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!!!