Bait additives

[lutra]

The point of using flavours for me is to create the illusion of food. When I fish places with lots of fish I never bother, because I can just use real food in enough quantites to keep the fish feeding. At low stock waters though I want to make it seem like there's loads of lovely grub waiting there so that when a little group of fish wanders past it's worth their while to drop down for a quick feed. When they get there, hopefully there's not actually much to eat, my hookbait then standing a good chance of being taken.

 

The main additive I use for this type of fishing (tench and bream) is a liquid sweetener which I mix with lake water and use to mix brown crumb. The idea being to get an unobtrusive dusting of crumb laced with flavour over the baited spot. To be honest, I'm not sure whether it has much effect on the tench, which feed best in clear water and daylight, but I have strong feelings that it may help with the bream, which feed at night.

 

As for amounts, 'one good squirt' per kilo of dry crumb seems about right!

 

The crumb is really just there to get the flavour down to the baited spot.

 

Terry, what did you mean by inappropriate flavours? I have done well in the past by using fishmeal groundbait mixed with sweetened water...

Doesn't sound like you are doing a lot wrong to me Anderoo.

 

One thing that i think is worth thinking about is fish don't go mad on eating plain crumb like they do fishmeal or crumb that has had lots of stuff added. I find fish meal great on a method feeder even on waters with low fish numbers, but you would need to be careful if you started balling it in.

 

Ive found chopping stuff up small that they like (hook baits....)and adding that to plainish crumb is good. Chopping it up small gets them picking about, releases there natural flavours which can compliment your hook bait and doesn't fill them up to much. I'm not a big fan of a lot of these chemical flavours, but i have tried them.

[Anderoo]

Doesn't sound like you are doing a lot wrong to me Anderoo.

 

One thing that i think is worth thinking about is fish don't go mad on eating plain crumb like they do fishmeal or crumb that has had lots of stuff added. I find fish meal great on a method feeder even on waters with low fish numbers, but you would need to be careful if you started balling it in.

 

Ive found chopping stuff up small that they like (hook baits....)and adding that to plainish crumb is good. Chopping it up small gets them picking about, releases there natural flavours which can compliment your hook bait and doesn't fill them up to much. I'm not a big fan of a lot of these chemical flavours, but i have tried them.

 

True, I'm actually going off groundbait completely to be honest. It's a good way to get flavour/attraction into a swim but is expensive and disruptive to put out. I'm currently trying to think of another way to achieve a similar effect. I have been using a 50/50 mix of crumb flavoured with sweetener and a fishmeal-based groundbait. Added to that different tiny bits and pieces of actual food with a ratio of approx 80-90% attaction 10-20% food.

 

It does work, but I'm coming to the conclusion that the hour's spodding that it requires to get out there is just too disruptive. The tench don't care (I've caught tench mid-spod!) but I suspect the bream run a mile. For that reason I have been baiting up in late afternoon, many hours before dark. However, if I do that, when a couple of bream wander past at 3am, is there any flavour left in the swim or has it all been washed away? If so, why spod for an hour at all?

 

Round and round we go!

 

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this.

[Dick Dastardly]

TT now youve said your using liquid flavours there is something I can add that may be of assistance.

 

When using liquid flavours in carp baits (boilies or paste) you need to take into account that a lot of artificial "flavours" aren't really "flavours" at all!!! Now that sounds like a bit of old bollo doesn't it but let me try and explain!

 

The term "flavours" when used in fish bait terms can be a bit miss leading.We would possibly be better to call them either "smells" or "tastes"! I say that as a lot of artificial flavours taste absolutely nothing like they smell! I know as I ate a lot of boilies in my carping days! (Que the Budgies Boilie belly comments etc!) But dont believe me try it for your self.

 

We need to realise this as it will seriously affect how much and what we put together in our baits/groundbaits. With artificial liquid flavours we also need to take into account the way the flavour is made,most importantly the "base" its made on. A good example are the carp bait flavours that are based on EA (Ethyl Alcohol). EA is a great carrier as it also allows the "flavour" to disperse quickly. Its down side is however that no mater how sweet it "smells" it actually "tastes" very bitter. The main reason that concentrated sweeteners become a staple ingredient was to counter act this bitterness.

 

Starting low and gradually increasing the amount you add is the best bet as is actually tasting (as unsavoury as it may seem!) your mix.Now I know what tastes good to us might not taste good to a fish (a whole topic of discussion its self!) but simple things like if youve over done some flavours you will get a "burning" sensation in your mouth (which surely the fish wont like either?) can be detected.

 

Remember as well that despite the over hyping by bait companies some "flavours" are found more attractive to some species than others.A good example of this being true and not marketing is simple salt.Very good for Carp but not liked at all by bream (er ask Steve Burke!).

 

God I could write pages on the subject but basically its down to a bit of research and lots of trial and error!

 

Further more living in a liquid environment rather than air do fish "smell" or "taste" a "flavour" from a distance?! think about it and you will see what I mean! Very easy to mistakenly "work it out" using our human comprehension of senses but extremely difficult to try and understand/know what a fish actually makes of it all!

 

Sorry mate I seem to have given you more questions to think about than answers!

