These days saving money on fishing is very important and anything you can do to get better results for less money is worth doing and making your own unique homemade fishing baits is a fantastic example and need take very minimal time! There are a few basics to know about making baits and once you have these you can go ahead and make very unique and successful baits economically for the rest of your life. Making your own baits will save you're a shocking amount of money and not just in the long-term; so imagine what else you could be spending your hard-earned money on instead!
Carp live in an aquatic world where most of the food they eat is based on proteins which can also contain important essential oils which also provide extremely efficient energy and do not predominantly eat carbohydrates as with so many races of humans. Carp have evolved to extract the most energy as possible from the foods available; and this means from proteins especially. Making fishing baits which contain protein ingredients is so important and is in line with carp natural dietary (and naturally stimulatory bait requirements.)
Proteins are composed of amino acids which carp can easily detect and find stimulating; and there are around 10 plus essential ones which carp cannot synthesise in there own body and must consume in their food to survive. The carp essential amino acids list includes: Histidine, leucine, isoleucine, valine, tryptophan, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine and arginine and carp will eat foods and baits containing any of these as they are essential to them. Exploiting protein ingredients in your baits is obviously a good thing as you are offering something fish need to survive.
Our bodies and carp bodies have evolved and adapted to extract energy in the most efficient ways from food found in our natural environments. With carp we can simulate or even boost the natural attraction and stimulation of substances found in their natural foods in our baits. The range of ingredients, extracts, liquid attractors, flavors etc we can use to exploit carp natural food detection senses is phenomenal and ensures we can always make unique homemade baits!
Amino acid needs of carp are important because we can exploit them even in very simple baits to induce better feeding on baits and more bites. But these essential are not absolutely necessary to catch fish on homemade baits; far from it in fact and you can very often catch fish on competitive pressured fisheries on simple carbohydrate wheat and soya type baits which are extremely economical to make! To keep ahead of the fish you might simply just change certain aspects of the bait like attractors such as flavours or even treacles, honey, molasses, cordial syrups, or liqueurs etc.
In the UK many fishermen have the attitude that carp baits not made from very expensive protein ingredients are crap baits and catch few big fish, but the truth is that you can catch as many fish on carbohydrate based baits if you know what you are doing and have enough experience of other ingredients and how to fish such baits well and save yourself a fortune, which is what I have done successfully for decades. You just keep adjusting levels and types of stimulatory and attractive substances to create new baits regularly, so keeping ahead of the fish; and many big fish often fall to new unfamiliar baits with good reason...
These days there is an abundance of over-stocked carp fisheries to choose from and your bait, whatever it may be is generally regarded as natural food by these hungry fish. This is one big reason why homemade simple baits will catch anywhere, but then any bait fished correctly will catch the biggest, wariest fish on the richest of waters. When you know a bit more about bait and how to really make it work for you efficiently are far reduced costs, the rewards will shock you; I have made homemade baits for decades and saved myself a fortune and caught enough big fish on readymade dominated fisheries to say that 80 percent of all my homemade baits over the years have caught big fish whatever they have been based on!
Many carp fishermen get confused between the nutritional aspects of bait as opposed to the stimulatory aspect and assume that a bait absolutely needs to be totally nutritionally attractive and stimulating as a complete food in order to do the job, but this is just not true. Many perceived simple ingredients may have very surprising nutritional attraction in any key aspect whether it be vitamins, or minerals, oils or some other aspect like simulating something which carp naturally eat confidently (many flavours do this but have zero nutritional value.) It is a fact however, that amino acids rank among the most highly feeding stimulatory substances for carp and so exploiting this aspect in your baits is advantageous, but then you have endless other possibilities and combinations to choose from, to save you money and hook you those dream fish; all you need is to know a bit more about bait!
