If the baits you use are not providing you with outstanding catches or your readymade bit is just giving you average results then some of this range of key words could well prove the answer to your better catches...

Solution: Fish are evolved to detect your bait components especially well when they are wet. This means that elements of your bait are able to become fully or at least semi-mixed or hydrated with water. Hydration of your bait is also very important because in order for many species fish to efficiently digest your free ground bait it needs to be hydrated. Most baits will finally fully absorb water over time depending on many factors regarding the bait and its ingredients and so on.

Hygroscopicity: This is an extremely productive property of your baits additives, liquids and ingredients to attract and absorb water. Think about it; these can ensure that your bait absorbs water even if it has been sealed pretty effectively by using proteinous eggs or similar binders in the mix to help bind it together as in boilies. Many types of pellets are heated as part of the shaping and extrusion process and depending upon the ingredients used, this can very much impact upon the bait performance in attracting and stimulating fish into feeding. Simple examples of hygroscopic substances are salt, yeast extract and glycerine as used in flavours.

Permeability: As with pellets, boilies are often made to make money as opposed to function as optimum fish stimulators. In fact it is obvious that some of the most effective baits are able to freely disperse their stimulators and attractors without limitation into the water column. However, such baits do not fit the criteria of many anglers who might prefer to have the same bait in a position in a swim for 48 hours or more for instance, before it becomes too soft to be practical as a hook bait. This does not stop permeability being a great fish-catching factor in both hook baits and ground baits of all kinds!

Density: Baits can differ in their productivity in part due to how much their ingredients have been compressed and this can seriously impact upon the rates of release of attractors, flavours, tastes etc into the water. Many machine-produced boilies and pellets actually have standard amounts of compression and density which I'm sure fish recognise in baits over time. I've certainly noticed that making free baits with extremely open texture and not using rolling in the bait making process results can be very much improved. Conversely, I do like to use hook baits that are bullet hard as I get the feeling that these are more difficult for fish to deal with for a range of reasons, not least because proportionately very few anglers fish with such hard baits these days.

Porosity: This is a bait property which is again related to how effectively your bait ingredients and additives etc can escape from your bait in order to become part of the water so fish can detect them and follow the leaking trail back to its source. Also porosity is linked to many other important areas in bait. One for instance is the ability of your bait to hold liquids such as liquid amino acid mixtures or liquid fish protein or a concentrated flavour. Many bait ingredients can be used to make you bait hold more liquid and egg biscuit and even bread crumbs or ground-up pellets of many kinds can be exploited.

Solubility: This is related to the above and is one of the keys to a great fishing bait, but it is probably one of the least mentioned bait factors while the hot topics may be flavours or protein in baits. The fact is that although nitrogen and amino acids are essential to fish, as found in whole protein foods, it is the water soluble fraction of this protein that does the work of catching fish. If this was not so, then the top fish attractors would probably have zero solubility. Having looked into the solubilities of a huge range of bait ingredients and liquids and how they mix or do not mix together, it is still obvious that even those ingredients termed insoluble as with those stimulating fish oils or hemp oil for instance, these still do not have zero insolubility... The use of fish feed triggering liquid lecithins in baits helps with the semi-solubility of many substances and is especially effective in winter and low water temperatures.

Texture: Bait texture again can have a great bearing upon desired bait function in many ways. Many anglers get the impression that if a bait has some kind of crunch factor then it will be more acceptable than one without. While it is true that many baits have coarse ingredients within them naturally such as in many fish meals and bird foods, crunch factors has much more to it. These materials can aid in food gut transit and growth of fish intestinal villi which means more of your bait will get digested over time thus making it a more energy efficient and preferable food source. Fish are stimulated by sound and sound is very obvious in water! The coarse ingredients you use can obviously improve bait nutritional value too and use of hempseed, and crushed cockle shell are both proven.

Buoyancy: Bait buoyancy can be the most important final deciding factor in catching any particular fish and is directly related to exactly how your fish feeding behaviour (in the presence of bait) deals specifically with your bait and rig. Even when baits with excellent nutritional stimulation in an innovative form having been pre-baited in a water for months, these may not produce the biggest possibly wisest fish in a water. It may be a surprise to find that after months of trying, using a critically balanced bait instead of a normal sinking bait, or even over-weighted or pop-up bait is the only change necessary to catch the wisest fish...

This fishing bait secrets ebooks author has many more fishing and bait edges; just one could impact very significantly on your catches!

By Tim Richardson.

For the unique new expert bait making and bait secrets bibles :

"BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And: "BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!" And "BIG CARP FLAVOURS AND FEEDING TRIGGER (AND CHEMORECEPTION AND OLFACTION) SECRETS!" Visit:

http://www.baitbigfish.com

Tim Richardson is a homemade carp and catfish bait maker and proven big fish angler. His unique bait making and enhancing fishing secrets guides are catching big fish for readers in 45 countries so get yours NOW!