What do you think of this?

4k L.T. 94
1k Pre-digested Fishmeal
1k Blood Powder
2.5k Maize Meal
1k Blue Cheese powder
0.5k Whey Protein Concentrate
300 ml Olive Oil

Then either -

300 ml Minamino
40ml Flavour (old school very successful attractor)

or -

500g Anhydrous Betain
500g G.L.M extract



Digestability? Useability? Rollability? Any ingredients that are unnecessary or could be substituted for cheaper but equally effective alternatives?

Don't hold back......I'm a big boy I can take it.

There seems to be a nation wide shortage of LT94 J.B, I don't know whether this will be your first stumbling block.
You could be a very popular man if you have a stock pile/suplier!!!
Not a very positive post I admit, but maybe one of the proper bait men could tell us which is the best replacement/compromise.

cc moores now have LT94 back in stock

Not a bait buff, just a passing interest in making bait that comes and goes depending upon if I can be bothered messing around.

Could be wrong, but I am fairly sure you will need some binders to get that to work and roll.

Maize meal is very low in terms of nutritional value.....

Are you using this as the binder?

Andy/Paul

Yep, maize meal is to be the binder, figured I may need to lower the quantities of fishmeals slightly to get it to bind.

I've also got half a mind on the binder being something that the fish can move through its gut easily and quickly. Not sure if Maize meal is suitable or not to be honest or if there are better ingredients available to achieve this.

Paul,

Aiming roughly for something with between 30 and 40% digestible/usable protein with enough lipids to satisfy energy demands and spare the protien.

Been about 15 years since I laid a hand on a rolling table and even longer since I faffed about with ingredients (Dumping 10ml of vanilla essence in some semo!), so forgive me any obvious mistakes that I may have made.

With price being something of a consideration, I'm just looking to put something together that is recognisable as food and is easily digestible.

If I'm honest I've caught a few this year on homemade hookers and I've gleaned a little bit of satisfaction from doing so. I'd forgotten how nice it is to catch 'em on something you've made yourself. I've also got something specific in mind (It's nothing earth shattering!) that I want to try doing with the base mix.

Once again, any feedback will be graciously received.

Blood Powder, too much and you end up with bait like bullets, even with a short boil, also eels love the stuff, personally I dont use more than 3% in a mix, 1/2 Kilo in 16K's of base mix, (your proposed rate is 10% of a 10K mix, you'll have cannon balls :)).Some expensive bits and bobs there, most definetley heavy on the Pre Digested FM, again, I use this at 3% of the mix, I cant comment on the Blue Cheese as I've never used it, and I always use semo as the binder, (3K's in 16K's), I dont use any oils as the LT94 content is OK in this respect, (PeteB will probably say I'm talking Biollix .)

I make bait in batches using 15 eggs,Betaine and GLM I add to the mix when making bait at the rate of a heaped teaspoon of each per 6 eggs, oh, and 28 gramms of Eqivite as well, its a horse tonic....verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry old school additive.

the groundbait mix i was using john..chicken meal and roasted peanut..i was told to add maize meal, soya flour and semo..to get it to a paste to stick round my boilies for distance baiting..a ten mm at 140 yards when the paste breaks down feels good tho..dont know about boiling tho m8!!!

4k L.T. 94
1k Pre-digested Fishmeal
1k Blood Powder
2.5k Maize Meal
1k Blue Cheese powder
0.5k Whey Protein Concentrate
300 ml Olive Oil

Then either -

300 ml Minamino
40ml Flavour (old school very successful attractor)

or -

500g Anhydrous Betain
500g G.L.M extract

Drop the LT94 and use Provimi 66, similar in amino acid profile and much cheaper, drop the pre-digested, it does nothing,replace Maize meal with good old Semo, get rid of Blue cheese powder and get some Lamlac in there, Drop blood powder and Whey and put a kilo of Soya meal in.....

Don't bother with Olive oil, use peanut (ground nut) oil...

Don't flavour it... whoever first said that flavours were attractants should be shot, many times... they are not...

Apart from that JB, it's a good mix and I would use it with confidence....

