Bait Flavours and Tastes

superb read ............cheers Jeff

Good read Jeff

Jeff, another excellent piece, and probably just goes to prove the old adage that more anglers are caught by baits than fish are.

Now, I don't do any carp fishing (le's be honest, I don't do much fishing at all...!) but when it comes to making a bait attractive, I would want something that leaches out something (flavour, taste, colour being lagely immaterial) to induce the fishes' interest in that bait.

To that end, I would experiement with oil based (I realise that there are problems with an oil/water emulsion)attractant, to give an almost rubby-dubby effect. Certainly many carp anglers are using flaked tuna in method mixes, and some of these give off quite impressive oil slicks.

Once a fish has become interested in that and homed in to the source,perhaps the actual choice of bait presented at the end isless important.

But there again, what do I know...........!

Well done Jeff for a great thinking article.

I have been trying to get my head around what colour baits or flavours to use for this coming season. I will read and study this article more carefully later on.

A comparrison I can give as to flavour or colour, is that I like most anglers enjoy a cup of tea. On a number of occasions I have forgotten to bring the milk along. The imiediate thing that became obviouse to me was that if I closed my eyes, I couldn't tell if the tea had milk in it or not.

A great read a leaves a lot to think about.

I'de never thought about some of these ideas, and will have to start experimenting./forum/smilies/big_smile_smiley.gif

Good one Jeff, i think we sometimes forget that a fishes idea of a banquet is rooting around in stinking silt for natural food ie bloodworm and their perception of a good smell/taste given that may be somewhat different to ours.

Excellent article Woody

I've used flavours and colours a lot in the past for Roach and there is no doubt that they can have a very significant effect on catch rates.

My favourite Roach flavour was Sweet Tangerine which wasproduced by Solar in conjunction with a red bait. I used to use ST as we called itas a baseline against which to compare the effectiveness of any other flavour. Sadly Solar stopped selling it a few years back.

I had my best results with Roach using lowlevels of flavour.

The purpose of the flavour and colour aretwo fold:todraw the fish onto the bait and then to induce them toeat it. However most anglers seem to attach too much imprtance on how good flavours and colours are.

The reality is that there is much more to success than simply perfecting yourbait. Provided you have a reasonable selection of good baits you will achieve far more by focusing your effortson location and presentation.

Invest your time inimproving your watercraftrather than your baits and you willcatch you a lot more fish.

I agree there, Andy. Was it Walker (oh dear, I can hear Ron's fingers typing even now) who said "It is better to spend 5 hours looking at the water and 1 hour fishing than 1 hour finding a swim and 5 hours waiting for a bite."? Or something like that.

I'm as daft as anyone though and mostly for no good reason. Favourites with me are Cream Cajouser, I could take these to bed with me, although I don't know what the wife would think.

Another - Tiger Nut, just reminds me of coconut and I love that.

If I want to catch roach, I feed with Sensas Bream 3000. I have confidence in it, it's nearly always worked for me, and the smell of it makes me want to eat some carrot cake. WHY???

For tench, I like to feed VDE Lake, like Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts. Liquorice, arrrrrrrrrrrrr!


And for barbel, well you can't beat a nice smoky bacon flavour, but I only have about 3/4s of the last bottle left of Action Baits Sausage Sizzle then that's it. NO MORE - Booo hooo!

And why do I put red dye into groundbaits when I'm fishing at night? What is that all about?

So you see, I'm as mad as a rat as well.

Good article Jeff, looking forward to part 2 /forum/smilies/wink_smiley.gif

Great article Jeff, but it is like cooking, everyone has their own idea of the types of food that they like, whichis in part due to biological factors and part due to familiarity. Take simple maggots for example and colour, by far the most popular colour now is red maggots, but for many years in match circles bronze maggots ruled the roost, fishes choice or familiarity?

I confess to being a confirmed hemp & caster man myself, but when casters were unavailable I was totally convinced that turmeric flavoured & coloured maggots, were the best for roach in the winter, when there was colour in the water.

On the continent the addition of flavours and additives in groundbait is regarded almost as an art form, we have started to catch up in this country, but for many years groundbait was only seen as a carrier for loose feed, not so now.

The proliferation of carp in this country, and their willingness to exploit a new food source, has allowed experimentation to take place, with a genuine chance of success. Whereas roach, perch, tench etc are not as catholic in there taste.

Bright coloured yellowsweetcorn is the most noted one for blowing and the first bait people started dying from what I read growing up,dont know much about this whole thing but it soon stopped working for me personallywhether it was down to colour I am not sure as I never dyed any just changed bait, but the lake were it blew quick there was no silt so colour was visible.
Now definatly seem to go for more neutral boilies but only because I know they work and that will do for me.
Also would like to mention my use of btaine and mianimo as glugs and mollases for mixes I would say you could put a piece of anything soaked in these and you would stand a chance of catching ,I rate it that much.Thanks Para man for that tip were ever you are.

I think that this theory that red line becomes invisible is a right load of old tosh. The colour may fade but you still have a solid object; put a red boilie on the bottom and it looks beige or grey not invisible. We were told that fluorocarbon was invisible but Stu and Guy's dvd proved that wrong.

Personally, I've always flavoured sparingly and coloured for effect not to match the flavour. I use an uncoloured mix for much of my fishing but if I feel that it will stand out too much on the bottom and possibly spook wary fish I will colour it either by adding Robin Red to darken the bait or by adding food dye, green and brown are favourites.

I remember years ago Rod Hutchinson wrote about fishing Redmire with particles. He fed Dolly Mixtures, yes the sweets. The small fish came in and ate all the bright ones but the bigger fish entered the swim later and truffled around for the dark ones that had been missed in the earlier raid. He started using the dark ones for bait and caught on them.

