Roobish what you are reading is, that because of the restrictive cost there has been little scientific research into Carp full stop, never mind into bait theories. People can't offer what does not exist. You don't believe the HNV theory and say that the success of the bait is down to the experience and watercraft of the angler. Ok that’s fair enough, now show us your scientific evidence to back that up. You see how easy that was, asking for the impossible can work for both sides of a debate.
You are not comparing like to like here Roobish treats are for pets and domesticated animals Carp are wild. Tell me as a biologist are you seriously saying that given an abundance of food wild animals will NOT eat the food that offers them the greatest nutritional benefit? Is it just a fluke that the preferred food for most wild animals just happens by coincidence to be the one that is most suited to their nutritional needs and digestive system? More to the point how do they know, for example do weaning Koalas sit a course on the nutritional benefits of Eucalyptus and plant identification? Hand rear a Koala and when weaning offer a choice of foods including Eucalyptus and you just know which one it is going to automatically make a bee-line for. Granted an extreme example but there is your sixth sense in action. Assuming that Carp will eat the food that offers them the greatest nutritional value is quite a reasonable assumption given the track record of other wild animals. As they say though the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Well after 30 years, baits based upon the HNV theory are totally dominant. Oh but of course that is nothing to do with the HNV theory or even the fact that they are just good baits for face value, we are all simply sheep who follow blindly. All our years of experimenting and comparing baits were just a figment of our imagination. We are mass produced instant Carp anglers come sheep, and a guy on a YTS scheme stamps Noddy on our foreheads as we roll of the end of the conveyor.

Yes, i believe in the foodbait / HNV Theory, and its because of personal experience with baitmaking contra practical results by fishing... In my experience a HNV / Foodbait typed mix catches me more fish than a plain 50/50 type mix... It CAN be a coincidence - but by trial and error fishing / experience - im convinced by those results ive had - that the HNV / Foodbait are the most stimulating to carps feeding behavior...
( Im talking baits made out of egg's + basemix only, without any flavours, senseappeals etc. )

Another thing that does im convinced are the scientific results on how fish ( carp ) detects food, where every result points in a direction where the carps senses are tuned to detect certain components / signals to stimulate a feeding behavior, these signals are closely related to the carps nutritional requirements - and the ingredients HNV's / foodbaits are made of compared to the 50/50 mix...

But, theres no scientific results im aware of, wich prooves that a carp should could recognise instantly how digestable / useable a bait / food are...

So as long the scientists agree and my personal and other baitmakers and anglers experience are as mentioned above i believe in this "theory" ( i dare to claim "fact")...

Theres quite a few scientific papers out there prooving this... try look at "stimulants of feeding behavior in fish" and you'll see what i mean...

Of course carp can be caught occaitionly without these food signals in precence - because its just curious and investigate the "items" it meets by sight and feeling, and maybe sometimes a "smell" wich are new...

I'd like to ad protease to my protein source before making my baits - to chop down the protein chains - to make them more digestable and hopefully more stimulating to carps feeding behavior... When i want the baits to more digestable its not because of attraction and more runs - its because i'd like to feed carp with a better foodsource because its more healthier than fill it up with crap - i feel kind of responsable for what i feed the carp with...

Hope it makes sense, id wish my expression skills where better or we could discuss this in danish....

Andy,

First let me say that I am playing devils advocate with HNV's. Do I believe it? Well, I'm not sure..hence this post. As a scientist I look for documented evidence. What you appear to be suggesting is that a carp will take a HNV bait over its natural food source. To borrow from your Koala example it would suggest that if you came up with a synthetic food source for it, it would prefer to eat that over its natural food source? Examples from zoos suggest that this isn't the case. If that is true we should be fishing with snails etc....which we do. I don't doubt that these baits work, but there must be some scientific evidence that carp like what we are trying to stimulate in them. There has been plenty of science into that, as it is of interest to Koi owners and feed-carp stock ponds. However, do they take that over their regular food?

Roobish

I believe that they would prefer, or pay attention to, the "synthetic foodsource" over the naturals IF the "synthetic foodsource" is more readily available and maybe easier digestable than the natural one...

- best results in angling have a tendency to prove that Foodbaits / HNV's goes hand in hand with the longterm prebaitng campaigns, where baits with lack of nutrients seems to blow in longterm use... ( ive seen a couple of waters where this doesnt occur though... )

Roobish, I know that your post was pointed at Andy, I hope its okay if i answer it to?

No I agree with that, so let me put it a different way.

I have read many studies on carp neurones and receptors. While the motivation might not be what I put, the science has been done. I want to know if that is what people are basing their theories on.
I can put a list up here of these documents, so everyone can get them.

Roobish

I would be very interested in such list roobish, i have only a limited amount of documents - the rest is mostly abstract's... Im basing a lot of the things i try out in baits on such data, and they help me to get the point behind what im doing...

The only papers I have seen where done by lovell and loeb I think...never had them, just saw the results of their studies, no doubt you have also seen these papers??

Semo soya and a big dollop of a minamino type liquid will have there receptors going into over drive thinking its good food...

I wonder if you fed them that, how long they would carry on eating it, and how your catch rates would compare to other anglers using HNV based foods on the hard fished waters here in the UK....

The 'HNV' theory has been proven scientifically in research carried out a long time ago. It was first done with rats where a range of foods of varying nutritional composition were offered and then with crucian carp and trout.

The gist of the research is that fish are able to differentiate between food sources and select a food source that offers them the most nutritional gain, down to individual amino acid deficiency in a food. This occurs over a relatively short time, a couple of weeks from memory.