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Flavoured meat

K

Kevin Daly

Senior Member
So after a move to mid Wales I found my spice cupboard and fishing cupboard needed a bit of on update. So with a few tins of tulip meat I found I didn't know about I set about having a dabble with flavouring........both sweet and savoury .....what's your most bizarre flavouring you've experimented with???

Honey and marmite?
 
Marmite is a good winter flavour. For summer to autumn I use smoked paprika or garlic salt. Aniseed is worth a try as is curry powder.
 
Tumeric and Paprika, half of a teaspoon of each to a tin. Freeze for a few hours/overnight, as the defrosting process will help draw the flavor into the meat.
 
Used to do it a lot and fry it in alsorts of spices and curry powders etc then freeze and it would smell fantastic but if the truth be told from my own experience I’ve always done best with it straight from the tin, usually a spontaneous decision and the meat bought from the local shop on the way to the river. I always believed that making it different would give it an edge and I made it up before most fishing trips. yes I’ve caught on it plenty of times but I’ve had more red letter days just tearing open a tin and going in straight off the block.
I’m now a firm believer that this awesome bait can’t be improved and they’ll continue to fall for it over and over again.
 
I’ve reverted to using it straight from the tin over the last couple of seasons. Used to coat & fry in all sorts of combinations from the spice cupboard and convinced myself I was on to something every time, results were always indifferent, however.

Whilst I think they’re are some proven & tried and tested supermarket-available spices, flavours and enhancers, such as garlic, paprika, chilli, etc; I think there’s every chance that some of the ingredients that are used & added could actually have a repellent effect, especially if the quantities added are particularly high. That’s just my opinion. I’m sure some anglers out there feel 100% confident and catch well on particular additions and good on you, if that’s the case.

Even when the more experimental flavours do ‘work’ is it because of or in spite of?



 
The only thing I use now is PCB's Garlic & Blue Cheese glug, and I only use this so as to tone the colour of the meat down from its pink to a gravelly muddy brown, plus I think you're on pretty safe grounds adding cheese and/or garlic flavour to any barbel bait (both being tried & tested over the years). But for trundling I use it straight out of the tin.
N.b.. chuck a black slug amongst cruising chub and they'll very often go for it. Chuck a pink prawn or a lump of luncheon meat amongst them and they're more likely to sh1t themselves.
 
Flavors and enhancements are merely attractants, that we use to highlight the presence of the bait itself. Fish oils probably being the best example of. Flooded and colored rivers, for myself this is, a big ole smelly lump of meat is a great bait and as good as any. On clear water, say fishing meat under the float through the gravel runs, my experience is that unflavored meat, straight from the tin (decanted at home of course), is much more attractive to the fish than the baits that I have altered the profile of.
 
Interesting topic, and I have tried many flavours over the years, but never sweet flavours ( yet I did when carp fishing). Has anyone experimented with Scopex, Pineapple or Plum for example to flavour meat for barbel ?
 
Flavouring it has advantages at times. For one it increases the range of scent. Secondly it can act as a trigger like Robin Red and aniseed do in baits used in certain waters. Then you have the theory of breaking the fish's suspicion with a blown bait by altering it. Of course in some situations the flavoured meat could itself become blown if over used. Then you could change it by adding a new flavour or changing its size, shape, colour or presentation.

I am fortunate in having waters where I could wager that meat has never been used. And been able to see the fish's reactions to it. In the main carp, barbel and chub react positively if they come across the bait naturally, i.e. laid on the bottom. If however it is introduced so that it sinks through the water colum they can and do spook. Very similar reactions to sweetcorn. Over time their fears subside.
 
Mike Thompson said:
Interesting topic, and I have tried many flavours over the years, but never sweet flavours ( yet I did when carp fishing). Has anyone experimented with Scopex, Pineapple or Plum for example to flavour meat for barbel ?
Click to expand...
I remember many years ago on Severals at Ringwood speaking to an angler that mentioned he had found a special flavour for his meat. The smell of Scopex was so strong it was almost overpowering. When I mentioned was it Scopex he was not amused. I did have a naughty chuckle as I walked down the bank. I never tried it because at the time I was doing very well on small squares of cheese using pva string to feed freebies.
 
Mike Thompson said:
Interesting topic, and I have tried many flavours over the years, but never sweet flavours ( yet I did when carp fishing). Has anyone experimented with Scopex, Pineapple or Plum for example to flavour meat for barbel ?
Click to expand...
Have in the past enjoyed a lot of success using Maple syrup, Not the propriety fishing brands sold in the angling shops, the real stuff that you would put on your pancakes. For boiled baits I would add it to the eggs, I don't recall exact amounts that I would use but I was very generous with it, along the line of 250ml to a six egg mix, fishmeal base, sweet betain, an absolute belter of a bait. For pellets I would bake a batch of hookbaits, approx 40 or so, using approx a tablespoon of the syrup as the initial binder. For loose fed pellet I would just add it ad hoc to the loose pellet, it also had the nice advantage of making the pellets pliable enough to use neat in a cage feeder. Do not do this in large quantities, just what you need for the session, as it has a tendency of setting like mortar after a few days.
 
