There are many mixed opinions when it comes to what we believe is the ultimate bait. In this blog I will try to offer you my thoughts and explain just how I came to the conclusions that I ended up with, without trying to flog you endless products that you probably already have kicking around your shed!
Growing up in the Bicester/Aylesbury area I was in the very fortuitous position of being nestled alongside some of the greatest carp anglers and bait boffins around. Just a few miles away from my home stood a famous tackle shop called J&K tackle which was owned by the legendary angler Joe Taylor.
Joe has now been a friend of mine for nearly 40 years and it is safe to say that I was probably a little bit star struck as a five year old boy every time I entered that little tiny tackle store in Bicester. Joe was involved in that spell of pioneering the French super waters back then but his tackle store was becoming blessed with a whole new range of flavours and ingredients that were exploding onto the scene and it was these wonder potions that caught my attention.
Joe rubbed shoulders with the angling giants. Rod Hutchinson and Kevin Nash were two names that everyone knew and Kevin Maddocks was another! With links to all of these big guns it was no surprise to see their ranges of bait accessories on sale in his shop and as a child I spent hours sniffing all of them whilst trying to work out what any of them actually did!!
The timing was perfect as we were slowly moving out of the secretive 70s and into the open 80s and 90s where top anglers wrote about bait theories or even how to produce your own baits. Like many lads back then we just purchased Richworth shelf life’s if we could afford them or even Joes own branded baits which I’m sure were rolled by Nash.
The catalyst for my own interest came when we purchased one particular boilie in the early 90s under the J&K banner which transformed our fishing completely. A subtle looking bag with brown spicy smelling boilies could have been overlooked easily but I emptied my pocket money onto the counter and took a 5kg bag of fishmeal baits home ready for weekend.
That 5kg bag became the holy grail for me! Cast it anywhere and catch a carp… simple as that!
It was an early indicator that not all boilies are equal and it is a principle I stand by to this day.
We were in our early teens when we started tinkering with very basic ingredients. A 50/50 mix to start which was combined with simple flavour combos and then moving up to bird food mixes which were a pain to roll but certainly caught a few carp. Moving on, myself and my fishing partner Rich took over his mum’s garage as we updated our rolling equipment in an attempt to produce some larger batches which by now had become Nashy’s bulk fish mix, sting or even Mainline grange.
Producing your own baits was addictive and the thought of making a boilie which nobody else could produce always left me feeling that I had an advantage. Much of our time was wasted and we churned out some awful crap that was certainly no better than a standard shelf life boilie but the rewards were there for those who persevered.
I remember rolling a fish mix with a lovely peach Melba flavour and a blend of liquids made from Minamino and fish oil which was very productive for a while but Richard branched out to a pre made Grange base mix and some new additives which blew everything else out of the water so I ditched my banker recipe for a season.
Changing Times
Life changes and certain products disappear which left us with a quandary on what to make next but the decision was made for us when big brands started producing better baits at affordable prices and that meant we no longer had to waste our evenings rolling bait and microwaving pop ups. We could do more interesting stuff like shooting or go to the pub!!
For decades I never made any bait apart from some hookbaits or a few test batches for my own entertainment.
Fast forward to the year 2000 and my fishing was becoming more serious again. I had used Nashbait, Essential Baits and had a deal running with Richworth after Keith Moors put me onto the new range of baits they were producing. Some of their baits were brilliant, and I was sad to see those baits slide off the scale as the brand lost its place in the market.
Eventually I ended up working for a small Oxfordshire company who sold baits made by other brands but Peter the owner was slowly becoming concerned with the products he was being given. I won’t go into what happened as it’s old news but the one thing that came out of my time there is how we as a team, turned around a company and showed that if you produce quality baits from good nutritious basemixes then you can pave a path in a very competitive field. They still produce high quality baits to this day and it is only fair to praise them for doing things properly at a time when many cut every corner possible.
So Handcraft Baits was formed in the winter of 2021 but it had been on my mind for about a decade or so. My only regret is that I didn’t take the plunge sooner.
I now have the chance to make things the way I think they should be done and try to reverse how I see the industry today compared to when we produced the baits for ourselves back in the day.
Read on to see how we make bait at Handcraft:
Old fashioned values with modern edges!
You either believe in the HNV theory or you don’t and I personally think that the only way to make a boilie is to provide the carp with a nutritious meal that offers the fish salts, minerals, vitamins as well as amino acids and attractors. Sounds easy doesn’t it? To be completely honest it certainly is not rocket science but more of a logical choice of ingredients that all play a part in a bigger picture.
One of my main points to remember is that you should only use an ingredient that serves a purpose. For example, use a milk protein that offers higher protein and lower fat content compared to a calf milk which may smell nice but offer very little in the way of nutrition or amino acids. Fishmeals have a always been my personal favourite and I still smile when I hear things like “fishmeals do not work in winter”. I can assure you that fishmeals do work in the cold but I think that you need to have a fine balance of other ingredients to improve the solubility and digestion of a bait once the water temp gets below 10 degrees Celsius.
