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Making your own bait.

Simon Archer

Simon Archer

Senior Member & Supporter
Is it worth it ??

My Carp fishing friend is going to start making some hook baits for himself and it's got me thinking of having a go myself, but not really sure it's worth it though. I don't use many boilies a season. I'm already up to £100 in my basket on John Bakers website. Trouble is, I have to do things right, I can't just roll a few sausages out and cut them up on the worktop, I'll end up getting the whole kit, I know I will, I always do.

A bag of off the shelf boilies isn't that expensive, less work and more than enough for me for the season. I understand it must be magic to catch a fish on home made bait, but I can see myself becoming a little obsessive with it.

Is it worth it ??
 
Tried it myself , but always reverted back to old favourites like Sticky Krill as a change bait and saw no real difference in catch rates. I don’t bother now , I just use Vortex cocoons and special hookbaits now along with their pellets , catches just as many as before. My boilie making kit is stuck away in storage now
 
Go for it ! You can make some for me whilst your at it. 😂 seriously though I doubt you use enough to get heavily involved with it can’t you buy base mixes and just personalise them a bit?
 
I made my own bait for years and am mates with several people who know a great deal about bait (including JB).

These days the only bait I make myself is chub paste in 1 egg mixes (from JB). It involves no equipment apart from a bowl and a fine measure !

I use quality boilies bought frozen from various suppliers and they catch more fish than most baits - so these days I really can’t be bothered to make my own if it involves any sort of quantity. And more importantly I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t catch anymore fish.
 
I make my own with JBs stuff , find it more rewarding and adds another dimension to my fishing , personally think off the shelf stuff is much of a muchness and made to a price point .
I’ve had some great results with my own bait but very rarely with off the shelf stuff , so that’s good enough for me .
A simple one egg mix taking me around 30 mins to make the day before I go fishing is all I do , no bait rollers just make the paste then sausages cut up and roll .
I usually use half the mix while fishing and the rest goes in when I’ve packed up .
Best to stick with one base mix/ flavour and keep it going in the same stretch , they’ll get hooked on it .. literally!
Although sometimes maggots/ casters hemp etc will work better , usually in winter .
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Tim Marks said:
I made my own bait for years and am mates with several people who know a great deal about bait (including JB).

These days the only bait I make myself is chub paste in 1 egg mixes (from JB). It involves no equipment apart from a bowl and a fine measure !

I use quality boilies bought frozen from various suppliers and they catch more fish than most baits - so these days I really can’t be bothered to make my own if it involves any sort of quantity. And more importantly I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t catch anymore fish.
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Need to ask yourself the reasoning behind wanting to make your own bait, and your own fishing situation. If your fishing mainly revolves around fishing many different venues not requiring (or not convenient) to prebait then unlikely your own bait recipe will make much difference to results. But if you’re targeting a single venue and wanting to prebait a bait recipe with your own label, knowing it’s unlikely anyone else is using the same, then this could make all the difference. I do a bit of both but only really use my own bait (using JB products) on my local Ouse which is very low stock and IMO prebaiting along with spending time finding the fishes preferred areas has paid dividends this last season…..would I have caught the same using a commercial bait? Maybe, but I’m aiming to create a recognised food source the fish will actively seek out. For my own situation the recent floods have completely changed my found Barbel haunts and I have not seen them for weeks - but my thinking (hope) is they will not be too far away and I’m continuing to trickle bait in likely areas until I find them and can target them with a food source they recognise .
But maybe you also just want to make your own bait for the satisfaction of catching on it….which is a great reason. It’s a big initial investment for your flavours and mix but a bottle of decent flavour lasts ages, and all you need is a fork/bowl and measuring syringe to knock up a small mix to use fresh
My advice is start small with a simple mix and see how you like it and what the results are…it’s very easy to get tempted into buying loads of different flavours and create many mixes which can cost a fortune….simplicity is the key IMO, and a couple of flavours/quality base and an additive will get you a personal label. If you get satisfaction from doing it the bug will bite and you’ll start playing with different mixes for different situations.
 
