Totally agree Jon - very enlightening - great posts Ian.
Anyway, being a bit thick, like what I is, what is HNV?
What is truly nutritional for a barbels well-being - betaine, yeast, milk/vegetable proteins / seeds / meat, pellets, maggots ?
And what do they find easily digestible and why ?
Too many questions, I know - just trying to understand the nutrition/food bits and why they are good for fish that would naturally feed on insects/larvae etc.
I used to use JB base mixes/flavours etc. but more recently have made my own basic semolina/rice/soya (much cheaper) mixes - nutritional for fish? - I really don't know.
Then looking at the CC Moore site, with so many ingredients, I'm thinking perhaps I should be buying a more refined base mix.
Can be confusing - perhaps a massive lump of Spam might be better !
Ok back now ! I thought you'd have had loads of answers by now Mark !
HNV... i guess you know this, it stands for High Nutritional Value, the term can be applied to any high nutritional food, such as the Protein drinks used by body builders and sportsmen.
Talking HNV in bait, what constitutes an HNV mix is a high protein content, by most anglers or bait makers, where that border line starts is a matter of opinion, as fish baits have a broad range of nutrition from as low as 30% to as high as 90+% i suppose in theory you could say it starts at a point which exceeds the nutrition available in a fishes natural food, which is usually between 45% - 55%, most proprietry bait makers i would assume regard it as starting at levels, 10 or 20 % above what is available in the average commercial bait, which i would guess is between 50% - 70%, and so this is where the matter of opinion comes in, but most i guess would say about 80% + if you insisted on a percentage figure.
Personally i would regard it as low as 70% this being a fair bit higher than what they could obtain naturally.
Making a mix with a minimum protein content of 70% is about where you need to start thinking carefully about ingredients in the mix in order to achieve that level, in that things like binders which generally need to be included to make a bait roll properly can sometimes have a fairly low protein content, which will pull the protein content of the Bulk down considerably.
So if choosing a low protein binder, it would be neccesary to consider a bulk ingredient that doesn't need a lot of binding or consider the inclusion of a very high protein soluble if the bulk options are not what you want.
Are you starting to see the complexities of HNV's or formulating them ?
So in a nutshell mark simplifying all that, it just means a mix of food with a much higher protein content than your average bait available on the market, or custom made at home for that matter, generally it will cost you more, but it's also true you can produce them at home, cheaper than you could buy a bag of readymades from the shop. ( if you know what you're doing
)
What is truly nutritional for a barbels well-being - betaine, yeast, milk/vegetable proteins / seeds / meat, pellets, maggots ?
The ingredients you give Mark are really irrelavant, all food is organic in origin i.e it came from - or is at the time of eating alive, whether this be plant or animal. very broadly speaking they are all made up from the same types of compounds, being Proteins Fats and Carbohydrates, there are some quite major differences between Plant foods, and animal foods (dead or alive), and processed foods of both, where other compounds are found in one and not the other, and in processed foods some which find their way in during the processing of the food.
But broadly speaking they contain in varying amounts similar compounds which are broken down, by a fishes digestion system into a soup of nutrition.
However, It gets more complicated than that !! because all animals require essential nutrients in the form of amino acids, which vary according to the structure of the protein, now here's where i start to get out of my depth !!
I've never delved greatly into the subject this far to any degree, but i'll tell you what i know, you can find out more if you've got the inclination to go there !!!
Fish require 11 specific amino acids as an essential part of their diet, don't ask me to list them i've seen them listed, and should know them, but i forget most of them, i reckon i could name four of the top of my head !
Anyway to my knowledge there is no single source of food which can deliver all these essential aminos to a fish, so much like any creature it needs a varied diet in order to maintain optimum health and well being.
So if you wished to provide the fish with a food which provided it with all it's nutritional requirements, you would need to consult a fish biologist, and preferably one who was knowledgable in Barbel physiology to answer that question properly !
But i reckon provided you included a fairly broad range of ingredients, say fishmeal, meat, and vegatable matter, you'd likely tick most of the boxes.
This was discussed in a thread a while back when pretty much the same subject was being discussed, i remember saying that we shouldn't lose sight of what we are trying to achieve with a bait, that in my opinion - is that essentialy feeding them is by the by, it's not ultimatley what i'm trying to achieve, if i wanted to do that i'd take up Koi rearing !!
The purpose of a bait is to initially attract them to your hook, and then give them the desire to swallow it ! that at least in some situations it means feeding them to aquaint them with the bait, and give them confidence to eat it in this pressured angling day and age is as i say in my opinion just a neccesary distraction, to achieve my goal, but with the specific intentions i have in mind of singleing out the biggest in the vicinity, means giving them enough to want more, but too little to ever satisfy them.
