1. Tinned fish make excellent baits. Putting them in a liquidiser and adding ordinary wholemeal flour and eggs is one of the simplest ways to make a fish meal bait!
2. Even using tinned tuna or salmon flakes or chunks in natural oil used in ground baits or one of the new round plastic hollow hook bait holders; both work effectively.
3. Many fish meal fishing baits can taste sour or bitter and benefit from use of ingredients to improve taste, (and smell) and most importantly; palatability which can cause fish to ingest baits more repeatedly to create more chances of a hook bait being taken.
4. It takes roughly 4 to 5 tonnes of live fish in order to process and produce 1 tonne of fish meal, (fish have a high water content like us humans among many other similarities!)
5. Due to world-wide over-fishing, certain fish species used for human consumption and in fish meals, especially of the north Atlantic white lean fish like cod, haddock, whiting and pollack are more in short supply these days but their place is filled by smaller still very valuable fish species.
6. You can mix various fish oils together or with vegetable oils, to create your own personalised fish feed inducing oil.
7. Lecithins improve the beneficial dispersal of fish oils from baits when in water; making them far more semi-soluble and easier for fish receptor cells to detect.
8. Use of fish oils in low temperatures can severely inhibit fish bait digestion and even lock-up other less soluble ingredients which could sit in the gut and go rancid.
9. Often when fishing a fishery containing large catfish, having baited a swim with fish meal type baits can produce a slick of oil on the waters surface which can take some time to reduce depending on the oil content of the baits.
10. Often a fish oil induced oil slick can be confused with the large slicks which large catfish produce, (and the reverse is also true!)
11. Putting together a fish meal bait is very easy at the beginners level and gets more in-depth at the levels of optimising the digestive biological value and nutritional profiles of substances in the baits (especially involving first and second limiting amino acids, for instance.)
12. Ideal fish meal boilies and pellets and pastes should contain much reduced oil levels and exploit lecithins (like the commercial carp bait Trigger Ice for example.)
13. A good fish meal bait in winter (in contrast to summer) needs to have an open texture which allows soluble components to leach-out more effectively.
14. Using crushed egg-shells or crushed cockle shells adds much more than just more effective open bait texture.
15. The use of wheat germ, wheat and barley bran and milk proteins, are all beneficial digestive ingredients in cold temperatures either helping other ingredients to be absorbed or helping further natural bacterial enzyme of proteins for example.
16. When your simple straight fish meal bait loses some of its edge you can add to its nutritional profile by using various milk proteins, yeast powders, ‘Robin Red’ additive type products ,or kelp powder for instance. (But there are thousands of choices and combinations to exploit while keeping a very favourable stimulatory nutritional value of your bait!)
17. You can rejuvenate the fish response to an already established fish meal bait, by adding various herbs and spices (which also aid more effective digestion and raise fish metabolism.)
18. Many simple baits based on cat foods and dog foods containing fishmeals and cereals make highly successful carp and catfish baits which are enzyme active and in the case of dogs, are most often than not, sweetened for added palatability!
19. Fish ‘oils’ are liquid at room temperature but can solidify in cold temperatures so making normal summer type fish meal baits very ineffective.
20. You can test some of the functional effectiveness of your fish meal baits and pellets, by placing samples in a glass of cold water and assessing the time it takes for baits to ‘colour’ the water in the glass and release soluble attractors you can smell.
21. The marine stocks of smaller fish used in brown fishmeals especially have stabilised and are claimed to be sustainable so it looks like these fishing bait ingredients are here to stay!
Although there are thousands of other bait variations, additives, attractors, enhancers, feeding triggering ingredients and substances etc, the basic fish meal bait and its nutritional profile is a proven winner for consistent big fish results!
This fishing bait secrets books author has many more fishing and bait edges. Just one could impact on your catches!
By Tim Richardson.
These are unmissable guides to improving your catches by Tim Richardson:
“BIG CATFISH AND CARP BAIT SECRETS!”
AND “BIG CARP BAIT SECRETS!” AND "BIG CARP FLAVOURS, FEEDING TRIGGER & CHEMORECEPTION SECRETS" SEE:
http://www.baitbigfish.com
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