Bait additives

[Steve Walker]

I think the distinction we make between smell and taste can be misleading. We taste but cannot smell substances which are soluble in water and not very volatile (salt, sugar, for example) and we smell but cannot taste substances which are volatile but for which we do not have receptors in our mouths (most fragrances and flavours, at least at the concentrations we encounter them at - often pure fragrance compounds taste bitter). Then there are substances which have both a strong smell that we can detect with our noses, and a strong taste which we can detect with out mouths (vinegar, for example). When we eat things, we taste them and smell them at the same time, and our impression of flavour comes from the combination of the two. Fish also have distinct organs of smell and of taste, but the essential differences are that there is no differentiation between sensation of chemicals which are volatile in air and those which are soluble in water and that the organs of taste extend beyond the mouth and onto the outer surfaces of the body. It's as if we could tell which tea has sugar in it by waving our tongue at the cup or indeed, by waving our foot at it!

 

We sometimes make guesses about which chemicals will appeal to fish based on which chemicals will appeal to us, but many of our likings will have evolved long after our evolutionary paths diverged from those of the fish we seek. We like the smell of chemicals which are found emanating from ripe fruit because we eat fruit and are evolved from animals which ate fruit. If some species of fish also like those smells (and it would seem that some might), unless they are fruit eating species themselves, it's little more than coincidence. We're guessing that fish might like something that smells nice to us, but we don't even know whether it is a substance they can detect at all. In terms of raw attractiveness to fish, the substances with most obvious appeal are the simple organic chemicals associated with leaking or decomposing life forms - substances like betaine, glycine, glutamate or butyric acid (if you don't recognise the last three, you've used them if you've fished with a stinky blue cheese paste).

 

There is another angle, though, quite aside from whether a particular chemical has an innate attractiveness to fish. If you have a substance which (a) fish can detect in the water and ( which does not actually repel them, and you apply it to a bait which the fish will come to recognise as good food, you ought to be able to train the fish to react to the substance by looking for and feeding on the bait. If enough people are busy throwing in peculiarly flavoured baits, you may create a situation in which fish learn that odd smelling objects are often worth investigating as potential food items. I think this may be the root of the success of some flavours which a fish has little right being able to detect, let alone being interested in.

[lutra]

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.

I might be getting a bit of topic, but that's something Ive played around with for winter barbelling on the river where Ive always thought sent trials being washed down stream worked well.

 

A bait that Ive been using and done OK with which comes in boilie and paste form along with a glug is what used. First i tried the glug in a foam filled feeder as you say, but it didn't seem to help much. Mean while I decided that the paste which seemed to catch barbel well work better with out glug on it. Not keen on the look of this glug (the paste was freezer bait the glug wasn't) i made my own glug by adding water to some paste in the liquidizer and tried that. Sadly despite giving it few good go's my other rod which was fished with broken up boilie of the same flavour in a PVA sock still seems to keep on winning.

 

I know shark anglers seem to do OK with liquid attractor's (blood) and the carp lads....., but i can't think that they have ever help me coarse fishing much.

[Tigger]

I might be getting a bit of topic, but that's something Ive played around with for winter barbelling on the river where Ive always thought sent trials being washed down stream worked well.

 

A bait that Ive been using and done OK with which comes in boilie and paste form along with a glug is what used. First i tried the glug in a foam filled feeder as you say, but it didn't seem to help much. Mean while I decided that the paste which seemed to catch barbel well work better with out glug on it. Not keen on the look of this glug (the paste was freezer bait the glug wasn't) i made my own glug by adding water to some paste in the liquidizer and tried that. Sadly despite giving it few good go's my other rod which was fished with broken up boilie of the same flavour in a PVA sock still seems to keep on winning.

 

I know shark anglers seem to do OK with liquid attractor's (blood) and the carp lads....., but i can't think that they have ever help me coarse fishing much.

 

 

 

I'll get some pva sock then Brian for this summers river sessions. I've often thought (but never put into practice due to the mess) about useing chopped liver in a feeder and a peice on the hook and see if that does any good for beards.

I've started soaking trout pellets and making them into paste then mixing it with crumb as an attractant(mixing in corn, pellets or maggots etc), making it quite sticky so it stays firm, sinks to the bottom well and breaks down slowly releasing a scent/attractant for a decent spell. I reckon it all boils down to a basic burly really just the same as sea anglers use. I bet fish chopped up and some liquidised would be better than all the others put together, lets face it I think all fish eat fish.

[Vagabond]

I know shark anglers seem to do OK with liquid attractor's

 

Minced mackerel(or any other fish) dispersed by an onion sack hung over the transom is very attractive to porbeagle shark. Have never done nearly so well with blood nor butcher's scraps.

 

The point is that even several onion-sackfuls of minced mackerel plus several tubfuls of backup fish scraps, although it looks a lot on deck at the start of a trip, is really quite a small amount of attractant in the context of a whole day's drifting in the open ocean.

 

Scale that idea down to a coarse-fishing situation, and you really do not need very much. Rag soaked in fish oil/minced sardine juice and presented in a swim feeder sounds a good idea.

[lutra]

lets face it I think all fish eat fish.

Maybe, but its pike and eels that spring to mind.

[Tigger]

Maybe, but its pike and eels that spring to mind.

 

 

You only need to watch fish in a pond or fishtank and virtually every species will munch on bits of fish.

[Kappa]

A good example of this being true and not marketing is simple salt.Very good for Carp but not liked at all by bream

 

Keep meaning to mention this feature:

 

http://www.dynamitebaits.com/index.php?id=1345

 

May be of interest, particularly about the salt!

 

Rich

[terry t shirt]

Well it looks like i've walked into a mine field now thinking keep it simple the only things i think i'll try to begin with are cod liver oil and brewers yeast and see what results i get.

[lutra]

Keep meaning to mention this feature:

 

http://www.dynamitebaits.com/index.php?id=1345

 

May be of interest, particularly about the salt!

 

Rich

Can't say I've ever tried salt, but i have heard of it being used before for bream.

 

I couldn't pull my face at his flavours for bream. A slightly sweetened fish meal seafood mix.

 

Is that another place that good sized bream seem to still shoal a bit?

[Anderoo]

Keep meaning to mention this feature:

 

http://www.dynamitebaits.com/index.php?id=1345

 

May be of interest, particularly about the salt!

 

Rich

 

Interesting...!

 

It's the old problem isn't it - do we catch because of, or in spite of, how we fish and what we bait up with?

 

Sounds like there's a decent head of fish at that pit, and a lower average size, and not much in the way of features.