One of the most useful fishing items has nothing to do with fishing and more to do with sausage making and meat grinding and processing. An old fashioned manual handle driven mincer has played a great part in making carp fishing baits since the earlier popular use of ground trout pellets in homemade carp baits decades ago and indeed before that.

One of the popular kinds of special carp baits years ago was made from a pet food yeast mixture powder packed with attractive minerals, and trout pellets, plus a little soya flour, semolina or milk powders perhaps to help binding alongside eggs and maybe Marmite as flavouring and extra enhancing etc. Elements of PYM style baits and baits of earlier carp fishing eras such as yeast, vitamin B and betaine rich wheat germ and so on have all been used over the years, right up to today to catch loads of winter carp. You can use elements and principles of old fashioned favourite bait recipes to help your own baits perform better whether you use readymade baits or make your own cheap homemade baits.

Phillips Yeast Mixture is still available today although the formula is slightly different to the original it is still a very useful product to exploit the senses of carp in your favour, most especially as it is rarely used today and will not arouse carp caution as much as many over-used popular ingredients and additives may!

You can get worm and maggot extracts form various sources in liquid forms and I regard these liquid protein type products to have great potential in terms of being different to so many conventional baits issuing forth recognisable products such as Belachan, bloodworm, mussel, L030, green-lipped mussel extract, corn steep liquor and others.

To ensure your baits are a little different all it takes is a glugs, dips and bait soaks that is a little alternative. These are exploited often for pulling fish to hook baits in particular. Homemade dips for example can be made using the benefits of glycerine in the mixture which due to its viscosity and density forms a halo of soluble attraction directly around the hook bait which can in many fishing circumstances bring bites more readily.

I prefer to combine many methods and ideas at once to overcome carp caution. One of the ways to top a popular readymade bait is to use a mixer or a spiked Korda bait crusher cylinder to break up some readymade baits into a fine powder. It does not matter if you use boilies, pellets, boilie pellets, your favourite nuts or seeds or meats or whatever. For late autumn, winter and the cold of spring time I prefer to make very finely crushed mixtures that form tiny particles when disturbed in water.

Note that hazel nuts are great for winter being rich in B vitamins (why stick religiously to tiger nuts for example?!) B vitamins are very important in boosting metabolism and this fact should be exploited in lower temperatures! Why not try adding CC Moore Cyprivit to your special ground baits and pastes and see the difference!

Simply mix up your powder or mash with some Phillips Yeast Mixture or maybe enzyme-treated yeast powder or enzyme-treated liver powder and add some liquid worm or maggot juice and liquid yeast for instance and then mix all this into a paste and let it all soak in together. Adding fine bread crumbs pre-soaked in aniseed, fennel oil (even better in my opinion,) or even basil essential oil and hemp oil for instance, are other good edges for winter and spring.

Making a mix drier using very fine and coarser particles is a great idea. The options and alternatives of substances to use really are endless although some are certainly far better in cold water than others and some have better characteristics in terms of fish stimulation or digestion or some other aspect perhaps that improves bait performance inside carp or how your bait interacts with water for example!

All you do is make the mixture into a paste. Just before use add extra crumbs and powders to it becomes crumbly again - this enables you to use it in PVA bags and netting without it melting. I rarely use netting and use very little PVA bags as I have discovered other methods that cut out this cost. I guess using a little more bread and maybe more coarsely chopped boilies and nuts etc will help the powders stay in position in PVA netting.

Ultimately, the bait will break up and soon produce a bait that will pull fish down to feed. Fish will recognise elements from the popular readymade bait you have found many anglers are baiting up with on a water and so you are exploiting this but topping the effect with some more unusual stimulating and attractive nutritional factors of your own!

This is such a simple idea yet very few anglers bother to adapt their own ground baits when fishing against anglers with the means or whatever to be using loads of readymade baits and this is just one way to top the effects of such baits. By winter time baits that are already established on a water do have obvious benefits but this does not mean that any particular ready made bait has not already hooked the big fish you want to catch and make them cautious! Therefore being able to exploit baits by adapting them and using them in new ways really is very effective in getting around fish caution - and avoiding too familiar baiting scenarios. However there are many ways of exploiting the benefits and features and actual modes of action etc of readymade bait recipes without even having to know what they actually are!

I have used PVA products in winter ever since Rod Hutchinson brought out PVA tubes years ago and although I was a fan of the old original Gardener PVA string, I objected to the price! One of the great things about playing around with baits is that you can find ways to avoid using PVA products altogether. Remember thinking like a fish and thinking differently can help you do things that bit differently to normal and get around fish caution instead of following the crowd and expecting unrealistic results.

One of the best things about using unique or alternative methods and being the first to exploit them on a water is that the fish tend to get hooked more easily - so why not give your thoughts about baits a little more creativity and come up with your very own irresistible secret mixtures to top all those readymade baits! Then next time someone asks you what bait you are using as you are catching so well you can tell them honestly you are using the popular readymades on your lake but with a big twist! (For much more information on making unique homemade baits and adapting readymade baits and altering for many applications and unique purposes see my bait making secrets website Baitbigfish and biography right now!)

By Tim Richardson.

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