Apart from that JB, it's a good mix


LOL@pete after you compleatly changed the mix

But you are right as usal


Also add some spice, ti 7 spice is a good starting point

Like it Pete! They are excellent refinements to that base mix. I would also use that mix with confidence. Also, a man after my own heart..........No artificial flavours.......Nice one!

As you know Pete I like to put the odd base mix together here and there. I always field test them fishing only the base ingredients. Its a confidence booster to know that the base mix itself is sought out and eaten by carp. It shows, if the base mix is on the money, that the carp are eating it for what it is............and not because it's pretending to be something else. if that makes sense? It kind of did in my head....lol!

Opinions please?

Minamino.....I am not convinced it is the attractor it is often cracked up to be. In fact, if given the choice I would always go for CSL instead. The active, bottle exploding if it gets too warm variety.

Can you please expand upon that a little Pete?

I always assumed being soluble it would be something for the fish to home in on and investigate?

i`d like to know that too.people rave on about predigested and the price for enzyme treated jeese!,is the price of it just hyped for anglers supply and demand because of the faze and not the knowing the why..sure be nice to know???

Thanks for the replies gents, it's a rare pleasure on here at the moment.

Fair amount of disagreements and opinions, which is what I was after.......So.......if I try and set out my reasons for using the ingredients I did please feel free to disagree, or correct me.

4k L.T. 94

Protien, - Good Amino Acid Profile - Does it matter? - lipid, attraction - Food!

1k Pre-digested Fishmeal

All of the above - As people have said is it worth it? - I've just googled it - Does predigesting (in this product) mean removing oils but leaving pollyunsaturated fatty acids?

1k Blood Powder

Colour, hardness and food again, plus from the sources I looked at and presuming I didn't make a mistake, then the amino acid profile of Blood meal compliments fishmeal - Is that correct and does it matter?

2.5k Maize Meal

Binder, plain and simple plus Carbs - If they Matter! - Bind it all up and hopefully allow the carp to sh1t it all out again quickly and efficiently - Does that matter?

1k Blue Cheese powder

Maybe a bit of protein, probably a bit more lipid, salt it says in the bumph - Does that Matter? - but generally there as something to attract the fish that they like eating - Does it? Do they?

0.5k Whey Protein Concentrate

Binding. Rolling. - Does it?

300 ml Olive Oil

Rolling. Lipid and because of it's linoleic acid content - Is that relevant?

300 ml Minamino
40ml Flavour (old school very successful attractor)

or -

500g Anhydrous Betain
500g G.L.M extract

Attractors. To make the fish investigate, eat and want to eat again, the bait.



I should add to that, pre-baiting is not really much of an option. I've got 3 very busy venues, with pressured fish in mind. I either fish short 5 hourish day trips or overnighters and rarely fish more than 20 or so hours in a week. I want to fish small baits.


One final thing, what are peoples feelings about Lamlac? do you use it? Why?

Andy, the purpose of the pre-digested is to improve the biological value of the bait (thus its digestability) in the gut, after eating, not prior....

Pete, I think Sesame Seed Oil would be a better bet than the one you suggest (agreed yours is better than Olive Oil), plus SSO does provide a 'smell' label to the bait...

SSO in the bait and then coated neat on baits have a good track history in Kent...a certain Dr Ian Brown, did very well.....

Pete, I also agree that semolina is a much better choice than the maize meal, which from memory is quite coarse. Marginally better nutritionally and the ultimate binder. Most ready mades are packed with semolina....

Also agree on the GLM as a source of natural betaine. Beware many comanies are selling dodgy GLM, only trust the big companies. If this is too costly then Betaine HCI must be in there or Finnstim.

Never used lamlac....is this a similiar ingredient to the old soya isolate? Or alternatively, the old lactein 75?

Lamlac… used it in Pete B’s mix, but as an ingredient it seems to cause me problems when mixed with certain other ingredients.. Good in a paste thou..

