Have you ever wondered what the attraction of milk to fish really is? Using cows milk has been very consistently successful in carp fishing baits and is well proven over many decades now. Big name commercial bait manufacturers use some extremely expensive milk fractions, derivatives and so on in various baits with very good reason!

I will not bore you with why milk or any ingredient is especially attractive to carp here, however you will discover why you need not be totally dependant upon readymade baits ever again and when you have made and fished using bait ideas given here you will know that making your own cheap homemade baits catch very good fish indeed - and that big carp are highly attracted to milk!

Milk based baits where really all the rage for a very long time and totally dominated top carp waters for years and years before anglers realised that other ingredients that cost relatively less could produce great catches too. As cost is one of the major factors why milk based baits are not used as universally as in past decades it should be remembered that basically there is more profit there for bait companies to make their baits mainly out of cheaper ingredients. However we can make baits that are exceptionally productive on just a small scale and without spending a fortune - that you really can trust will catch loads of bigger carp everywhere you fish.

Just to put things into perspective, because milk protein baits are so high in protein and so very nutritionally attractive you only need a small number of them to catch big fish. By contrast you may have noticed the amount of kilograms of fish meal and bird food boilie baits that anglers use - and still blank!

Many anglers realise that a bait simply consisting of maize flour, eggs and flavours can catch lots of carp. However this is a microcosmic picture of what is going on in terms of fishing lakes, carp responses, fishing situations and angling pressure and abundance or lack of natural foods and so on. One way of describing the attraction of milks could be to say that when milk derivatives etc are in solution carp really respond to their taste and smell and their over palatability.

This word is used a lot when speaking about bait but does not quite mean the same thing in fish as in humans as fish senses and how they are connected to their different fish brain via converging nerve connections etc differ from ours, but the over all effects are very much similar. Baits offer stimuli which ultimately result in amino acid and hormone etc releases in the brain which determine how the fish will physically and physiologically respond to your bait. So in effect you could be said to be drugging fish in many ways - and there are many ways of influencing fish behaviour just as there are of influencing human behaviours. For instance, just reading this article is having an effect on you brain chemical releases and how you feel about the words you are reading.

You have most likely heard of the adrenaline rush and the fight or flight syndrome that affects the human body. This is the effect I am talking about - and getting your baits right can be truly devastating in terms of great catches. Unfortunately very many anglers do not realise what their baits are ultimately aimed at doing and either do not apply them to maximise their impacts or often present baits that fish are already very cautious of; so reducing chances of hooking the fish.

I understand all the advantages of buying and using readymade baits. However how can you possibly fish them to their maximum potential effect if you are ignorant of what they contain (and why,) and do not know what they are doing to carp senses of all possible kinds and how they impact upon carp physiology and brain chemicals release etc. Remember that your bait is supposed to get a hook into a fishs mouth but to do this it need to stimulate it into physically being in the modes of carp behaviours that maximise chances of you hooking a fish.

Beside this there are other factors which can matter enormously in influences fish responses including how your bait substances react or interract with the water it absorbs (or adsorbs) etc. But be confident that making your own baits will really help you get a really good competitive edge and understanding of how better to influence carp feeding responses in your unique favour!

Just like blood, milk contains very many aspects about it that make it a very nutritionally stimulating food that stimulates carp into feeding enthusiastically. If we begin with making homemade baits using the very high protein milk powders from bait companies this could cost you loads without you at this stage being able to fully maximise the nutrition in the baits so fish really benefit from it. But this does not take away from the fact that cheaper milk powders and other milk ingredients will certainly catch you enough big fish to make you happy! (Note: you may have heard about very high protein baits; you need carbohydrates in your diet to fully maximise the protein you consume - and carp are just the same.)

The bait ideas I will provide here are very easy and basic and will catch very good carp because I have personally tested these ingredients bought from many diverse sources so everyone can buy them and I have caught loads of big carp using these ingredients in many diverse bait recipes, ground bait formats and so on. I will add that many of the ingredients I will use here are habit-forming to fish (and us humans) and are ideal for not merely instant-attractor type baits but long-term baits too.

So I will choose milk ingredients you can get almost anywhere. Basically all we are going to do is mix milk powders with wheat flour. It sounds so easy right! It is but there are ways and means of making a bait super-boosted with various added bonus impacts and effects, and making baits very digestible or even more attractive to carp, so I will include a few added ideas for extras.

