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P a g e | 20 Ingredients from bait manufacturers Our prime consideration when formulating our own bait, or using any bait for that matter, is There are many types of processed bait out-competing the appeal of the barbels’ natural ingredients that we can buy from bait food and unless we achieve that we are certainly manufacturers and with which we can formulate going to have a very hard time catching them. baits to our own individual requirements. The Failure of our bait to deliver results leads to combinations of them must be endless! endless experimentation, trying to find that It is these that people often turn to when perfect combination of ingredients and looking for a new and individual bait, but it is consequently sliding down a slippery slope and also often where many become lost in a maze of into the ‘bait trap’! Once you are in it, it is very confusion! It is, without doubt, a minefield for difficult to get out. Total confidence in a bait is those inexperienced in bait making. Making a the only way out and that can only come with bait without understanding the nature of the success and success will not come until you have ingredients and how they react to each other confidence through catching - it’s a chicken and can end in a mess, and failure, before they even egg situation, and, as I stated, not a nice place to leave the kitchen - let alone reach the riverbank! be I can tell you! The mix will not roll, it is too stiff, or too sticky, The Essentials dissolves in the pan, or ends up like little bullets! Avoiding that bait trap is best done by not losing All these things the novice bait maker will sight when making or choosing a bait to use of experience, and there is no way round it really. what we are trying to achieve, whether using an You can take all the advice on board, but still, at HNV or ‘standard’ bait. Feeding the fish when some point, you will have the odd disaster! All I fishing, or pre-baiting, is only a means to an end can say is, you have to really enjoy the learning to get that all important hook in its mouth, that process or you are on a hiding to nothing! It will is an essential we must keep in mind, many lose become a chore and, as a result, you will never sight of it, and become wrapped up in do well at it. If this is the case you need to be unnecessary complexities in their bait recipes. honest with yourself and just stick to using proprietary ready-made mixes or baits. Attempts to keep the cost down can also result in an ineffective bait by using cheap, unappealing ingredients. This is, I believe, the case with many proprietary baits – not all, but some telling you on the packet they are the business are, in fact, made from cheap bulk ingredients, with a flavour that the manufacturer hopes will compensate for its nutritional inadequacies. You may have the odd success, where I believe the fish pick it up out of curiosity – but will it perform week in week out year in year out? I very much doubt it; a stick of 2004 – An early HNV capture pepperami will out-fish them a thousand times Trying to copy, by nutritional profile, the food a over! barbel eats naturally (a tall order in itself), is at best offering the fish nothing that it cannot find