I just know that if I do have a go at making my own bait, I'll have to get all the kit and ingredients to do it, I always do that kind of thing. A kg of JBs base mix alone is the price of a kilo of boilies, then there is all the other stuff you need to flavour it. I think it would be a great thing to do, and I could really get into it. I'm just not sure I'd be any better off.
 
Simon Archer said:
I just know that if I do have a go at making my own bait, I'll have to get all the kit and ingredients to do it, I always do that kind of thing. A kg of JBs base mix alone is the price of a kilo of boilies, then there is all the other stuff you need to flavour it. I think it would be a great thing to do, and I could really get into it. I'm just not sure I'd be any better off.
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A kilo of base mix makes more than a kilo of ready mades , and it’ll last ages , think I went through 3 kilo last season with some left
You only need one flavour and eggs on top of that , 50 mil of flavour £15 and you’ll never use it all
Mr Issac’s got me going on JBs bait and I never looked back !
 
But which base mix, which flavour ?? It's very confusing.

I've got two base mixes, two lots of pick and mix flavours, salmon oil, krill extract and measuring stuff in my JB's basket at the moment. Comes to around £100. I don't use a kilo of boilies a season.
 
Simon Archer said:
But which base mix, which flavour ?? It's very confusing.

I've got two base mixes, two lots of pick and mix flavours, salmon oil, krill extract and measuring stuff in my JB's basket at the moment. Comes to around £100. I don't use a kilo of boilies a season.
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Taste F2 and barbel search 4 is as good as any
1/2 mil to a large egg
That’s all you need
£38 inc postage
 
Simon you would be mad to go out and buy all the kit because you fish venues like the upper Trent and dove with very few barbel and very few other anglers. I also know from your pictures you spend a lot of your fishing time from just a small selection of swims.

You are the perfect choice of angler to be adopting your own unique baits but sensibly. Not buying kg’s of the stuff and not buying rolling tables etc.

It’s easy to start off. Buy yourself a base mix a flavour and an additive it will set you back about £50 and 1kg would do me about 3-4 months. Flavors last seasons but keep them sealed in the fridge.
Buy some egg albumen it’s cheap from anywhere and make up a 1 egg mix.

Good starter recipes would be
0.5ml of alasalar
5ml shrimp extract
2 tee spoons of egg albumen
Add bio shellfish until a firm paste.
1min 40 seconds for boilies around 18-20mm


0.4ml chicken tikka
0.3ml cheese
2 teespoons of egg albumen
Add tastef2 until firm paste
Same boil times.

2 tee spoons of Bombay spice mix
0.5ml of masala oil
2 teespoons of egg albumen
Bio shellfish- paste
Boil and again same time.

Important thing is find something and stick with it. Use it fresh and most importantly keep putting it into your swims. A one large egg mix makes 20-25 big boilies around 20mm
You’ll probably use 6-8 of them on a session. The rest should end up in the river during and definitely after your session.

It is very easy. It doesn’t take up much time and you are using bait that’s high quality that they will actively seek out once it’s established between your swims
 
I like my baits to have quality ingredients and I like my baits to be fresh so I make my own ..I can also measure out ingredients and liquids precisely
I have watched bait being made in a well known bait maker’s factory and couldn’t believe what I was seeing all very slap dash and matter of fact they obviously work because they catch fish ..but they are what I would deem to be instant baits absolutely banged out with flavour
I only fish one venue so I want my bait to be a recognisable food source over a long period of time so I’m fussy with the precise measuring of ingredients
 
Since I have been firmly banned from using the trusty maggots, casters, worms by the missus, I am going to make my own bait, the reason being I have very low catch rates when using off the shelf bait. For the JB range I think a good starting point would be taste f2/bio shellfish with barbel search 4 flavours.

Another advantage is I can control the hardness, the size, the shape etc
 
Huanzhou Zhu said:
Since I have been firmly banned from using the trusty maggots, casters, worms by the missus, I am going to make my own bait, the reason being I have very low catch rates when using off the shelf bait. For the JB range I think a good starting point would be taste f2/bio shellfish with barbel search 4 flavours.

