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Making paste

Hurgen Akindji

Hurgen Akindji

Senior Member
Hi all. I have always made my own Barbel paste by using fishmeal groundbait and eggs and a little extras like garlic and hemp oil. The trouble i get is that it always comes out mushy and a bit soft. I have seen John Wilson using some home made stuff whick looked nice and dry and stiff. Also i have seen some in magazines that looks stiff but with a good oil content. Also the stuff i have seen in mags are very dark.Am i doing something wrong?
 
You could always add a little wheat gluten to the dry mix to help bind it. It's what I do in the summer months when you want a slower breakdown time. Other than that it sounds like you are simply not making up a stiff enough mix, too much fluid not enough powder.
 
Have you tried adding more powder until you achieve the desired consistency? Groundbait should contain sufficient binders already, but if adding more powder doesn't do it, consider adding some wheat gluten to give the paste a little more 'body'.

Hope that helps
 
As mentioned, probably too much liquid. A simple alternative, put some pellets in the grinder & grind till fine powder. Add to desired consistency - kneading the mix well. Leave on the side for a small time for the consistency to become more even.

Even better, add some proper fish meals used in making boilies/pellets. Something like LT94 or predigested fishmeal.
 
Mix it till it's a bit softer than you want/need you'll find it stiffens up a little after a short time. I also think like said before your just not adding enough dry mix to the liqiid but add the dry stuff a little at a time because I find if you over do it by only a small amount the paste ends up to dry and is very hard to use. I think most will agree practise make perfect and once you've found the right consistency it become easy.
 
When I am reliant on fishing with paste, I always take some bagged dry powdered mix with me to the bank in addition to the home prepared paste. On arrival, if it's too soft, at least one has the option to harden it up adding the dry mix & add river water as needed. If no dry mix on the bank, all one has is slop that's no use to no one.

For info - the end colour of the final paste will be due to the ingredients it contains. I like to use up to 10% robin red in mine & it has that classic burgundy colouration.
 
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Thanks for your replies lads! For some reason though i think the John wilson paste i saw was made with trout pellets. [Not that i know the difference between trout pollets and fishmeal pellets] Also, the barbel pastes i see from some bait manufacturers look really stiff and smooth,and quite dark. The other day i took some paste with me on a session down the Lea and once it had defrosted it almost collapsed in the bag it was in. Alot of oil residue started to leak off of it. Probably due to the hemp oil i put in. One thing i will add is that i used the dynamites baits method mix,although i usually use something similar with the same sort of results. This could get expensive!
 
Hurgen,

Don't let it get expensive; it is completely unnecessary. Buy a bag of boiley base mix, say, CC Moores odyssey or Nutrabaits Trigga. There will already be sufficient binders in such a base mix so just mix with a couple of eggs. Then roll into small balls -whatever size you usually take fishing with you - and freeze. You could also roll some and boil them up or perhaps make some chop-ups with them. The last bag I bought was the season before last and I nearly always use paste for my barbel fishing. I usually have no problem getting at least a season from a 1kg bag that usually costs no more than about £14.00. Keep it simple.
 
Interesting reading. I am doing very well this year on a home made paste bait with shop bought ingredients.

However, I'd like to make the bait black for day light fishing. I've tried using food colourings but they wash out and go purple. Has anyone got any suggestions?
 
Thanks for that Haydn. Buying a ready made base mix is the way im gonna go but what about the flavour and colour? I always thought Barbel paste is dark and fishy? Or should i add fishmeal to the base mix?
 
Jb bio shellfish all the way for me and helen with a few tweaks here and there,i remember being told by teme severn at a birmingham bs meeting several years back that there lamprey paste would outscore jbs bs ten times so i thought what have i to loose ill give it a go,well it went in the bin as all we did was blank till we pulled the jb bs back out.

Mh
 
Paul Sene said:
However, I'd like to make the bait black for day light fishing. I've tried using food colourings but they wash out and go purple. Has anyone got any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Pop down to an Indian supermarket and ask for some powdered food dye. It comes in little pots and it doesn’t tend to wash out of paste or finished baits. (Or anything it comes into contact with!)

Tom.
 
Hurgen, don't worry about flavour and colour. You can add and tweak a mix if you really want to but it's not essential. A base mix, as long as you get a named one such as trigga or activ8 etc. is just the same as boilies but without being boiled. If you get a 50/50 White base mix then obviously that's different. Like I said, activ8, trigga, odyssee you can't go wrong.
 
For info 50/50 mix comprises solely of soya flour & semolina - not that good for our exploits.

Be mindful that we are approaching colder waters time so half or exclude oils altogether. Normally I add 5ml of oil per egg (salmon oil, cod liver oil, hemp oil, pilchard oil, tuna oil, etc).

One could emulsify the oils added but that's another can of worms altogether. If the mix is good enough then there is no real need to add any flavours nor oils.

As Dave G highlighted on the previous page, CC Moores has a wealth of information. Also, use the BFW search facility for "paste" for this newer site & the older site. There is masses of info there too.
 
Lecithin will emulsify you oil, or you can buy winterised oils, if you insist on an oil in winter, but as Jon said, you don't really need them. Plenty of water soluble ingredients to aid flavour leakage will do the job.

Cheers, Dave.
 
Guys, do you find hemp oil is ok to use in cold water? I wonder if the 'less oil in winter' thinking is more relevant to those oils that start to solidify in the fridge. Never had that problem with hemp oil.

A few years ago I experimented with 10ml per egg in paste baits with encouraging results. Just wondered if you had any thoughts?
 
One way to see how the nature of oil changes with is to refrigerate a sample with a thermometer immersed. A classic for example: I store some of the household goods including olive oil in the garage. Over winter it forms a lard like structure within the oil. On bringing it into the house & leaving it on the side for a while it returns to its original state.
 
One of the reasons I only use 5ml per egg, sometimes less, is the fact that the ingredients that I use in the base mix are relatively high in oil too. Hence, cutting back on my summer inclusions. Another thought is that if ones bait is laden with oil, will it smoother the texture of the bait preventing some of the more subtler flavours leaching out so readily(?). Not to mention that higher concentrations, higher than those already stated on this thread, might not be beneficial to the fishes diet.
 
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