Fishing Frenzy

Sausage meat is now part of carp and cat fishing history having proven its worth as a very effective cheap bait ingredient for small and big fish (many thousands of times, and for decades.) It is far cheaper than using the popular Pepperoni and similar luncheon meat type products for example. But how do you make extremely effective but very cheap baits and ground baits using it; see a few very proven big fish suggestions right now!...

Using sausage meat is rather more ethical than basing your baits on very valuable marine resources, but you can use it to bulk-up certain fish or shellfish bait mixes to cut costs and create different nutritional profiles, tastes effects etc. you can easily get sausage meat fresh or frozen fresh and fresh is best although catfish are also renowned for loving baits just souring, but I would prefer to use this effect with blood based baits for instance and not pork. Often the biggest fish in your water will take a new safe bait pretty quickly and certainly sausage meat based baits are not trendy so can really give you many competitive edges!

You can use the minced products or use a mincer to make a sticky pliable material to use to base you bait on. Pork meat is very nutritionally stimulating to big catfish and carp, supplying many essential nutritional needs including many amino acids and energy packed oils. Sausage meat may be made from pork alone or with other materials, but even adding very cheap wheat flour, or with a few eggs to meat with sausage rusk will bind bait to make practical bait dough for paste or boilies.

So how do you further produce one of the cheapest home made protein baits fast and easily?

Use a large pan or bowl to make a bait mix using a test batch of about half a pound of meat plus about 2or 3 hen's eggs and enough wheat flour added to bind into dough. This is practical bait to use immediately, or you can store it in plastic bags and store in the freezer or fridge for future sessions. Although these meat baits (like any bait ingredients) may vary in nutritional profiles and fish effects and catch results, they are normally instant type baits and reliable fish catchers straight from the first cast.

Like the majority of carp and catfish baits, the best way to start fishing with it is to feed perhaps 2 to 6 pounds or more of it into your swim, in advance. (This is certainly not absolutely necessary however!) You might for instance, over a period of 3 days prior to fishing, start introducing paste pieces about an inch in diameter just by pulling them off your balls of dough you have made.

The effect of pre-baiting is that the fish will be far more prepared to eat your bait with even more enthusiasm when you start actually fishing; so hold onto your rod! Sausage meat in this form makes fantastic ground baits too. Fishing paste balls has always been extremely effective, but these days you might prefer to make your baits more resilient to smaller fish (by par-boiling,) so they are still intact when the bigger fish arrive; but add some dough to your bait or hook or PVA bag anyway too!

You might make your boilies from small half inch odd shaped pieces and these odd baits will have a competitive edge over all those expensive uniformly shaped machine-rolled baits! Just get a half pan of water boiling and add a handful of baits at a time usually for about 2 minutes on average before removing them. Use handy towels or papers (or special drying trays from Gardener tackle) to dry your baits and remember to keep your water boiling at all times.

Boil your baits for anything from a minute to 5 minutes; the longer boiling makes them harder, but this loses more attraction in the process. To help attraction there are so many choices to add to your bait, or just to keep results coming. For instance you could add sea salt at about a teaspoon per 2 eggs worth of bait mixed, or add curry powder at a heaped teaspoonful per egg used in the mix or more depending on the form of curry powder used.

You might just add a teaspoon of black pepper powder per egg used. Other examples of well proven kitchen favourites are yeast extract products like Marmite or Vegemite; add at a heaped tablespoon per egg, or even Parmesan or blue cheese powder which is ideal in sausage meat baits. You can simply add some Minamino or proprietary fishing liquid amino acids supplement like Nutramino to boost feeding stimulation and nutritional profile of your bait; or add fish meal, keratin, or poultry meal, or ground bird foods and lecithins for more digestible baits in winter, for example...

The fact is that there are thousands of additives, liquids, flavours and some very refined and advanced bait ingredients and extracts you could use. Many ingredients are often used to most exploit the food detection systems of fish which have internal and external specialised cells which enable fish to instinctively home in on your bait. You might use a proprietary flavour like Secret Agent, Megaspice, Mulberry Florentine or Maple steep liquor, vodka, spice oleoresins, or add MSG to enhance taste, or simply add salted liquidised liver or liver pate, (just a desert spoonful per egg of 2 these will keep big results coming your way!)

The options are limited only by your imagination; but using proven fish feeding triggering substances and metabolically stimulating substances are among the best proven substances when you look at bait components... Homemade sausage meat baits (and ground baits) for big carp and catfish are well proven against any popular modern baits (even enzyme-active ones,) and I've proven this myself (although my baits are sometimes rather more complex than here.) So give them a try and you might decide to get much deeper into making your own homemade baits; but beware - they can become addictive!

By Tim Richardson.