To make a bait that is soft with good solubility and ideal for colder water conditions or warmer conditions a 50:50 mixture of ordinary wholemeal wheat flour and dried milk powders is a good very cheap basic starting point to add some eggs for binding mixed with any other liquids you may wish to try. To harden such a bait you can do loads of things; from adding Sluis CLO bird food, adding particular caseins, semolina or maize flour or using a percentage of blood powder for instance.

I realise this does not sound very complex but frankly this is for beginners not seasoned bait makers who know their oligosaccharides from their peptides. But these baits will catch - and very similar types of baits (with many well-known - and not well known additions) have caught me loads of big fish over the decades! (For more on this see my bait secrets ebooks and site!)

At this point in time as I write the outside temperature is averaging about 1 or 2 degrees so you can imagine that the lake water temperatures are not that warm - and that Mr Carp is quite cold and relatively inactive at the moment too. Having said all that it certainly appears that outside of angling pressure and the atmospheric and electromagnetic influences of lunar and solar phases and convergences etc, very possibly the biggest factor in your success is you being on the bank - with an effective bait that leaks off lots of attraction and stimulation in the lowest of water temperatures without filling fish up prematurely!

In winter and spring it is wise to use low amounts of baits anyway so you will not be spending much on bait even if you use expensive milk protein ingredients. Go for a bait company that specialises in bait ingredients and shifts tonnes of the stuff - each month. Companies I use include CC Moore, CW Baits and Formula-Carp with CC Moore having the largest range. If you choose the very popular cheap milk powder called Vitamealo is works great, but if you use the milk powder called Lamlac for example, watch out you do not use too much!

So you have a basic bait with milk, but what can you do to give it some extra carp behaviour-altering impacts? Well for the colder months a very common trick is to include some crushed hemp in your bait. To make your baits have some crunch factor and make your baits transit in the gut faster you could include your egg shells crushed. Crushed oyster or cockle shells are other options.

If you wish to make baits work better in winter try using maybe 10 percent of whole egg powder and or mix whole liquid eggs with some water etc as they can seriously lock up your baits attraction, and quick steam them instead of boiling them. If you do want to boil your bait paste balls in water, do it for maybe only 40 seconds (boiling times are very critical to milk ingredients.) you will find milk type baits like to float. I take advantage of this just like the commercial bait manufacturers in making their buoyant baits, wafters, pop-up baits etc and making your own pop-up baits is good fun while thinking of all the fish they will be catching!

A couple of tips regarding improving your bait protein content are to include wheat germ (excellent for the cold) and try adding the much under-rated Supergold Maize protein (a significant fish meal replacer used in aquaculture. Adding this ingredient will also make your baits heavier and harder; look online on the CC Moore site for these and other ingredients!

Never think that the commercial bait companies have a monopoly of power over you and intellectual information so you will never know how to make your own unique baits. The vast majority of the principles and publically-available ingredients extracts and liquids etc that catch carp are right here in my writings and ebooks. The trend certainly since the early eighties has been for more and more anglers to buy readymade carp baits for convenience but it does certainly appear that my ebooks and articles have stirred up the imaginations and creative abilities of a huge number of carp anglers around the world who do not wish to have to keep on paying for readymade baits good as they are!

In my own experience one of the biggest disadvantages of readymade baits is that I do not know what they are doing to carp or water in detail and never really know how many fish have already been hooked on any particular publically-available popular readymade bait - thus reducing or significantly stifling my chances of hooking my target big fish! (I would much rather fish with a new unique homemade baits to maximise my chances!)

I recommend the Lactose Concentrate from CC Moore and I also really urge you to use their fructose Concentrate (which is a very effective natural sweetener, alongside their unique Ultrasweet concentrated sweetener (levels are provided on their website.) If you are looking for a more unique flavour why not try their version of Creamy Condensed Milk - ideal for such a bait, or even use this and their Scopex perhaps, or a fruit or spice flavour?

If you are after something a little different and original why not try something from the supermarket such as a blend of real almond extract alcohol type cake-making flavour and a real citrus oil based type flavours for instance with some glycerine for hook baits and added vodka for free baits! To keep this short and sweet I would recommend that you try CC Moore Corn Sweet Syrup, CSL powder, liquid betaine and their Feedstim XP products among other things - the choice is yours and in terms of true fish feeding triggers the world really is your oyster but you will have to find out more of these secrets! Revealed in my unique big carp and catfish homemade bait and readymade bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information - see my unique website Baitbigfish and my biography for details right now!

By Tim Richardson.

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