Solar's Martin Locke shares his thoughts on baits, and passes on a few of his favourite bait recipes from the past 30+ years.
There are a few gems in here for you to put to use!
With the quality of ready made baits these days , whether it be shelf life or frozens they are an obvious choice of most anglers , but there are a growing number who like to ‘put the chef’s hat on’ and add their own subtle changes to make their baits a bit more personal and be a bit different to the anglers .
For those of us who have been carp fishing before any ready made baits existed , rolling your own boilies, was the only way !
I have grown up with ‘tinkering and tweaking’ with base mixes and flavours , sometimes hitting on that magic combination, that proves to be highly successful .
One of the best and most well-known examples of this is the Squid/octopus and Ester cream combination in the Club Mix.
This came about when I was having great success on the ‘Club recipe we know and love. Then ‘the word’ started coming in from the lads using Ester Cream in a Dairy mix , that they were ‘smashing them’ wherever they took it …
I couldn’t ignore the results , but at the same time , I couldn’t not use Club with Squid/Octopus, so I simply added the two together and BOOM !!
Even though what seemed (to us) as an unlikely combination , it worked fantastically well from day one , with ‘off the scale’ results .
That’s just one example of how adding your own touches can make all the difference to your catches and make things interesting and exiting when you ‘roll your own’ and have success.
To put you in the right direction , here’s a few ‘winners’ that haven’t hit the shelves , but proved great combinations over the years .
These are based on 6 egg mixes and in my experience , the flavour levels aren’t critical in relation to egg size or amount of dry mix used , so don’t worry at all if your inclusion rates aren’t exact.
You’ll notice that I rate Stimulin VERY highly , you can only further enhance the attraction of your bait by adding this to ANY mix. Ester flavours also have the effect of ‘sharpening up’ the flavour profile and undoubtably increase success in the colder months..
CLUB MIX –
10ml Stimulin Amino Compound
5ml Squid/Octopus
5ml Ester Cream
QUENCH –
10ml Stimulin Amino Compound
2ml Esterblend 12
5ml Squid/Octopus
TOP BANANA –
10ml Stimulin Amino Compound
5ml Pear of Banana’s
5ml Ester Strawberry
CANDY FLOSS -
10ml Stimulin Amino Compound
5ml Ester Pineapple
2ml Esterblend 12
RED HERRING –
10ml Stimulin Amino Compound
5ml Squid/Octopus
5ml Ester Cream
These just a few examples , but you’ll find that all our Mixmaster flavours are all compatible with each other , giving you endless permutations to play around with .
Go get em boys, best of luck out there.
Martin 'Lucky Lockey' Locke