* Making effective carp baits that produce astounding results can require some understanding of how carp digest your bait but this pays in far greater catches! *

This will help guide you to how best to design and make your baits exceptionally attractive and digestible for long-term best results.

In carp digestion, Trypsin and Chymotrypsin, (digestive enzymes from the pancreas,) are largely responsible for protein digestion.

Carp do not have a conventional stomach, but a simple intestinal tube, and therefore no acid digestion takes place here, unlike in humans, where protein digestion takes place with hydrochloric acid and pepsin. In koi carp, for example, the gut is only typically up to twice the length of the fish.

Please notice, with regard to making baits for winter; it can take over 60 hours, at a water temperature of 12 Degrees Celsius, for the temperature-dependant enzymes, to digest food, for a complete gut of food to waste 'transit.'

Carp have a distendable receptive sack, where there is only sulphorous bile and enzymic digestion. Amylase is secreted in further down in the gut, in the small intestine, for internal digestion of starch.

Cellulase is secreted by bacteria, also in the small intestine, for digesting cellulose from plants. Once in the carp gut, and converted, glucose is used for energy, and is passed through intestinal cells into the bloodstream.

Blood insulin regulates energy levels, by helping glucose enter cell walls. Insulin is produced in fat cells, so all the sugars and sweeteners that attract carp so well are adding instant useful energy to the fish too. In humans protein helps reduce glucose levels in the blood, by slowing the absorption of glucose into the blood stream, from the intestine. This then reduces hunger by lowering insulin levels, and making it easier for the body to burn fat and produce more energy.

By using increased soluble and insoluble fibre in your carp bait, at 5 % to 10 %, can speed movement through the gut by 'peristalsis', so enabling the carp to eat more food more quickly, and subsequently producing more potential for more 'takes' from fish actively feeding for longer period of time.

Glucose does not seem to be a 'superior' energy source to protein or fat. High protein ingredients, such as casein, appears to slow down the digestive process, allowing more time for nutrients in other ingredients, for example in fish meals, or in bird foods, to be more efficiently digested and assimilated.

Unused glucose goes to the liver and is stored in a starch-like form as glycogen. This is reconverted to glucose using amino acid derived substance, when more energy is required.

Carp break down fats (lipids) using lipase, into soluble fatty acids and glycerol. Amino acids from protein digestion pass easily and quickly into the bloodstream.

Chitin, the bimolecular polysaccharide is extremely abundant on the planet and is an essential part of a natural carp diet. It contains nitrogen, an important 'building-block' of proteins, and it also supports many vital roles, processes and carp structures, like healthy liver function, skeletal growth and repair and strengthening the immune system.

This is the real reason carp ingest so much shellfish and crustaceans - not just for their soft parts but their just as important hard parts too. Acids in the carp gut can break these down to make them usable. Carp also seem to 'enjoy' the normal act of dealing with crushing shells and carapaces and these in your bait may also encourage healthy 'processing' of food in the gut as it passes through.

Many carp bait ingredients will make the bait more effective if they stimulate or balance the carp metabolism, digestion, liver function, heart function, kidney function etc. Many strengthen the immune system, or detoxify the blood, or dilate blood vessels.

Others promote an available energy 'peak', and betaine, niacin, folic acid, vitamins B6 and B12, capsaicin, from peppers, piperines from black peppers, peppermint, brewers yeast powders, (contains both chitin and betaine...) amino acids, etc.

Wheatgerm provides blood 'anti-cholesterolic' effects, as do chilli peppers (and the B vitamins B6, B12 and niacin in different ways) For the chemists; good additives may be methyl group donors... Look for betaine containing ingredients to combine with great amino acids providers...)

Stimulants like those in coffee, kola nuts, chocolate and a whole range of lesser ones have great carp energy boosting effects. How many people have tried caffeine as a feeding 'stimulator?'

Soya flour, the commonly used staple carbohydrate food in carp baits, may be maximized, by sourcing a soya meal which contains pre-sprouted beans. These contain higher levels of converted starch to sugars, which are more readily absorbed for energy at less digestion cost!

Soya has a seed coating designed to inhibit digestion by animals etc, for protection, so the beans can be transported inside the animal to new locations, be excreted whole, (undigested) in a useful pile of fertilizer for new soya bean plants to thrive! However, the reward for eating soya, (even soya isolate,) are low compared with eating a far more biologically nutritional high protein ingredient, like whey protein isolate, and it's use is not considered ideal in bait as there are so many other ingredients that could be used, that act in themselves as 'attractors / feeding stimulators' and have important nutritional roles and benefits also.

Carbohydrates are converted by alpha-amylase from starch, by 'phosphorylation' to glucose-6-phosphate at 1.6 Kcal /gram -1. This energy conversion is not as efficient as humans; at 4 Kcal /gram -1.

Cooked or 'gelatinized' starches are twice as digestible to carp. And peas (pulses) are more digestible than cereals. Some examples are as follows:

- Wheat meal has a protein digestibility of 92 %

- Corn (maize) has a protein digestibility of 81 %

- Barley, a protein digestibility of 73 %

- Wheat meal has a fat (lipid) digestibility of 80 %

- Corn meal a fat (lipid) digestibility of 90 %

- Barley, a fat (lipid) digestibility of 67 %


These are all highly digestible foods, but the higher the overall digestibility of your bait, the better whether your bait is high in carbohydrate or in protein food sources!

The key to nutritional bait making certainly seems connected to amino acids primarily, but there are many other bait concepts leveraging 'instant feeding stimuli' effected by many varied plant and animal extractions.

The author has many more fishing and bait 'edges' up his sleeve. Every single one can have a huge impact on catches. (Warning: This article is protected by copyright, but reprints with a link are OK.)

By Tim Richardson. 'The thinking angler's fishing author and expert bait making guru.'

For more expert bait making information and 'cutting edge' techniques see the expert acclaimed new ebook / book:


"BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!"

http://www.baitbigfish.com