Making your own boilies

I'm interested in making my own boilies, could anyone recommend what equipment I would need, and what is the best way of making them, i.e. a sort of cook book for boilies.

cheers

Richard

Richard,
IMHO the best recommendation is to use one of the vast array of proven fish catchers on sale in mix form and make your own from there........some of todays baits are superb.

Hi Richard try this site www.boilie.co.uk
there is all the information you will need

Steve

I been making mine for the last few months and have had some nice results!
My latest menu is...

(Base Mix)
Semolina
Brown Rice Flour
SMA Gold [yes, the baby milk powder!]
Maize Meal
Trill birdseed
Ground Coffee Beans

Also used "orange" food dye for colouring!

(Flavourings)
Milky Toffee
A touch of Pinapple
2/3 drops of Butyric Acid [this absolutely stinks, be very careful!!!]

I'm no expert on making boilies, but the above recipe caught me 2 nice Carp yesterday...both were mirrors 1 @ 16lb 3oz and 1 @ 18lb 7oz

Len

Many thanks for the info guys, the www.boilies.co.uk website is just what I'm after.

Rich

The key to boilie making is getting the kit really organised in advance. A mate and myself produced large quantities some years ago. I’m sure you could improve on our arrangements, but to give you a start:

We made an improvised table in my garage from an old door. A big rolling table was screwed to a piece of mdf and attached to the table with hinges so it could be raised to roll the baits off it.

Several trays for before and after boiling were made from some scrap wood and chicken wire. These were about 3’ by 2’ and had little folding legs.

The table had hooks for attaching the trays so that when the rolling table was raised on its hinges the baits rolled down onto the tray.

Large quantities of dry ingredients were mixed by 2/3 filling a plastic dustbin, securing the lid very tightly with carpet tape and rolling it up and down the drive.

We measured exactly how much dry mix for a batch of eggs and then bagged the rest in this quantity. Mixing was then just a case of adding the whole lot to the correct number of eggs (always the same size).

A large metal bait gun with 3 nozzles was used. A compressor would have been good, but as cost was the reason for making our own we didn’t have one. Similarly a Burco would have helped greatly with boiling.

All that said it was mind numbingly boring and I wouldn’t do it again now there are bait rolling firms to do the job.

hi can anyone help me out im looking at making boilies and id like to know if you can harden them without boiling them as i wont be able to do it in the kitchen because it stinks,any tips much appreciated

Emlyn. You can steam boilies and i've heard of someone using one of those wallpaper steamers to do it.

in thet case then you could probly use one of them food steamers you can get for about a tenner

its not advised to steam them because you will not get the coating on them that the boiling process provides and the baits come out too soft and the the other factor is when you are given guide amounts for flavour concideration is taken for flavour loss during the boiling phase.

steaming them will actually "boil" the bait quicker than boiling. the albumen or gluten is set just as well (if not better). its a complete pain to do which is why by and large people dont.

you are right about the flavours though - just uses (for example) 25% less of it in the mix.

must be a complete pain in the arse and for what time frame would u steam that could be very important as some baits work better with a boil for 1 and a half mins and others work better with a 3 min boil could take a while to work out think i would stick with the proven method that i know works for me but each to there own in carp fishing the only way forward is to experiment.

you dont de-nature the bait as much steaming them as you are cooking them quicker as the steam is hotter then boiling water. you just have to keep the baits seperated in the steamer, so you're limited by the size of steamer. it is a proven method....

times? havent got a clue, never done it! wouldnt take any more time to work out than boiling them though.

When i've done mine with softer mixes i find that steaming for a longer amount of time results in harder and dryer boilies than doing them in water. The boiled ones absorb alot of water so they don't dry out as much. Like you say you can't do them in large batches. When i did mine they went out of shape from touching each other. This means that its going to take you a while and i don't like boiling freebies and steaming hookbaits because they tend to be different in strength of flavour. Can't help but be paranoid about the carp avoiding the "different" bait.