Johnny B/ Paul ..Lamlac.. from the label on the bag..
Ingredients
>40% Whey Protein Powder, 10-25% Blended Vegetable Oil,0-10% Hydrolysed WheatGluten, 0-10%Calclum Carbonate, 0-10% Vitamins & Minerals, 0-10% DL Methionine, 0-10% Citric Acid,0-10% Antioxidant BHT E321
Analysis
Oil-24%
Protien-24%
Fibre-Nil
Copper 3mg/Kg
Ash-7%
Vitamin A- 50,000 lu/kg
Vitamin D3-6000 lu/kg
Vitamin E-100 lu/kg

I ended up dropping it for seaweed & changed the levels of the other bits in Pete’s mix ... No doubt he will strike me down for ruining a good base mix

Sesame Seed Oil..Mmm lovely sort of nutty of smell, I use it on the rolling table to stop baits sticking to it

The whole enzyme/pre-digested thing.. I could never work out if nutrition was actually lost at the cost of attraction.. but then again I’m not the brightest

Whey Protein, excellent rolling properties, also made from milk, cheaper than Caseins, also milk products,I use blood only 'cause I've got some and dont have a problem with eels where I'm fishing

seame oil and rayners condensed milk :-)

Paul what you mean by "dodgy" GLM? old stock?

No Vader, there are different grades of GLM and there is high quality and low quality, it all depends on the manufacturing and stabilising process. This is reflected in the price.

Some of the smaller companies selling GLM at cheap prices can only be selling the inferior product....

Yes i use lamblac very creamy smelling i have a good sniff every time i open the bucket to add it to my mix luverly mmmmmmmm

I thought I knew that, but assumed that I must have been informed wrong if Pete was telling us that it does nothing.

Surely if the stuff is predigested and soluble it will also be leaching amino’s into the water, thus giving off food signals?

Perhaps "silmultaneous" is the key word here Andy......

Is that some sort of shape.

So are you suggesting that it does both?

Thats what I was getting at in my last post, obviously not doing a very good job of it though.

No.....its a form of "equation"...

To be of practical use...does the AA/Enzyme algorithm
have to be simultanious and contemptory ? ......

Sorry mate that has just gone right over my head. I have never looked into it that deeply and my limited education does not stretch to enzyme algorithms. In fact scratch that, it does not stretch to algorithms full stop.

In short I aint got a clue what you are on about.

..And yet....I know you will be back....

hahaha ...

been reading this post with great enthusiasm..and i`ll tell thee now i can decipher information coming from a distant star to the seti institute easier

i think and i could be wrong here again.. is what pete put was an economical effective mix.. thats less mither with less ingredients but gives equal attractivity.. maybe a little less but for the costs .ample..less is more..and maybe some ingredients that claim certain values maybe annulled when combined with certain other ingredients..so i`d opt for what pete put and add a little sommat to harden

I assume that all comes down to the enzymes already catered for by Mr. Carp itself, the time of the year ( watertemperature), the denaturation of AA profile by heat treatment, the treatment after boiling (drying, storing etc), the knowledge we have about the nutritional value of the ingredients used and all these concidered in one formulation. Heehee! And then there are people who thinks they know about bait.

Gentlemen we know absolutely nawt about bait.

Paul,

dont you think maizemeal is a much better "binder"(it doesn't really, does it?) than semo concidering the use of soy ingredients in certain formulations?

anyways...

I think I would prefer Pete's mix. Sesame oil hasn't brought me more succes than peanut oil. It's only more expensive and - in many cases.

Wey protein in fishmealmixes hasn't either...

have a nice one. I'm out prebaiting

Mitz I don't use maize meal or semolina in any of my mixes as a binder, since nutritional quality is key to me...

I tend to use milk proteins as a binder namely casein and lactalbumen.....

Paul,you obviously have far too much money available to you if those are your given choice as binders mate!!!!!

Gissa sub geezer???

Skint mate.....but I am a fieldtester for Nutrabaits...

So whats the differance between egg albumin and lac albumin both do the same thing dont they?

Lactalbumen is highly digestable and nutritious and is derived from milk.....egg albumen less so and comes from eggs...

The 825 Alatal stuff from Fronterra NZ is the best i have used to date.

Highly digestable means diddly squat if the products of that digestive process are not in the correct proportions for a carp..