Another advantage is I can control the hardness, the size, the shape etc
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I can tell you from experience that taste F2 and chicken tikka is an absolute killer barbel combo 😉

Probably one of the best non fish meal combinations ever for barbel.

Don’t rule out the sizz either.
Barbel can’t help themselves with either of those 2 flavours. I frequently use double 20mm boilies without any freebies or fear of them being cautious with a bait that size because they can’t resist but eat it.

Keep your flavours really low. It should not smell strong to you, it should be a hint of flavour and quite pleasant smelling not over powering. That way they’ll enjoy it and keep looking for more.
 
Can I ask what maybe a silly question but what is the difference between a base mix and a hook bait mix is it just the hook bait mix has egg already added
And which is the best one to get to start with
 
Ray Heath said:
Can I ask what maybe a silly question but what is the difference between a base mix and a hook bait mix is it just the hook bait mix has egg already added
And which is the best one to get to start with
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No difference at all unless you want to make a more durable hookbait. Both can have egg but your hookbait may contain elements that toughen them up. You will see Mr Baker offers hookbait mixes.
Before anyone buys rolling tables etc just ask yourself, do I really need a round hook or free bait ? Probably not ? Then you don't need to spend money on tables etc .
 
Ray Heath said:
Can I ask what maybe a silly question but what is the difference between a base mix and a hook bait mix is it just the hook bait mix has egg already added
And which is the best one to get to start with
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Like David said it’s exactly the same base mix for both but John adds the egg albumen and Siv’s all the course bits out of the mix so it’s a fine powder. Totally not necessary to buy and imo totally not necessary to do.
All my boilies are made up as hook baits whether they go in as freebies or not and i certainly do not siv my base mixes.
All the course seeds etc go in my baits
 
Simon Archer said:
But which base mix, which flavour ?? It's very confusing.

I've got two base mixes, two lots of pick and mix flavours, salmon oil, krill extract and measuring stuff in my JB's basket at the moment. Comes to around £100. I don't use a kilo of boilies a season.
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There is also the issue of how you apply the bait and how quickly the fish will start to eat it….

If you hardly ever use boilies, then IMO there is little point in using a very expensive, bespoke (eg JB) base/flavour combo that is designed as a food source. These baits are conceived as long term baits and therefore have very low flavour levels. One downside of that concept is that it sometimes takes a while for the fish to switch onto the bait…..

Real world examples:

My mate and I have used the same off the shelf frozen boilie for the last 4 or 5 seasons, it catches barbel, chub, bream, carp and tench. If you take it chub fishing it catches on the first day on a new stretch - conditions (and fish availability) permitting. It catches straight away AND it goes on working.

Contrast that to a (JB) paste that we used 2 Winters ago for Thames chub. On my main stretch it took me 3 or 4 trips to get a bite on it; very lightly baiting each time (as per John’s instructions!). Then it just got better and better. By the end of the season I was catching 4 - 6 fish a trip and having re-captures. All that is exactly what that type of bait is designed to do….

BUT, I also fished 3 other stretches over the same time period on a very occasional basis. I tried the paste on each of them and didn’t get a single bite anywhere. If I used the boilie I caught fish…..

This last Winter I was involved in testing a new boilie. One small batch of bait split between 4 or 5 guys. As far as I know (and I’m a junior partner in the ‘team’) it was used on 3 barbel rivers this Winter and it caught upper doubles from all of them. All tricky low stock venues and only one or two anglers on each river. It wasn’t heavily baited, but it worked on all of them almost instantly.

Bearing all of the above in mind; you could buy the paste/boilie mix and then double the flavour level to make it a bit more instant (which rather negates the ‘quality’ of the base mix concept), or you could just buy a kilo or two of a proven boilie (iro 8 - 10 quid a kilo) and get on with it. And save yourself time and effort and money in the process. You would also remove the potential ‘issue’ of getting involved in home bait making in a bigger way…..
 
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