There are a variety of additives, ingredients, and mixes available to make or improve your bait.

Dry ingredients

Making boilies at home is similar to making a cake. The most effective dry ingredients contain materials that carp need to survive. Fishmeal, poultry meal, and wheat germ provide the essential amino acids needed for growth and weight maintenance. There are many other basic food ingredients for making boilies, these are; milk and egg powders, soybeans, fishmeal, and meat make up the majority of available base mix powders. Good boilie powders are rich in nutrients and are good for carp.

Carbohydrates are found in sugar and can be used by carp as an energy source, albeit in small amounts. They also include cellulose (fiber) for fodder which helps the movement of food through the carp’s gut. The main energy of a carp is provided through the oils, so leaking oil from the bait can be very attractive to the carp.

A typical two-kilogram recipe for boilies includes:

• 6-10 eggs
• 500 g of corn flour
• 500 g of corn semolina (panzani)
• 500g precooked soy flour (organic flour)
• 400g powdered milk 1/2 (Lovelait)
• 100 g of sugar (fine mixture)

As with many types of mixes, you can make substitutions. You can add crushed canary seed to the base mix in a ratio of 1 part seed to 3 parts mix. You can also substitute different types of flour, such as cabbage, rice, cinnamon, and wheat. Other dry ingredients include seaweed, belachan block, hot chili powder, spices, and tiger nuts (they need to be soaked overnight, then boiled for 30 minutes). Dean Towey has developed his own lure bait recipe. Includes white fish meal, whole soybean meal (the binder), lactalbumin, rennet casein, robin extract, and seaweed.

Once you’ve created your unique bait, try out a few tactics on how to introduce a new bait to a lake.

Liquid Ingredients (Nutritional and Attraction Properties)

To your dry mix, you will need to add liquid ingredients. Again, you’ll want to use ingredients that are attractive to carp. Lipids (fish or vegetable oils, especially sockeye salmon oil) are a source of energy. They are also used in the formation of cell membranes and are carriers of the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Other liquids include corn steeple, many different fish oils, liquid liver, minamino, multimino, and molasses.

Powder additives and stimulating additives

Carp tend to chase bait that they recognize as a beneficial food source. Essential Baits makes the Shellfish B5 base mix. Contains betaine, five different marine extracts, low-temperature fishmeal, soluble fish enzymes and milk proteins. Baits containing liver, lobster, robin, seaweed, and brewer’s yeast are also very attractive to fish. Although peanuts contain lipids, sugars, and amino acids, they are not as attractive as items that carp prefer, such as green-lipped mussels, crayfish, and grass.

Another source of amino acids are worms. As this is a vital part of carp diets, earthworms are very effective as bait. There are two schools of thought as to why worms are so attractive to carp. Some anglers think that the worms attract carp because of their twisting motion. Others believe that the worms naturally emit a powerful aroma of amino acids that the carp can easily detect in the water. In 2006, SBS developed Liquid Lobworm. You can add the liquid to pastes, baits and particles. It can be added to any base mix. Julian Grattidge even added it to dog biscuits and got several carp!

Powder and liquid attractors

Some ingredients are added to the bait as color attractors. Spirulina, krill and paprika are used to create orange baits. Saffron produces yellow. There is also the liquid Shellfish Plum attractor, which produces pinkish-red boilies.

A very powerful liquid attractor is SBS Corn Steep Liquor (CSL). It has additional betaine, essential amino acids, and vitamins and minerals, making it a very attractive food source for carp. SBS also manufactures CSL granules, which dissolve in water and rapidly release attractive food cues.

imitation baits

Carp will also eat flavored imitation baits. When boilies fail to attract them, artificial corn will usually work. Many anglers have successfully used Zoom Carp Snacks. The snacks come in honey, vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavors. Zoom also makes a variety of joint snacks. These are made from multiple pieces of artificial corn held together with a latex hair. Push your hook through a notch in the hair and pull the hair around the back of the stem. Julian Grattidge recommends using two pieces of fake corn on a fish hair over some hemp, particle mix, or real corn/corn as feed bait. Enterprise Tackle manufactures an excellent range of imitation baits.

Glugs and Flavors

These flavored water soluble solutions make everything more attractive to carp. Resistance Tackle makes glugs in a variety of flavors, including strawberry, anise, tiger nut, pineapple, pineapple and banana, clam and blueberry, scopex, and banana.

You can mix other flavors and additives into your mix, including almond essence, anchovy concentrate, squid, octopus, peach, and pepper and fruit flavors. These are particularly effective additives. Mike Willmott of Essential Baits recommends “(not) adding more additives, flavors, extracts, etc., in addition to those recommended, simply because they could end up acting as a repellant rather than an attractant. Stick to the suggested levels and guidelines and you’re good to go.” It shouldn’t go too far wrong, all you have to do now is place it in the right place!” Mike also favors the use of quality food as bait. Once the flavors and other additives dissolve, there will be something for the carp to eat. If you don’t use quality feed, once the coatings and additives are gone, there is nothing left to attract the carp.