This to my mind is the use for which HNV is particularly suited for, but there must initialy be that period where you must give the fish time to recognise it's got a good thing on offer, especially with so little available to it, that recognition comes from the protein content that i'm certain of, it's no coincidence i believe that because fish cannot store protein, in the way they can fat, yet being vital to it's well being, must therefore eat regular amounts, if to excess then all to the good for it's metabolism, as what is not absorbed by the time a mass of food has passed through it's gut will be excreted, but will ensure that protein delivered to it vital functions are maintained at optimum levels, and it's my theory that because of that evolution has given fish an ability to somehow detect protein within a food source, maybe thats only after eating it i'm not sure, but i'm convinced they get a feel good factor from eating it.
What do they find easily digestible, and why ?
Well again i'm out of my depth, the what is fairly easy the why - well again you'll need to speak to that fish biologist geezer !
Again i tell you what i know
Without going into specific ingredients.....
All soluble bait ingredients regardless of their protein content are generally - but not always i think - easier to digest than non soluble, - generally because there are a few non solubles which are very digestible in their own right.
The Solubles because within a fishes gut there is a large water content, which once a food has been crushed by the the Phyrangeal teeth, allows water to attack the food and soften it, this is accelerated by the water coming into contact with the soluble portions of the bait, it's as simple as that, the quicker any food is reduced to mush, the sooner proper digestion can begin.
The digestibilty of other non soluble ingredients, and in fact the further digestion of even the solubles, is down to the cell structures of the food itself, basicaly what divides one cell from another - this is the purpose of digestive enzymes, of which in Barbel and other Cyprinids there are two types Trypsin, and Chymotrypsin, one specifically i think attacks the cell division, one attacks the cell walls, and thereby release the amino acids contained inside, don't ask me which is which, i can't remember, and i'm not 100% sure i have all of that correct, pretty much though.
It's a misconception that these enzymes are less efficient than the enzyme Pepsin which all mammals have, and i believe all predatory fish.
Pepsin is only present in animals that have stomach acid, to aid the breakdown of food before the digstive enzyme pepsin goes to work.
Cyprinids and so Barbel don't have the advantage of Stomach Acid, breakdown of food once past the Phyrangeal teeth is achieved in much the same way as in a birds crop, being ground up by grit and muscular action in a pocket at the top of the Barbels digestive tract, ( i forget the name of it ).
Essentially the Barbel therefore as other cyprinids has no stomach as we know it, it's just one long intestine basicaly, which start to draw nutrients from the food by means of those 2 enzymes from the begining to the end where whats left is excreted.
Other things affect speed of digestion, cold water in winter is the main inhibitor, as the fishes metabolism slows so does the production of digestive enzymes, to compenaste, the passage through the gut is slower too.
Which is why during cold water temps it's bad news to put a lot of feed in, and is also why though i only ever boil for 20 secs for freebies to make bascialy a paste with skin on it for summer use, once water temps drop below 50f i make mostly paste for freebies, and soft paste at that, so at least any food i give them has the best head start i can give it, so that proper digestion can start almost straight away.
Getting staight into making HNV baits can be a bit of a leap Mark, i've been messing around with baits for quite a few years first starting by adding things to shop bought mixes slowly progressing to my own when i felt i understood enough that i could do better, i had some good results, but i had a few disasters on the way as well, not majorly expensive in the greater scheme of things, but expensive enough at the time, the HNV came much later when i was rescued by someone !!, but the whole subject facsinated me, and right from the start, i wanted to know more about the subject pretty much along the lines of the questions you asked me, but i'm no academic, and there were areas where i just didn't go which just seemed far too complicated, and just not worth getting into to any great depth, you'll see for yourself if you start looking into it all, the language for a start !!!! Jesus ! these biologist boffins have got a dictionary all of their own !
Your last statement, as i said in my first post to John, you're not to far off the mark.
For cetain situations Spam is as good a bait as any, there are a 1001 things you can do with it, and not just spam, lots of other processed meat, and un -processed meat too, such as Chopped Chicken breasts, Cubed steak pieces, or cheap steak sliced up, all can be fried or flavoured if you wish, meat is still a blindingly good bait no matter what people say in my opinion.
HNV is best when it's being applied to an area very regularly, in a one off situation, and especially if the Barbel have never seen it before, you'll have no more than a reasonably good bait, but absolutley no more so that well prepared meat.
Jesus i think i've broken my own record for a length of post !!
i don't 'alf go on once you get me started !!
Hope i've answered your questions though, tell me if i haven't.
I'm off to bed, going fishing again tomorrow
Night Night All
Ian.