Pre-digested fishmeal, whoever says it is soluble? Soluble means the ability to dissolve in water..

MOST fishmeals do not contain the ideal amino acid requirements of carp, you need to supplement them, pre-digested ones are simply more available, they do not address nutritional requirements of carp, simply break down.

Pre-digested simply releases the peptide chains/amino content of the meal that is subject to the process... whether that is of benefit to a bait I am highly dubious as the same effect happens quite naturally on the lake bed.... and it's a bugger to roll a bait with a high proportion of Pre-digested....

No kidding sherlock????????

Miasma... your obtuse replies are highly amusing...

More headaches for us Andy LOL bit DEEP for me to understand to be honest


http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac50020a021

Pete,
By releasing the peptide chains/amino content of the meal do we achieve a greater attraction by having more bits advailable to ionize/attract or what ever they do? But by also braking down the meal or the egg wall & immersing it in water do we also lose nutrition/the correct proportions quicker as well.
It’s a question that has troubled my simple mind.. Is it a case of high attract at loss of nutrition or about as good a compromise as we can get between the 2 at present.

Excuse my simple mind…it’s haunted me for years

Hunter,
The best you can achieve is to break down a protein mix that caters for all amino requirements in a carp, you get attraction on the most basic level (they cannot ignore it) plus you get the perfect nutritional profile. This is VERY, VERY difficult and requires an understanding of certain chemical reactions I have not got my head fully around... it is DEEP to put it in a simple way.. LOL

I am working on it, but am not totally there.. yet..

"Is it a case of high attract at loss of nutrition or about as good a compromise as we can get between the 2 at present"

The contributions by Les Watts on attractor leakage in the latest BCSG book (Rotary Letter 2) should be required reading for all those who make bait, it explains what you are thinking about 'attractor' loss. It will conversly put you onto a different train of thought if your mind is that way inclined....

However, substitute a boilie for a dissolving bait and it all reverses... But... dissolving baits present their own special problems....

High attract is a nebulous concept, 'attract' means they get a feeding reaction to the signal in the case of a carp. 'Attractors' are well documented for carp and most on the market do not fall into that definition.

Obtuse.......but amusing......

Only you could think up such replies...

I do believe that you are trying to confuse people... or at least get them reaching for the paracetamol...

stop right there bivvyman pmsl...jesus christ you only live once..algebra at school was bad enuff..

A times C over D divided by E..if = F fish

when E is luck and A is weather what is D and C??? = fish



ANSWERS.. place and time and bait aint even in the equasion

Well...D and C must be a uterine scraping....frankly I think
Algorithmic reasoning falls down here......

i wouldn`t ever want to know if it did or not

one thing i would like to know..after baiting up with the latest bionic bait ingredients..how long in the water is it before the bait is rendered useless to the carp..nutritionally???? anyone??

Never, It breaks down and becomes more nutritionally available (mostly) if not eaten it will contrubute to general nutrients on the lake bed (it's different in garden ponds with limited water) so don't put loads of boilies in an enclosed pond....

So it's ok to pile the bait in where there is a stream feeding the lake at one end
and a dam at the other end
So long as the water is of course emptying from the lake via the dam wall

Brian,LAKE and POND?

Can you see the difference?
one is big,the other,small by comparison!!!!

What peter said was"dont pile them into a pond!"

You said"stream fed with a dam"Now thats some frigging pond mate!!

ok, say the bait dosent get eaten in 7/14 days on a bland bed in winter..will the carp still get the max nutritional value out of that bait.. should it find and eat it and tufties aint found it first???

The bait will decay and if not eaten will contribute to the overall background protein count, the carp will inadvertantly benefit, you are obviously questioning an area you don't understand, can you be specific on what you want to know please....

Tut tut peter, the fella asked a fair question,at least give an answer without the mockery please mate?

Can i ask what baits we are actually talking about here?Are we talking about our baits or just food baits generally?Shelfies,? etc,for as to give an accurate answer,we first need to ascertain the baits makeup before an answer can be given!!!!