I agree that the bait industry is fixated on selling what it thinks the angler wants rather than what the fish wants but with a bit of thought and maybe some homemade bait you can always plough your own furrow.

Jeff,

Really enjoyed that one, any chance of going into further detail on the more 'traditional bait' flavourings, as well as additive flavours for groundbaits?

I'll happily collaborate if you like.

Good enjoyable article Jeff.

An interesting article HEREon the Barbel Catchers Club site

Good read Jeff, I suppose we can’t go too far wrong if we imitate the colours of the natural food chain. I’m not sure how we could identify the chemicals emitted by natural baits and thus add these to our artificial baits?

When I got the opportunity to put the CSG’s catch returns onto a data base one of the 1st listing I did was that of baits used, and lo and behold bread & cheese was way way out in front of any other bait. However, bread and cheese was also way way out in front in the number of times it was used and of course I’ve no idea how many times it was used and it didn’t work. The only comparison I’ve got is my own records of fishing more or less 90% of the time for Chub where I’ve also fished 90% of the time with bread/cheese on my upstream rod and pellet & paste on my down stream rod. The last time I looked at analyzing this was each caught 50% of the Chub. Some times it was all caught on bread & cheese and sometimes all on pellet & paste but most of the time I caught on both.

Then there is the angler, his ability and confidence in what he is using. Just look at the selection of fly’s for trout fishing, if you are confident in one pattern then you will persist with that pattern and generally catch. Again some anglers just can’t get their heads around using bread simply because it’s never on the hook when they retrieve line.

To get back to Jeffs point I’m sure some of the popularity of colours and flavors are what WE think are logical attractors, but as Jeff points out when you sit down and really think about it, then its’ not as logical as we thought, but that dose not mean we should give up trying to attract fish into taking our baits. However, the No 1 Rule is, 1st find your fish.

Sorry Andy, I've just re-read your last line and I'm just repeting what you have said.

Good one Jeff.

Andy - have you triedNashy's tangerine oil pallatant? one tangerine is totally different from the next, but it's an excellent citrus flavour.... though that might be something to do with pH though....

Another consideration regarding baits other than attraction by sight, taste and the bait having the right texture is the choice of carrier for transporting the flavor from the bait. A medium that has a lower density than waterwill carry the flavor vertically when in still water and both vertically and horizontally in moving water. You can also use buoyant or semi- buoyant particles to transport the flavor such as liquidized bread. And to speedup the dispersion the use of active agents that release any bonds when they come in contact with water.

Great article Jeff.The colour of baits has never bothered me.I suspect they don't bother fish much either.I agree with part of what you said at the end of your article and that is if a fish passes over your bait and is hungry there is a chance it will pick it up.For most of the last 5 years I have been using the red Pepperami on one particular water and never failed to catch unless the fish were not having it and then there is nothing you can do about it.Recently I have been fishing another water which is deffinitely not easy.Have used various baits on there and had good and bad days very often with a choice of baits on each rod.Some baits caught more regularly than others.I then got hold of some new boilies which my local tackle shop highly recommended as an instant catcher.We are all scepticle at times but thought I would give them a go.I actually used the same bait on every rod (3 rods) and these were all cast out to spots in various parts of the lake.Nowhere near each other.I caught on every rod and had a 33,2X26,2x20 and an upper double.I straight away thought this has got to be down to the bait.It has to be an attractive bait to the carp.Or is it?Was that just luck or coincidence?Normally on this lake you might catch on one rod or maybe two but on all three rods in totally different areas.What are your views?

<blockquote class=quoteheader>Stevie the 'Pisc Artist' wrote (see)</blockquote><blockquote class=quote>Good article Jeff, looking forward to part 2 /forum/smilies/wink_smiley.gif</blockquote>

Don't hold your breath.

Same goes for you Peter, it was a one-off because I was getting a bit fed-up with people writing about best colours and smells and yellow banana was the dogs whatsits. Unless you tried the Red Squid and Scopex.

Sure we have to try top con fish into taking baits that aren't natural to them, luncheon meat, boilies, chick peas, maggots, whatever, but lets just say - if it works, go with it. Don't try coming up with half-baked ideas about what fish 'want' and what they see. We will have no idea until such time as they learn to talk, but that will definitely be the end of fishing!

I have forgiven Marsdin for nicking the best bits of my piece for his article, he is after all 'my hero' and he has introduced me to such delights as crispy bacon sandwiches with HP sauce and how to add four creams into a Latte coffee. I'm nearly as fat as he is now.

Nice article Jeff.

I've come to the opinion that what bait I use on the hook (usually) doesn't matter. What matters more is the bait I use to attract fish into the swim. Once a fish is in the swim and feeding it will normally take the hook bait unless it is spooked by it. I now tend to use large quantites of flavour and low quantities of feed with a view to attracting fish to my baited area. I've noticed that fish will often ignore baits such as casters, which have almost no smell, until a few pellets have been fed. They then get their heads down and continue to feed on the casters.

Colours are another interesting problem. As Dave says above, colours at the red end of the spectrum don't become invisible at depth they just become a shade of grey. I do wonder if a fish having red fins is a sign of a species that spawns in shallow water. The red colur becomes a good signal in the shallows whilst not being a liability in deeper water. Rather than colour we need to think about shade (depth of colour)or contrast. The trick is to make the bait visible without it standing out so much that it spooks the fish. Perhaps the success of red maggots is not their visibility, but that they doen't stand out enough to spook fish. After all what's the advantage of a bloodworm being red if it makes it more visible to fish? By thinking about shade and contrast we do away with the unanswerable question of what colurs fish actually can see.