* Giving carp the energy and nutritional requirements they need in your fishing baits to make them irresistible! *

Carp have an extremely developed and efficient metabolism of amino acids from protein foods and natural sources; and so this indicates amino acids are probably among the most important essential nutrients in the healthy carp diet, and our carp fishing baits too!

In carp bait making, you need to provide the maximum digestible levels of amino acids from protein ingredients to attract carp most efficiently and effectively, using various methods.

Sugars used in bait are perhaps most effective not for their energy content, but because carp prefer a bait that has been sweetened over an unsweetened one, even when all dietary needs have been met in an unsweetened bait! This has been proven in exhaustive fish feeding trials.

Carp are 'omnivorous' and can digest fair amounts of carbohydrates at well over 20 % of a bait content.

Many other 'Cyprindae' fish can also live on such a mixed diet, such as roach, rudd, bream, chub. Our practice of offering 'free' baits into the swim being fished helps attract carp feeding attention, not only by the bait attraction itself, but also by the activity of smaller fish bigger ones like catfish or tench.

It is a scientifically proven fact, that natural sweeteners like: glucose, sucrose fructose, milk sugars, (lactose,) molasses, brown sugar, honey, liquorice root extract, thaumatin etc, and artificial sweeteners like sodium saccharin and aspartame, are carp truly scientifically and catch proven feeding triggers!

Like salt and amino acids, sweeteners may work by ionizing the water in ways that carp especially prefer and can easily detect. Flavours affect the pH of carp baits and may also ionize the water surrounding carp baits, so making them enticing to carp.

It's also possible that alcohols flavours, with the addition of sweeteners in baits make baits far more effective. So why is this? Well, this area of chemistry is pretty involved, but similar atoms are arranged in different structural ways in fatty acids, oils, esters, sugars, alcohols and other similar carp attractive groups. These groups definitely appear to enhance one another when used in combination in carp baits.

The beneficial replication of natural fermentation processes:

Carp seem especially naturally attracted to fermentation processes, and these need to be utilised in bait to produce sugars and alcohols and 'side effects'. The curing and effective pre-digesting of such baits that produce easy to absorb, simple sugars like glucose, make energy source absorption in the gut faster and more efficient.

'Vanillin' of the synthetic 'Vanilla flavour' fame, belongs to the same functional group as the alcohols and has similar attractive effects on carp! The synthetic 'Vanilla' used as flavour in chocolate, (rather than the expensive natural vanillin extract), was an 'isomer' of eugenol of clove oil extract fame.

More recently 'vanilla' as a flavour is made from the fermentation of wood extract lignin called 'Talin' which gives a 'richer' flavour, than oil based flavours. I prefer to use pure natural extracts, in combination with other natural flavours like iso-eugenol from cloves as natural baits have better nutrition and 'feel-good' effects.

I believe that the more artificially processed an ingredient is, the less value to the carp it usually has, as in the case of wheat or maize flours which are often simply a carrier for an attractor or flavors combination.

Really attractive long-term carp baits have everything to do with maximising nutritional value within your bait!

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