Going by post No1 i would say homemades

It was always Fred Wilton's contention - and I agree with him and Pete is also agreeing (I think) that by using HNV baits any baits that are not eaten by the carp enrich the water itself, leading to an increase in water life and plants etc. due to the added nutrients... Over a period of time waters greatly benefit from the use of HNV baits...

I also think that when a HNV bait leaves the gut (i.e. is crapped out) by the fish this also contributes to this effect....

I have seen the carp in my own lakes feeding on the excrement of other carp directly as the surplus food is crapped out....

Sorry, can't stop myself... whatever the composition it will contribute to the overall background protein count (assuming the bait has a protien content) ...

Volume of water is the key, the smaller, the more vulnerable it is to overbaiting causing Nitrate or Nitrite? overload..

Besides, everyone knows Timber is a......

Pete, is right in a small pond it is important not to overload the pond with baits.....as an old user of amino acids in the 1970's the exponents of these baits at the time warned against over-use in small ponds...

100% Paul, Protein not used directly by a carp (eaten) will be utilised by the organisms in the water... it will enrich the water.... not to be tried in a garden pond though...

Not even a stream fed one with a dam end pete????

Prepare a good filtraion system....

Bacteria…Ammonia/ammonium/ph.. I presume...Interesting stuff even to my simple mind…

yeah was just asking about bait still being nutritional after some time cos i seem to remember somewhere in the back of my mind a water where it was drained and lots of boilies was still there on the bed..a while back tho..and bait ingredients have moved on since then..cheers for clearing up that one

Pete moving on ..By raising the background protein count could this lead to difficulties with location of food through chemoreception in that area or would they respond to something that’s different to the background clutter.
Another option would be move to another area or wait for the conditions are more favourable for detection of food..
I wonder if baits really blow as much as we are lead to believe..

The amount you could raise the background level would be small, unless you regularly baited with the aid of a tipper lorry..

Baits do not 'blow', well, good ones don't anyway.... I use a tweaked version of a base mix that is over 20 years old, it still catches as it emits food signals, if this particular bait 'blows' it means that the carp are no longer using their receptors to locate food and we are about to have the largest carp death scenario in history...

In order to understand what I am on about, answer this question, in a murky lake at a depth of twelve feet there is no light and carp cannot see the bottom of a lake, you put out two beds of bait, each one covering five square yards, one contains 2 kilos and the other 40 kilos, how does a carp regognise the big bed of bait? If it was increased food signals it would just increase its desire to feed... there's something else and it's common to most baits and the reason bait companies bring out different baits each year.... what is it? and I'm not just talking flavours either...

p & a H.

Pete..Ionisation...p/H change.or am I heading in the wrong direction.
Thanks for taking the time so far ……..Ionisation...p/H change.. be warned this could lead to a lot more questions..

pH change is an investigation trigger, much the same as a food signal, if it becomes a repellant you have overdone it or we are back to a mass carp death scenario..

Take a look at the advertising blurb for what you consider the 'top' baits... the ones in the shops that 90% of anglers use, then look at advertised 'attractors', then google these substances.... any similarity? look in depth at solubility and the base chemicals, you may have to look at chemical formulae, but once understood it's not that daunting...

Pete are you refering Base Chemicals as the opposite of Acids? i.e a chemical compound that is greater than 7.0pH when dissolved in water (Ammonia as an example)?

Cal
I hope he’s referring to flavour bases.. Propylene glycol, Isopropyl alcohol, Ethyl alcohol etc.. or I’ve been googling up the wrong tree

The common denominator in all commercial baits is of course flavour,be it on whatever base you like!!! if used enough and in quatity,then it will cause alarm and of course blow,carp will learn to avoid these signals through association,either that or they are a lot thicker than i thought they were?

But then,perhaps im just a censored angler????Anyway,Going down the same old road,pete is right in that flavours catch more anglers than fish,there are of course a few exceptions that are better at the investigation phase,but these are either greatly above or below the ph 7 for neutral,either very acidic,or very alkaline,again,this is dependent on the said ph of the water in question as to the effectiveness of the said flavour!!!

