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Colouring meat

Jon Frisby

Jon Frisby

Senior Member & Supporter
I'm going to have a dabble colouring meat, I'm looking for suggestions on colours and suitable dyes etc.
 
I use liquid food dyes which you can pick up from a supermarket. Cut the meat into hook bait size, put in a plastic bag, add two or three drops of the colour and shake. Leave for about an hour then put in the freezer. The freezing and thawing draw the colour into the meat.
You can add liquid favouring in exactly the same way.
Mike
 
I dyed meat many years ago and found black was a very good pike catcher,i even had 2 pike from Adams mill fishing black meat. Green was the colour that worked best for me for pressured Barbel,combined with the oil from the Sunday roast chicken. But a mate swore by a yellowy/orange colour, just yesterday i bought a 500g tub of Preema powder red dye for £1.99 in a local Asian shop. A bargain that will last years, Preema brand is a very strong human grade food dye.One 1/2 teaspoon will colour a whole large can, if diced up in a bag, inflated then shook around, just beware of the dye making your hands orange,green or red.
 

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Seem to remember having sucess using Ponceau Red 4R powder (aka Cochineal Red, E124) for meat.
 
Prefer to use it fresh out of the tin. The more you mess around with it the less effective it seems to be imo.
 
I wonder if the green worked because they thought it was water snail or something alike. I wish there were enough Barbel in local Rivers to experiment like that.
 
I think Green worked because the rivers had plenty of weed and the bait blended in .Colouring meat will always work if the fish have seen it before.Anything that changes the shade,colour or shape is always going to be better than a square cut lump straight from the can, unless at night.
Iain Tutt said:
I've bought a few bags from this eBay seller before. kitchen-chemistry. Bags sell for 99p each
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. They look like the same colours i buy in bulk,that have been repackaged into small bags,but doing it that way would cost £20 a tub.
 
Stephen Crowhurst said:
I wonder if the green worked because they thought it was water snail or something alike. I wish there were enough Barbel in local Rivers to experiment like that.
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I reaĺly don't think that they can confuse a lump of meat with a natural food.However I would think that the main advantage of colouring is to hide any danger signals the fish might have in being caught previously, but we are assuming they can see colour, but why should they? There main feature is taste sensory , and filter feeding, no need for colour. Nature doesn't waste features if they have no purpose.
 
It’s an interesting point. Most fish see in colour and some can see parts of the visual light spectrum we can’t such as ultraviolet. For their size I’d say Barbel have pissy little eyes and as you point out their other senses are the key. The gin clear water round here allows observation and they actually seem in my experience pretty acute to tackle. So your probably right it’s more likely that it’s another factor than mistaken identity.
 
Cheers lads really appreciate all your views, thank you a lot.
 
Interesting points guys. I'm making a barbel return after some 20 years away! Living in north Devon they aren't a plenty. Not really got much to add but I have had a lot of success by preparing the night before and putting into the fridge rather than the freezer. However i do freeze it if left over after a session and it doesn't seem to effect it's effectiveness to me. However I would most likely use it as feed. Curry is an obvious one we all know but turmeric I found to be good to. Great in maggots in the colder months. Anyway thought I'd get stuck in I was member about 12 years ago. Here's to a great season ahead a hopefully to a couple (at least) river trips. Thanks Jon
 
I tested colouring bait years ago, ignoring flavour. Had a shallow clear area in front of me about 8 yards wide and 3 yards across, surrounded by streamer weed - it was on the Kennet, remember streamer weed used to grow there :(?

I tested over a period of 9 or 10 sessions. Barbel were confidently feeding on hemp, coming out of the streamer eating some and drifting back, typical behaviour. I dyed both meat and sweetcorn.

Meat with no dye was treated with suspicion, they'd approach it and veer away. Yellow was pretty much the same. Red was better, black was good.

Sweetcorn with no dye was ok, strange maybe as being yellow it was quite bright. Red was ok, black was good.

Pescaviva made red and orange sweetcorn but I seem to remember these were flavoured, so the "experiments" would add this dimension and not what I was after.

All of this was, or course during the day. Leaving a (freebie) bait in the water for 30 minutes and all colours were taken. Of course we all know that if barbel are feeding then they'll eat pretty much anything so it's hard to draw conclusions.

So what conclusions did I draw? well, colour didn't seem to make as much difference as maybe I'd thought. If the barbel were confident then colour seemed immaterial. If they were more timid they'd be wary of brighter colours. If I got them feeding on hemp and then used a baited rig and caught a few (usually on maggot) and then introduced the test baits, any colour was taken readily.

You have to remember that this was Kennet many years ago, when there were a head of barbel, when you could catch anything between 0 and 25 per session. Also, boilies were not on the menu in those days, and pellets were always brown!



So to today. Don't fish the Kennet. Don't fish maggot. Don't use hemp. Don't fish during the day - well I may arrive late afternoon but fish through to past midnight.

I open a tin of spam at home. Cut it into 1" cubes, Put into a container and shake vigorously, this removes the sharp corners and edges. Put into a frying pan (in the garden :)) and fry with some Pataks paste for a while. I put this into a food bag and that goes into a screw top plastic container. The resultant bait is smelly, and orangey-brown. I bait with a needle and rarely have to actually touch the bait. One bait per session or more if I catch :), no feed, into freezer when back home ready for next trip. In and out over a long period, a tin lasts me several months (so I cannot imagine people that buy umpteen tins at a go).

Meat on upstream rod. T'other rod has source boilies.
 
Paul. Do you just sit on that one meat hook bait or do you check it periodically? I don’t think I’d have the confidence that the bait was still attatched to sit on it for a full session.
 
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Paul 20 barbel in a session!! Sorry see gents I got off the colouring oat and went to flavours! I guess ultimately the tummeric turns it yellow and curry reddish brown. Ice never tried for barbel but I have used blue corn on commercials very successfully. But needless to say hands are shocking for days.
 
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