[Dick Dastardly]

Doesn't sound like you are doing a lot wrong to me Anderoo.

 

One thing that i think is worth thinking about is fish don't go mad on eating plain crumb like they do fishmeal or crumb that has had lots of stuff added. I find fish meal great on a method feeder even on waters with low fish numbers, but you would need to be careful if you started balling it in.

 

Ive found chopping stuff up small that they like (hook baits....)and adding that to plainish crumb is good. Chopping it up small gets them picking about, releases there natural flavours which can compliment your hook bait and doesn't fill them up to much. I'm not a big fan of a lot of these chemical flavours, but i have tried them.

 

Im pretty much down with that as well.Dont see the point of using an artificial flavour when you can often use the real thing.

[Anderoo]

Yes, comes back to the question of what we are actually 'flavouring' - the bait or the water...

[Steve Burke]

This is what I posted about flavourings on a previous topic:

 

"When Archie Braddock wrote about flavours in The Book of the Perch over 15 years ago {20 years now!} I was very sceptical. However, now I'm very much a convert!

 

Initially I thought flavours may work just because they covered up smells the fish don't like, including ammonia in maggots. Nowadays, though, I won't use maggots without flavouring them!

 

The turning point for me was when I baited up 2 parts of a featureless swim on a commercial water with 2 different flavours. One flavour attracted mainly roach, the other mainly perch. I then switched the flavours around. The fish followed their favourite flavour!!

 

You don't need to buy a huge number of flavours to begin with. Indeed, if you do it'll take you longer to determine what does and doesn't work best in different circumstances.

 

For instance you could just buy a fruity one for members of the carp family, including tench, bream and roach. Add a spicy one for perch and you'll cover most stillwater species in summer. Two I can highly recommend from personal experience are Archie's Peach flavour and his Perch Magic.

 

I'd add that the colder the water the more I use stronger spicy flavours. Also the colder the water the more flavouring I add, but be careful here as too much flavour can result in catching less rather than more."

 

Unfortunately, Archie has now retired and so his flavourings are no longer available. With many of them the dosage rate is 1 1/2ml per pint of maggots or 12oz can of sweetcorn. With Archie's excellent pineapple flavour I've found this is too high though. On the other hand his Perch Magic can be used at a higher dosage, especially in cold weather.

 

I haven't as much experience with other makes of flavours and so can't help with dosage rates. In general though I'd recommend erring on the side of caution. I well remember one session at Wingham when I added too much flavouring. There was clear evidence I'd attracted the fish into the swim, but the hookbait was never taken.

 

With a new flavouring I start at a lower dose than recommended on the basis that you can always add more but can't take it away. On the other hand liquid flavours (as opposed to powered additives) will evaporate over a session if added to baits like maggots, and so you may need to top up over a session.

 

I'd strongly recommend anyone interested in flavours gets hold of Archie's book "Fantastic Feeder Fishing". In fact I consider it one of the most useful books of modern times. Look out too for his "Archie Braddock's Magic Book on Bait Flavouring".

[Vagabond]

Just my two pennyworth

 

Just as I am careful about not overfeeding, so do I take care not to overflavour.

 

IMHO One should consider the main downsides of groundbaiting - disturbance and overfeed, in any situation where you think groundbait might help.

 

also IMHO a little natural flavouring goes a long way - fishes have much more discriminatory and sensitive taste/smell detectors than we have.

 

Anderoo - good point about tench tolerating spodding but bream being spooked thereby. Read Ivan Marks on matchfishing - he reached the same conclusion.

[Steve Burke]

I'd add that there's a difference between liquid flavours and powdered additives. As I've mentioned, liquid flavours will evaporate in air, and as Budgie has mentioned will leach into the water at different rates according to the base they're made from. It also depends on whether they're on the outside of a bait, on partially locked in as with boilies, that of course by definition have a hard outer skin.

 

Powdered additives will tend to stay on the bait for longer, and if used on maggots will normally be eaten by them. This means that any maggots left in the swim will still smell and taste of the additive.

 

Just about everything we use as bait or groundbait will smell or taste of something to the fish. This includes bread of course, that together with biscuit meal is the base of many shop-bought groundbaits.

 

Being brought up on the teachings of Dick Walker and his contemporaries I poo-pooed the idea of flavours for many years, and this undoubtedly cost me fish. However my later experiments have convinced me that flavours can and do make a difference.

 

If only I knew that years ago!

[Tigger]

For that reason I have been baiting up in late afternoon, many hours before dark. However, if I do that, when a couple of bream wander past at 3am, is there any flavour left in the swim or has it all been washed away? If so, why spod for an hour at all?

 

Round and round we go!

 

I'd be interested to hear any thoughts on this.

 

 

 

You could always use a feeder stuffed with foam soaked in fishmeal etc just to keep up a burly type trail to attract fish to the baited area.

[Anderoo]

You could always use a feeder stuffed with foam soaked in fishmeal etc just to keep up a burly type trail to attract fish to the baited area.

 

Yes, that's one kind of thing I was considering. But then I reckon you may as well use a method feeder. I don't think there's any practical way to eliminate spodding completely, but there will be ways to drastically reduce the amount needed... I hope!