing waters containing them! This is often limited by your location, willingness to fish very busy circuit waters and time, personal connections and disposable finances etc. It is very easy to rack up high numbers of big fish if you happen to be a full-time angler, an angler local to most of the big fish waters in the country such as the Colne Valley, or have the funds and time to basically fish when and where you want on the many big-fish commercial waters and seriously establish baits on them.

Like most carp anglers, I do not have the luxury of any of the advantages of the full-time sponsored angler or retired builders for example with loads of money and time to sit on big fish waters and rave about what great anglers they are (big deal!)! I have to fish against bait and tackle-sponsored anglers wherever I fish just the same as most of my fellow anglers, but one thing I have is desire, focus and willingness to constantly learn and refine my thinking which is so vital in fishing. Being able to make an effective homemade carp bait is a very well proven leveller to those advantages others may have in terms of money, time, personal contacts and up to date fishing intelligence and so on.

Although beginning in carp bait making is like starting junior school again - when you are really competing against bait companies (and individuals) who are exploiting professionals with PhDs in food science, fish nutrition, electrochemistry and so on, you can be certain your efforts will pay-off, big-time! Although certain anglers will rave-on about a balanced nutritional value bait being as fully digestible as possible and sorted down the third limiting amino acid level, you may noticed that over 90 percent of all carp caught in the world are not caught on such baits; this is because only a handful of well-connected bait designers can actually produced baits to this effect! The nutritional, metabolic and health impacts of a fast and efficiently digested bait cannot be under-estimated however; it figures that the more energy a fish has available after eating baits and the more a bait offers in potential rewards that carp detect in them, the more chances you have of fish actually mouthing baits and consuming them repeatedly " with more chances of captures than very many competing baits perhaps with much less to offer (view my unique ebooks on bait design and making at Baitbigfish for more!)

The average carp angler has been conditioned by appearances to associate carp baits with flavours; many are still on the basic level of asking other anglers what flavour they are using and this is a great shame as these anglers are missing out on tremendously better catches if they knew more! The real key to long-term success for average-skilled anglers is the use of nutritionally stimulating baits seriously packed with optimum levels of nutritional substances carp need in order to survive. Many versions of food style baits are being offered commercially by countless companies, but the large majority of these baits are in effect wasted by the fish due to being indigestible to varying degrees " but make no mistake, they still catch carp on many carp waters.

Many carp anglers are champions of highly flavoured baits over-dosed with highly concentrated flavours on many kinds of bases both natural synthetic, nature-identical and others where the lines are blurred completely (See my flavours secrets ebook for more!) Instant highly flavoured flavours do work very effectively but do not give you competitive advantages over excellent food baits if you are an average-skilled angler; in the hands of a very talented angler they can be extremely effective and I can name many of the key components of the very best flavours but that is for those wanting my ebooks! Chilli seems very popular today although it has been around as a bait additive for decades; this just demonstrates the number of outstanding additves and substances that are simply not being fully exploited that can leverage to maximum effect - the most potent of the natural chilli bioactive substances is named along with a unique supplier in my ebooks!

When you understand and appreciate much more deeply the relationship between substances carp depend upon for their very survival and how these impact upon their senses, health, digestion and metabolism etc you will be able to boost and top readymade baits like crazy be supremely confident in making and using your own specially powerful boilies, pellets, particle and fake baits and be able to leverage substances in ground baits to pull even more fish to your hook baits and get them feeding far more intensively and competitively! Everyone is on a learning curve in regards to baits but I can save you decades of researching and practical experience in choosing ingredients, formulating recipes, making baits and applying baits for big fish success and I am biased only in regards what works - as I am deliberately not affiliated with any individual bait company whatsoever despite having contacts and friends at many of the leading ones. You can even boost the simplest of baits far more than you might have ever read in the vast majority of carp magazines " I have written my ebooks to help you achieve your big fish dreams just as I have; so find out more at my site Baitbigfish!

By Tim Richardson.

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