Dean
But by taking away the investigation trigger do we limit our baits to a narrow window of opportunity?

Maybe it’s a case of finding more suitable substances to trigger the investigation process instead of rocket fuel & solvents.. But will the carp learn to avoid these given time, say chilli for example IF it works along the same lines ..circles

My thoughts are based around something Mr Paisley wrote over 25 years ago regarding the significance of a p/h of 7 & the alterations triggered by flavours..mind blowing stuff

Its one of the reasons we chose the enzyme route,aminos being natural triggers to the carp we feel were the obvious answer,chilli is also added to alter the ph signal emmited and for that reason only.

carp cannot ignore aminos or else they would not be able to find their natural larders.

nAtural additives are the way forward,but,the really good ones are not cheap so in turn not commercially viable for the majority of big bait boys!!!

I think you'll find Nutrabaits have always gone down the natural ingredients and attractors road now for many years, Dean....I know I'm biased as a Nutrabaits man, but that is the truth....

I couldnt agree more with you paul on that point but......

What i am trying to say is,there are far more effective natural attractors available of which a few im sure mr cottam is aware of that would make a far better bait,both in terms of attraction and nutritional benefit,but due to profit margins,these are shelved in favour of lesser,so called attractors/investigation triggers!

Lets face it paul,you and me both know that its all about the dollar in this game for the big boys!!!

good stuff up to now and further away from my comprehension on bait and fish attractants..leave that stuff to you guys..

what d`ya reckon to this then???..this below is the breakdown of the complete diet and nutrients required apparantly for goldfish and with them being a member of the carp crew..

what would be in the other percentage left..???

and are we going overboard with the natural needs of a carp at hnv levels??


Protein 33.5%
Oil 12.0%
Ash 13.0%
Fibre 3.0%
Vitamin A 10,000 IU/kg,
Vitamin D3 2,400 IU/kg,
Vitamin E 500 IU/kg.

"???..this below is the breakdown of the complete diet and nutrients required apparantly for goldfish"

Protein.... now that's where it falls down, Protein is made from amino acids and different proteins have different amino acid profiles, a bait with 98% protien can be 1% useable to a carp, Some milk or soya based ingredients are a very good example of this....

Understand what a carp needs and build a bait around that...

Paul, Nutrabaits is a good company, claims of nutritional shelf life baits though....... I know marketing etc... and the b/sh1t that goes with it, so I'll put it down to that...

I know what you are saying here Pete, but the question is still valid and interesting. Presuming you have got your Amino profile as sorted as you can, are thses sort of figures banded about by the fish feed industry relevant to bait?

Considering that the carp/goldfish intended to be fed by this hypothetical diet will have no other food source, live in a confined and limited environment and cost will be a factor.

Are these figures really the ideal diet, or just the ideal financial compromise, cost-growth ratio for captive fish?

so,in simple terms for people like me..
the complete feed supplement is 33% protein to the fish and the other percentage is protein that the fish can`t utilise..is it same with bait ingredients..ones that boast 80% protein levels should state what protein in percentages is utilised by fish not humans..fish/carp might only get to utilise 1 to 33% unless the protein is correct only for the carp..

i can see how a diet of that above would benefit fish in captivity and be it complete and efficient to the chemistry of its environment with waste management..but..i have now goldfish the size of good crucians in a 4ft tank...all extremely healthy and fit..but i put that down to near like tropic fish conditions barr heating elements and feeding three times a day more than the designated requirements labelled but i can`t help feeling the plight of those who look starving...what i`m getting at is..with this diet...it may seem more of less wasted proteins maybe more beneficial in this habitat...and can the overloading with wrong proteins in bait be dangerous???
couple of ingredients that i aint seen mentioned lately is...yeasts..fats..algae..and derivatives of a vegatable origin besides those of fish!

Andy,
The ideal diet will probably be dependant on water temperature, I have it in my mind that the optimum temperature for growth is around 28°C, not many lakes see that sort of figure.

Pete, Why should it be immpossible to produce nutritional shelf life bait? Does bait have to mean boilies? The koi industry seem to manage it, granted it may not be the ultimate food due to costing, but I bet it's a damned sight closer than the majority of baits.

