Starting with a base mix or starting from scratch are the two ways you can make your own carp bait. The first is the best way to quickly construct your own bait where as the latter takes a little longer.

Both have their advantages and one the main part the largest of these is the cost involved followed by the overall quality of the bait that is the final product. The ready prepared base mixes only require that you add flavor and oils to them in order to get them to a good quality bait. This is the more expensive route but at the end of the day it does produce a high quality bait.

The other method is to collate all of your ingredients that you will need to make the most basic of basic base mixes. For this there are three main ingredients which are Semolina, Ground Rice and Soya Flour. It takes a little time but stick with it and you will have a good start to your very own base mix.

Now is the time to add any powder you have planned for your mix for example robin red or fish meal, one of the key rules to making bait is to remember that you add powder to powder and liquid to liquid. It sounds fairly straight forward but as an example make sure you have added all the powder to your mix and given it a really good stir before you add in the liquids. One of the best ways to mix the dry is to use a sealed bag and shake it around, a clear bag allows you to see how mixed the powders are before you proceed.

When you have sorted out your base mix and have decided which way you are going to make your carp bait, then crack your eggs into a bowl and add your flavours and oils to the eggs, most manufacturers will give you guidelines on how much egg you need to make your carp bait, however a usual rule of thumb is approx 4 eggs per kilo of base mix. With the eggs cracked and the flavors added slowly whisk the mix with a fork trying to avoid getting to much air into the eggs, if you beat to much air in then the air will boil out of the bait and leave your finished product too soft.

Once you are sure that your liquids are all fully mixed you can start adding them to your base mix, a little at a time, not to much but add a little quite often and keep mixing it with a fork until the mix becomes too thick to use a fork on. At this point you have to get your hands dirty as you will need to mix by hand (wear gloves if you don’t want to smell like your bait for the next week). Continue dribbling in the mixes together until when you break the ball open you will see that it is the same dampness all the way through.

At this point you will need to start breaking the paste into a number of sections which are the right size to fit in your bait gun. You need to be compressing the mix through the gun making sure that the nozzle on the gun is the right one for the size of bait that you wish to use. For example if you want boilies that are 20mm make sure you are using the 20mm nozzle for your mix. Once you have the sausage you will need to roll it on a sausage rolling table this makes certain that you don’t end up with out of shape and broken boilies.

Once you have rolled your sausage in the rolling table and produced an amount of mix into the required size spheres you will need to move on to the next stage, boiling your carp bait. Take a small amount of your boilies and place them in a pan of boiling water for around two minutes. Refrain from putting too many in the pan at any one time as this can restrict the bait from cooking properly.

After the two mins is up we recommend placing them on an air dry tray for around 24 hours so that the skin forms fully and you can now take your carp bait and see what the fish think!