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Making your own bait.

Tim Marks said:
If you roll the sausages and then cook those whole; it saves even more time and you can then cut them up/slice to suit on the day.

There is also even more uncooked surface area so even more leak off…..

Also thin sausages (eg 8mm) cut and fished as long, thin baits work brilliantly.

Disclaimer: tactic(s) from my carp fishing days decades ago, I use frozen bought bait for barbel.
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I would like to one season use purely shelf life baits to see if the theories about shelf life against frozen is realised.
 
Damian Kimmins said:
I would like to one season use purely shelf life baits to see if the theories about shelf life against frozen is realised.
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That’s a different topic all together….frozen against shelf life as in preserved.

I’m talking about the faff of making your own against commercially available (frozen) bait. These days I favour the lazy approach as mentioned in post 4 at the very start of this thread.
Julian Griffiths said:
How long would you guys suggest boiling a square block for example, & would you clingfilm it?
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I mucked about with Dave Preston style boiled block baits 30 years ago. I made big blocks from a 10 or 16 oz bird food mix. After cooling I diced the block into roughly 6mm cubes.

My memory says (I’ve checked my bait book and I didn’t write it down!) I double cling film wrapped the block and boiled it for 15 - 20 minutes. Obviously you can cook it for a shorter time and put it back in if you think it needs more. The difference in texture between the surface layers and the centre was really revealing.

No doubt google would generate DP’s original articles on the subject
 
Tim Marks said:
That’s a different topic all together….frozen against shelf life as in preserved.

I’m talking about the faff of making your own against commercially available (frozen) bait. These days I favour the lazy approach as mentioned in post 4 at the very start of this thread.


I mucked about with Dave Preston style boiled block baits 30 years ago. I made big blocks from a 10 or 16 oz bird food mix. After cooling I diced the block into roughly 6mm cubes.

My memory says (I’ve checked my bait book and I didn’t write it down!) I double cling film wrapped the block and boiled it for 15 - 20 minutes. Obviously you can cook it for a shorter time and put it back in if you think it needs more. The difference in texture between the surface layers and the centre was really revealing.

No doubt google would generate DP’s original articles on the subject
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Cheers Tim 👍
 
Kevin Brown said:
View attachment 30320View attachment 30321View attachment 30322Decided not to bother rolling small baits anymore , not sure of any advantages on a river .
So I simply extrude through a bait gun with a 16 mm nozzle and cut into blocks or pillows as some home rollers call them .
Advantages are it’s lots quicker , bait comes out more open course in texture, easily trimable to suit length of hair and leaves a nice paste centre.
It’s not going to roll away in a current as easily as a round ball , plus it’s different to thousands of small boilies being thrown in .
Here’s a six egg mix I knocked out in about 40 mins , enough for 6 evenings fishing .

OCD home rollers look away now 🤣
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@Kevin Brown

Is that a vacuum sealer behind the boilie gun?

If you’re making up 6 trips worth, do you freeze or just refrigerate the rest of the batch?
 
Roger Pearman said:
@Kevin Brown

Is that a vacuum sealer behind the boilie gun?

If you’re making up 6 trips worth, do you freeze or just refrigerate the rest of the batch?
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No it’s a coffee maker 🤣

I leave in the shed overnight to harden off , then freeze , when I go fishing I’ll just get 50/60 baits out for the evening session .
Later on in the season I’ll make fresh bait up day before a trip .
 
Kevin Brown said:
Yeah I looked into steaming but the longer cook times seem to negate the more aggressive boiling method .
Reading around in the home rolling community the jury is still out it seems on which is best .
I boiled these for a minute which still leaves a nice soft paste on the inside , something I was keen to have in the finished bait .
Plus I can always tinker with it soon as I start fishing with it .
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Is one of the benefits of steaming rather than boiling that you lose less nutrients in the bait from steaming, a bit like when steaming vegetables rather than boiling them?
 
Mark Harridence said:
Is one of the benefits of steaming rather than boiling that you lose less nutrients in the bait from steaming, a bit like when steaming vegetables rather than boiling them?
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Yeah it is but you have to steam them longer so extending cooking time.
I boil for a minute and still get a soft paste inside that’s hardly been cooked , I’ve not tried steaming so can’t compare but John Baker still boils his baits , so that’s good enough for me .
 
Kevin Brown said:
Yeah I looked into steaming but the longer cook times seem to negate the more aggressive boiling method .
Reading around in the home rolling community the jury is still out it seems on which is best .
I boiled these for a minute which still leaves a nice soft paste on the inside , something I was keen to have in the finished bait .
Plus I can always tinker with it soon as I start fishing with it .
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I no longer bother to time mine. By putting the same amount roughly into the pan everytime I whip them out as soon as they float and for the mix and size I use they're just how I like them. Nicely skinned but softish inside.
 
Nutrabaits steam all of their baits and it does produce a much nicer bait to be fair but I don't mind a well cooked skin as I would generally only fish a half a 12mm or 15mm.
 
Andrew Jackson said:
I no longer bother to time mine. By putting the same amount roughly into the pan everytime I whip them out as soon as they float and for the mix and size I use they're just how I like them. Nicely skinned but softish inside.
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I’m not confident enough to do the floating method , I know a one minute boil gets me what I want , plus I’m struggling to even see the baits in boiling cauldron I’ve created 🤣
 
I was involved in testing a prototype bait last Winter and the supplier had a devil of a job programming his machine to not overcook the bait. We wanted it soft and ended up with about a 45 second boil - the shortest possible.

Ideally we wanted it softer still but the machine couldn’t do that…..
 
Thing is with the short boiling times is if you have a high degree of soluble ingredients without something that skins a bait, you might have a bait that doesn't last too long. Ideally I think I would like my bait to last 1.5hrs in terms of it maintaining it's shape, but on retreiving like it to turn to mush in my fingers.
 
Damian Kimmins said:
Thing is with the short boiling times is if you have a high degree of soluble ingredients without something that skins a bait, you might have a bait that doesn't last too long. Ideally I think I would like my bait to last 1.5hrs in terms of it maintaining it's shape, but on retreiving like it to turn to mush in my fingers.
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I have no problem achieving exactly this with boiling.

I use 20-22mm baits.
5% egg albumen
Aggressive boil for 1min 40 seconds

Easily get 3-4 hours out of the bait with out breaking a sweat
Nice firm skin of around 2mm thick and a pure paste centre.
The only change I’d make if I was suffering damaged baits from nuisance fish is up the egg albumen to say 8 or 10%
 
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