Dean,
I'm interested in how you use chilli to alter the pH signal. Do you know what the pH is of your finished bait, and what it would be without the chilli? Would this vary much depending on the water the baits were boiled in? Or could you use additives in the boiling water to control the pH of the finished bait?
Lot of questions there, sorry.

One last one, does the pH of the carp you're trying to catch have any bearing on this?

Ged,every ingredient we use within our baits is used because it has a specific function within the mix.The chilli,being acidic,alters the ph signal of our baits.What people must realise is that in the ph scale 0.1 is quite a large difference.Yes we do know the ph of our finished bait and also the post boiling ph.The water its boiled in has little effect,it is temperature or the efficient working temperatures of the different enzymes we use that is the key for us!

We have never found the need to control ph through addits during boiling.

A little example,a chalk pit i have been fishing for a few years seemed to respond extremely well to a highly acidic bait of ours! The chalk lake being on the alkaline side and the bait being acidic,i feel,played a major role in its success

Feeds for aquaculture are designed with two things in mind, the cost of the feed vs the economic value of the end product (fish) and the fact that extremely high protein diets may well be best, but they mess up water quality without very expensive filtration (Costs again) Protein supplemented with lipids is the best for weight gain. Fish pellets are dry, boilies are moist, proteins are one of the most difficult substances to preserve in a moist state, shelf life nutritional baits are no more than a dream at present (the ways to do this are phenominally expensive for a fish bait.....)

The pH of Dean's bait is designed to maintain enzyme activity, boiling in water the sme pH as you intend he baits to be presents its own problems... Chilli is present for several reasons.....

Pete, in empirical terms you are simply wrong in terms of shelf-life boilies....

Nutrabaits shelf life Trigga and Trigga Ice boilies outfish any other boilies massively on lots of French waters - including my own - how can that be?

In my view it follows Wilton's view that carp will always take advantage of the best available food source and these baits offer excellent nutrition...

WOW!!! Yep I will say it again WOW!

Just what I thought Pete. So in short, 90% of bait, if not more is formulated using an potentially flawed and irrelevant ideal as a base.

Pete what profiles are you basing the drop the 94 comment on? Not saying provimi is crap they can still thrive on the stuff but 94 is far superior as far as I am aware?


Drop the flavour is a good shout though

The figure given for protein is highly misleading in that it simply states the amount of protein in the diet that will exhibit maximum growth rates or support a healthy mature fish.

If you dont 'reasonably' meet the specific amino acid requirement of carp or goldfish of the 10 essential amino acids the end result is the same...stunted and unhealthy fish

It doesnt matter if the protein content is 50% if the essential amino acids are not there in the correct ratios your end result is going to be the same.Equally if you can meet the requirements within less than 35% protein in your finished baits its going to be fine, and much better if feeding goldfish in an enclosed environment.Ammonia and tank/pond fish dont mix

"So in short, 90% of bait, if not more is formulated using an potentially flawed and irrelevant ideal as a base."

Not exactly what I was inferring, but correct nonetheless, those who quote aquaculture feeds as a base/blueprint for the ideal are wholly wrong and any bait based on such thoughts are therefore not as good as can be made....

"Nutrabaits shelf life Trigga and Trigga Ice boilies outfish any other boilies massively on lots of French waters - including my own - how can that be?"

Best of a bad bunch...? They are probably marginally better than most others based on what you say, but as 99% of people go to France with all kinds of readymades (like uncle Joe's Euro Semo Specials) it isn't that much of a test really, is it...

reminds me of the executioner who asked a condemned man whether he wanted to be flogged to death or hung, he chose hanging, the end result was the same, just a more pleasant way of achieving it....

Perhaps Nutrabaits have defied the laws of science and created a cost effective way of preserving proteins in a moist state, if so, there are numerous research centres in multinational companies that would pay hundreds of millions for the knowledge...

