Carp Fishing Bait

There are many different ways of fishing carp as I previously discussed. There are also many types of bait you can use. Some prefer using lures, some prefer using bait, and some prefer using both bait and lures. This article will only discuss bait, and not include lures.
We will have a small look at natural bait, small sized bait, flavours and attractors and how to make “homemade” bait for carp fishing.

During the research it seems finding and choosing bait for carp fishing is a science in itself. This is of course true for most kind of fishing, but in particular for carp fishing.

Carps have a varied taste, and eat many different types of food. Some of the live animals it eats shrimps, bloodworms, daphnia, snails, daphnia and freshwater mussels. The carp are mostly fed on less natural food for them, such as nuts, seed, boils and corns. Neither of these is of course natural. You might have some success with mussels and worms, but most likely a mixture between natural and unnatural bait will be best for fishing carp.

Some small sized baits as trout pellets, hemp, multimass and partiblend require you to use tools as spodding to get them to the hook.

Some of these are well suited as they bring smell to the bait. The problem is often you have to either prepare bags for usage; or using spodding to add them.

Carp doesn't really get attracted to smells in the sense we people get attracted to the smell of food. Instead it seems carp is attracted to the chemical signals given by bait. It might help to use bait which has slightly different pH value than the water you are fishing in to create a local source of chemical signals. It seems that one corn or bread have signatures to attract the carp well. Cheese is another product that is used often by carp fishers.

Newer methods of adding flavours are the usage of oil; these are also added to some sorts of small sized bait. Oil can be bought separately. Strawberries seem to be a big winner for many sport fishers.

Most people agrees that the best attractors for carp is food based baits; meaning food giving a chemical signature for the carps to find. Some also argue giving a signature of balanced nutrition (for the carp) is best suited as carp fishing bait.

It might be an idea to add a colour strongly contrasting to the background for the carp to more easily detect the bait you have put out. Pink, white and black are all strong colours separating from the background. It requires some experimenting to find the colours best suited for the location you are fishing at.

Base mixes are most commonly used to create “homemade” bait for carp fishing.

It is a large variety of base mixes making use of oils, nutrition, flavours and colours. In some cases you should choose a base mix giving neutral effects, while in other cases it might be good to choose a mix giving a distinct signature. The reason is that if there are lots of sports fishers using bait with distinct signature it might not work so well to catch the carp. It might also be hard to use these strong signatures if the water the fish is living in is polluted. In these cases it might be far more effective to use weaker mix to attract the carp to the bait.

Most homemade mixes are made by different kind of grains/corns to give distinct flavour to your bait.  Some indigents I found to be used are maize flour, bio flour, sugar, wheat and nectablend.  It seems you are largely free to find recipes on the internet, or to create your own “secret” recipes if you have some experience and knowledge.

I would recommend investing in some new kitchen equipment before you starting cooking your own bait. Your family might not be so happy with you using their favourite cooking ware, adding oils and all kinds of attractors to your carp baits.

You first start by mixing eggs with colours, flavours, sweetener and other attractors. A general rule is to use about five-six eggs to 500g of base mixes. You will have to experiment on how much to use different kinds of attractors for your mixture.

You will need to mix the dough till you have round and decently hard dough. Once the dough is finished you will have to roll out small balls. It will make the process easier if you have extruding bait gun and others tools making it easier to form, shape and cut the bait for you.

Once you have finished preparing small balls of bait you will boil them for about a minute. You can easily boil 15-20 balls at the time.

I hope this hub helped to give you some ideas on both choosing bait for fishing, some of it can be used on existing fishing solutions you already have (natural bait + oil scent), or if you are really into the bait process you have a small foundation to start cooking your own homemade bait.