Not helping in any way but a funny story,(well I think so).I had not been married for so long when my wife and I holidayed just outside Christchurch but a couple of days before she had to have a wisdom tooth removed.This left her with a very pronounced speech impediment due to still having several stitches left in her gum.One morning she drove me into Christchurch with my gear,waited until l bought a ticket for the Royalty and dropped me in the car park arranging to come back later and meet me for lunch.It was a bright sunny day and I was catching silver fish on the maggot feeder but no barbel so had lobbed out a large piece of meat more in hope than expectation.My wife arrived mid afternoon and decided she would walk into Christchurch to buy some sandwiches for lunch.The following conversation ensued bearing in mind that bait additives were new at the time.
"While youre there can you pop into Davies tackle and get some sausage sizzle bait additive"
"Why"
"They don"t seem to be taking normal luncheon meat."
"Shaushage shizzle,are you taking the pish"."No honest Mary,would I do that to you"?.Off she trotted,bless her into Christchurch returning later with sandwiches,fresh coffee and the sausage sizzle.After a while sat on the bank with me she asked "are you going to ushe the shaushage shizzle".
I replied,"no,I dont think it will make any difference".
"Sho why have you had me buying it"?
Punch line,"I bet the lads in the tackle shop had a right laugh when you were asking for it."I then found out that Mary had no problems pronouncing her Fs and that she thought I was illegitimate.
PS.still married but she still gets annoyed when I say shaushigesh.
 
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Les Daniels said:
Flavors and enhancements are merely attractants, that we use to highlight the presence of the bait itself. Fish oils probably being the best example of. Flooded and colored rivers, for myself this is, a big ole smelly lump of meat is a great bait and as good as any. On clear water, say fishing meat under the float through the gravel runs, my experience is that unflavored meat, straight from the tin (decanted at home of course), is much more attractive to the fish than the baits that I have altered the profile of.
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But apparently Garlic Spam was supposed to be the best ? and thats flavoured
 
Les Daniels said:
Best is relative to the individual and their own tastes more so than that of the fish.
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Splitting hairs ? == To argue about an inconsequential and trivial aspect of an issue:
 
I personally never got the Garlic Spam thing, with tins going for silly money on ebay, when they stopped making it. I just never found it any more successful than normal spam.

90% of my Barbel fishing is with meat and as it can blow quite quickly, under normal river conditions, I do like to flavour it. First by dusting with Robin Red powder, then coating in a liquid glug, before freezing. Successful glugs have included Spicy Shrimp and Prawn, Squid and Scopex and this stuff, which works well:

ccmoore.com

Hot Chorizo Compound || CC Moore

Hot Chorizo is an outstanding liquid food with a smooth, smoky, spicy-meat profile that is used by anglers to make their baits really stand out from the crowd. Its smoked sausage aroma and tangy, peppery taste makes it a superb year-round liquid food option for using in and on boilies, pellets...
ccmoore.com ccmoore.com

Only other preferences is roughly torn up chunks, to help with flavour and attractant penetration.
 
Overall I reckon that flavouring meat is akin to 'gilding the lily' and, whilst it may add to the angler's confidence in the bait, it may not add to its attractiveness to barbel. But when I do flavour meat (as opposite to just toning its 'pinkness' down) I will often use fluted pastry cutters. With these you can increase the available surface area of the meat by 50-100% and therefore increase the flavouring by that same amount. Below is using a 1" / 25mm cutter. The 'tubes' of meat produced can be used as is, or cut again sideways with the cutter, resulting in 'fluted balls' of meat .....
Meat cutter.jpg
 
Tried all sorts of combination's but plumrose pork and ham or whatever label it now has [not as soft as spam ] , with a few squirts or teaspoons of halibut oil slooshed around then left in a fridge for a few hours and always in a small cool bag with a ice pack has been my go to meat bait , a few years ago a local west yorkshire tackle shop sold some halibut oil that got taken off the shelfs that smelt like TCP , the fish chub and barbel loved it .
 
Always fascinated me the whole 'smell' thing. Absolute myth in my eyes. Fish can't smell, so adding and changing baits based on how they smell or appeal to us, is a pointless exercise in my opinion. Attractors based on the science behind it, absolutely. Frying baits to add flavouring, seems counterproductive to me, sealing the baits and potentially preventing leakage etc.
 
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