Ammonia and tank/pond fish dont mix ..


too true saggy but i did say mine was near tropic conditions..well really its more marine without heating...four filters including an external pondfilter and all contain nitrate fighting carbon medium ..these fish are in the pond of eden

>>"Perhaps Nutrabaits have defied the laws of science and created a cost effective way of preserving proteins in a moist state, if so, there are numerous research centres in multinational companies that would pay hundreds of millions for the knowledge"""


they`ve managed it with tin foods for years pete so beans to you

what about vaccume packs where the baits are oiled first..sure that would lock in moisture but keep out air

Wow this thread is all over the place,

A couple of thoughts if I can stick my oar in.

Re, commercial fish feed diets. I think its misleading to dismiss them out of hand. They are after all based on legitimate scientific research and although as Pete (I think) has pointed out they are concerned with determining the best compromise between growth and expense. This 35-40% protein level has been arrived at through such a compromise. The research that I have read states as much in saying that the increase in growth attained through increasing protein levels beyond this ratio is not significant enough to warrant the extra expense. So the question in my mind is, is this increased growth significant to us in formulating a more attractive bait? Lets not loose sight of the whole point of bait, its there to catch fish not feed them. Is a bait with a usable protein level of 60% a better bait than one with a useable protein content of 40%?

Re, Protein to lipid ratios. A carps primary concern is to satisfy its energy requirements. Once it has done this then it can begin to utilise the protein content for growth and maintenance. Its misleading therefore to think of Protein ratios as static levels since the amount of Protein that that carp will utilise for growth and maintenance depends on how much energy it is expending at that particular time and how much of that energy can be supplied through metabolising the lipid content of that particular food. Put simply, an active Carp in the height of summer will expend and therefore require more energy than a Carp in the depths of winter. If that summer time Carp cannot meet its energy requirements from the lipid content alone then it will begin to catabolize the protein supplied in that bait for energy rather than growth and maintenance. That naturally dictates that there is therefore, in a nutritionally complete food source and one designed to encourage maximum growth, a maximum level of protein required in order to leave room for the lipid content and that this ratio of Protein to Lipids will vary throughout the season dependent on the carps energy requirements. So what are the parameters for this ratio and how does it vary throughout the year? 40/60, 50/50, 60/40, 80/20? Does a 'better' bait take account of this? Is there a maximum lipid content?

Re, Limiting Aminos. I'm not dismissing it because its a scientific fact but I've always been a little sceptical about how much it matters in an angling situation. In a tank, yes, if you don't supply a complete food the carps health and growth will suffer but in an angling situation where you can't control exactly what that Carp is eating is it really so critical? I stand to be corrected here but from what I gather if the transit time for food in a carps gut is around the 12 hour mark (for this example) and a carp eats some Pond snails and blood worm at 9 o'clock in the morning; it then goes on to eat some bait made from LT94 at half past one and then finishes off with some mayfly and maggots for desert at about 3 o'clock. Can anybody say for definite that those or other food items eaten either side of the LT94 bait are not supplying the carp with the essential amino acids it requires and that providing that the carp eats those other items before the LT94 bait has travelled through the gut then it is able to use them in conjunction with the LT94 bait?


Finally, back to the real world. I challenge anybody out there to tell me, using everything they know about nutrition, chemoreception and attraction. Why are Halibut pellets such a noticeably better bait than any boilee I've ever used for catching Bream?

Timber, your understanding of preservation is very limited, I will restrain this time from dissecting you in public, I may not be too understanding tommorrow..

Johnny, I'm tired and going to bed..... will post a replyy tommorrow..

pete i have proof..i`ve got a tin of pre-war beans
dont know what they`ll be like..probably crap when fresh back then..especially if everyone raves on about bread n drippin

Johnny, commercial fish feeds are designed with costings in mind, they are OK in terms of nutritional profile and satisfy the commercial fish producers.. However, step across the line and look at bait as an attractor... FLAA etc now start to play a part, carp can detect what they need, they have numerous receptor sites that are quite specific. Ignore the nutritional benefits and look on this in an attractor sense...
Lipids, you are correct that the requirement will vary according to water temperature (and consequent carp activity) but altering the lipid source is the best way forward on this, I have found no maximum lipid level save for the abiity to roll....
Halibuts..... the quantity they are used in....