The Baits & Flavours Column

He is affectionately known as Dave the Flave due to his love affair with baits and flavours and is a self-confessed flavour junky.

PART 1 - BOILIE BASICS - FROM DRY INGREDIENTS TO PASTE

Boilies, surely the most convenient bait devised for angling? But I sometimes wonder if the sheer success and convenience of these baits can actually pose problems to anglers who start using them for the first time.

Their first approach to a tackle shop in search of these will be a daunting one as they survey rows and rows of coloured baits with extravagant and mystic names, such as Assasin8, Activ8, Multiplex and the Isotonic range to name just a few of the multitude available. Now all of these baits are extremely effective and catch thousands of fish each year, but I feel that the high success rates of them actually means the new angler can lose out on a valuable aspect of angling; that desire to know why and how their baits work.

I still find this part of fishing such a challenge and a very enjoyable one at that and a lot of new anglers don't even think about it. To be honest they don't need to know, but I feel they miss out on the element of experimentation that most anglers with a few years under their belts still seem to relish.

Let me try to clarify this a bit more so as not to sound old fashioned, set in my ways or even out of touch. With the multitude of readymade boilies available just about everywhere I personally feel it has taken a lot of the learning curve away from anglers who, being new to the sport, can theoretically approach a water and ask various anglers what's working. And then trot off to the shop to buy some, return and put the same bait on both rods and sit back to await the fish.

Now there are most likely a lot of you shaking your heads at my last statement and thinking, 'but surely the idea is to go to a water with the right bait!' But I cannot remember how many new anglers, young and not so young, I have met bankside that have come for a chat and been so downhearted that they did not arrive with THE bait! They were defeated before they had put a line in the water and their enthusiasm had gone. Even the offer of some flavoured luncheon meat or paste that I had been catching on did not re-light their fuse. They just had no faith in it. I am also dismayed at the number of young anglers who take up carp fishing as their first approach to fishing and have never used anything else but boilies!

I am not anti-boilie in any way (I'd hardly be writing this article if I was, would I?). I always carry a small selection whenever I am lake fishing as so many species have become accustomed to eating them on a daily basis. And there has been many a time that I have used a certain boilie on one rod and had take after take with not a touch on the boilie on the other rod. So yes, I have put them on both rods; it stands to reason we are there to catch fish but I at least had the choice of other baits.

As often mentioned in previous articles both my family and pets suffer great loss at times for my love of bait making, there is very little that comes into the house that does not get the once-over after it has hit the cupboard.

Think back. Who amongst you hasn't pinched the cat's biscuits and put them through the grinder when 'she who must be obeyed' has gone out. Or nicked the custard powder and the milkshake powders. Devastating! This is what I mean about the learning curve. I remember years ago taking boilies made up of trout pellet, an Oxo cube and ground cat biscuits, and after a successful trip thinking I had THE magic bait only to open the bait box before the next trip to find fur balls that resembled the offspring of Gizmo! Obviously I had a lot to learn about preservatives, but learn I did and I continue to do so.

This was when the majority of 'specialist' baits came from the home cupboard and allowed an endless scope for experimentation.

Anglers wanting to make up their own boilies without having to go in-depth on the various base ingredients need look no further than the shelves of their local tackle shop. There are some very effective base mixes out there to choose from and this allows you to make up your own boilies with just the addition of your own 'special' additives.

Making your own baits this way allows you to use a mix based on the 'working' bait on your chosen water and experiment with flavour and attractor combinations, shapes and sizes to make the bait even more effective over a longer period of time.

This can be very rewarding and can give a great deal of enjoyment to the angler. Making your own baits should save a few pounds along the way too.

Another problem the newcomer to boilie making may come across is the cost of some of the various ingredients. Having read or been told a few recipes they go off to their tackle shop armed with a shopping list and then find that the bottle of X is £12 and the tub of XX is £9.99, plus the bottle of MultiXX is £14.99. And they haven't even looked at the rows of base mixes yet. So quite often their bait making ideas are short lived. Although, once purchased, many of these tubs and bottles often work out very economical.

So let's have a look at the various stages of making boilies, beginning with a few ideas about making up the boilie paste, and then, in Part 2 next week, some hints on freezing, storage and preserving, including a couple of basic recipes. These can be made without a multitude of additives so therefore they won't cost the Earth.

MAKING THE PASTE

One piece of advice before you start: do not be tempted to add a bit more flavour than the stated dose. You will find that the bottles of flavour are highly concentrated and our rather primitive noses cannot appreciate the true flavour levels, but believe me, the carp will reject the bait if you overdo it too much.

I mention this because it often happens that once the flavour is added to the eggs, etc, it loses its smell, at least to us, and it can be tempting to add a 'touch' more.

EQUIPMENT

A Bowl - Get your own, as the wife/girlfriend will not appreciate the type of ingredients we use for fishing and the smell does linger.

Scales - For accurate weighing of the dry ingredients.

Syringe - For accurate measuring of flavours, amino liquids etc.

Measuring spoon - For mini doses of dry additives such as Betaine, Sweetener, etc.

Fork - For stirring.

Rolling Table - Although you can roll by hand this makes the job both quicker and easier.

Bait Gun - Again not essential, but does make the job easier.

Air Drying Tray - For hardening off the finished boilies.

TIP: If you are hand rolling then it would be advisable to just break off a lump of the paste and keep the rest of the mix in a plastic bag as a lot of boilie mixes dry out very quickly.

1. In a separate bowl measure out the dry base mix and add any other dry ingredients you choose to use.

2. In your main bowl crack the required eggs and add your liquid flavours, oils and any additives.

3. If you're using Betaine (an excellent all round additive) this is one of the rare occasions where you change the rule of adding powder to powder only. As Betaine disperses fully into liquid you should add it to the eggs.

4. Once all the liquids have been added to the eggs use the fork to whip it all together evenly.

5. If you want to colour your baits, now is the time to do it, whether it is powder or liquid colouring add it to the egg mix and stir it well in.

6. Once you're happy with the liquids start adding your dry base mix a little at a time.

7. Start folding the mix together and slowly keep adding more base. It will get to a stage where it becomes too stiff for the fork.

8. So get your hands dirty! If the mix is a bit too sticky add a dusting of base mix to your hands first. Keep kneading until the mix is smooth and slightly sticky to the touch.

TIP: Paste

Why not keep a bit of the mix aside in a plastic bag to use as either a paste or a wrap for your boilies? This can really give you the edge on some waters and just entails wrapping a covering of the paste around your boilie to give an instant powerful leak-off as the paste slowly breaks down.

If you decide to do this you may have to add a little of your dry mix to stiffen it up, but this really can work well so it's always worth a go.

Next Week, in Part 2 of Boilie Basics - Rolling, Boiling, Drying, Freezing and Storing, and some of Dave's favourite recipes.