Watching the carp...
I have spent decades watching winter carp up close and feeding them all manner of baits to see what they can and cannot digest and I have come to a few simple conclusions.
A carp that has been well fed in a rich environment throughout the the spring, summer and autumn can be a tricky beast to tempt in the true depths of winter. The build up of fatty reserves mean they can go long periods without food if they need to but luckily enough for us anglers, they rarely turn their nose up at a free lunch.
On the lakes that are very well stocked, the carp are always on the hunt for food which again makes our life easier. A winter boilie must be carefully thought out and ideally a fine blend of milks to bird food to fishmeal to attractors.
A pure out and out fishmeal may well be too high in fats or oils to be consumed in huge quantities hence why some of the most established bait companies offer a tweaked version for the colder months. I’m sure that one of our baits is a game changer in summer but may be to high in fishmeal content to be a good winter prospect.
Nutriplex
Nutriplex is my first choice in winter. It is the perfect formula of things that carp like but can be easily digested if you get the baiting strategy right. It contains two fish meals, Haiths CLO, 90 mesh casein, blood plasma, yeast, kelp, minamino and a low level attractor package. The bait softens well in cold water and I tested that bait for an entire winter to see how they reacted to it.
Hand on heart I could get those carp to drop down and feed on that boilie every single day of the year and I even tried giving them bigger quantities to assess how they reacted the following few days as you often hear that it can bung fish up or make them uncomfortable.
That bait certainly did nothing of the sort and it is plain to see the results I have had in the last 6 winters using that one boilie in one form or another. There is something about Minamino that carp are attracted to and it is in Nutriplex despite the fact that it is now the most expensive liquid in bait world!
Nut Baits
Nut baits are very popular but I have yet to see one out perform fishmeals when the two are applied side by side throughout a 12 month cycle. Nut products do not contain the protein, the amino acids or the salts that fishmeals offer and lets be honest here, if carp were left alone without our intervention would they rather eat fry, bugs, daphnia, crayfish or wait for a peanut to fall in… they love eating their own fry or the fry of any other fish present. My own carp ate the entire population of sticklebacks in one summer and grew five pounds in the process!
Feed them nuts and they don’t grow at all!! Nut baits are improving but I still think the best ones are the ones that contain good milks, bird foods and real human grade nuts. It is very easy to make poor nut baits and I see so many now that are just soy, semo, bread, tigernut flour and a cheap calf milk combined with high levels of human friendly flavours!
Many have no nuts in them at all!!!
I designed our nut bait: Tricknut around a really nice peanut protein that I was shown by a friend from another bait company and it is probably the best nut additive I have seen. Once again a human grade product.
Flavours... oh this drives me mad
You will have been told that a certain flavour from so and so will turn you into the next carp angling hero and that carp will swim from 20 acres away to get to your boilie now that it contains the new and improved Jaffa oil from the carpathian mountain range which is hand picked by a virgin goddess!!! The truth is they are generally all very similar.
I tested a bait on a fish farm several years back and the feeding response to that bait was impressive from day one. I kept the basemix and liquid foods identical, but kept adjusting the flavours and the levels from very high to none at all, without any difference to the response what so ever. I’m not saying flavours are all the same or that they are all even as there are clearly some liquid combos that stand out among the vast range available.
By sheer fluke I have noticed that there are certain flavours that possess a unique quality to destroy the binders in our hookbaits much to the annoyance of my partner Pidge!
It isn’t difficult to work out the PH of these or the make up of the base liquids they are formulated on and perhaps this is the thing that the carp home in on. I’m pretty sure a carp will not swim past a strawberry pop up to get to a mango one!! There is one combo I rate highly and it dissolves a plastic spoon if you stir it!
The key factor I look for in a flavour now is one that survives being boiled, as well as being readily available and I hate to say it, but one that anglers can associate to. I don’t think a flavour alone will change your season but a rich attractive boilie that is carefully applied certainly will.
The problem I see today is that you the consumer are bombarded with so many new baits, false hopes, crazy deals and new super baits that it must be very hard to make a decision in which one will be the best thing to have in your armoury for the coming season.
My advice is do not shop by price. If it is a cheap crazy deal for 3 quid a kilo I can pretty much guarantee the bait will not have the fine products that are proven to be beneficial in a good boilie. If the bait is like a dry rock hard bullet then that would be a worry to me having seen a few of those baits refused or regurgitated on several occasions.
Ask questions, go and take a look round the company’s warehouse if possible and find anglers that use it for honest feedback. I don’t have all the answers yet and I am certainly not a scientist or a bait boffin compared to others but I am open and honest about my findings plus I doubt there are many who have spent as many hours as me staring into a lake watching a carps reaction to ingredients.
Tight lines
Gav
