Making Carp Boilies with Oil-Based Flavours
When using the Ocean Fresh Concentrated Flavours to make your own boilies, we suggest that you mix 5ml per 6 egg mix for subtle bait, and for that Ocean Fresh taste and smell of attraction then we suggest you up the level to 10-15ml.
Basically, you want to create irresistible and attractive tasting bait with instant attraction capabilities for the carp. This means that the boilies immediately start to release their flavours on entering the water, but they retain enough flavour for a full twelve-hour session. Be careful not to over power the boilies, as this may be ignored by the carp until the bait is washed out.
Before you start making your bait you should decide what type of boilie you want. The options are 'shelf-life' or 'frozen'. Frozen boilies require no man-made or chemical preservatives to keep the baits from going off; in simple terms stopping them from going mouldy and becoming useless wastes of time and effort. By freezing the bait you keep them fresh until the day of use. What ever you have left over from your days fishing can be re-frozen, though the quality will be less than new fresh bait. Most serious carp anglers tend only to take out what's going to be used and the rest will be deposited in the lake for pre-bating the next session.
To make shelf-life boilies, you will need a chemical preservative. This tends to be a rubbery smelling liquid that can only be masked by over-dosing with flavour additives. Please note Ocean Fresh does not use this type of conservation technique, and you will have to purchase this product from other bait companies and follow their instructions. Ocean Fresh does not recommend these preservatives, as most unnatural preservatives will damage carp's welfare; when they consume large amounts of this bait it will rot in their stomach, it's not easily digestible and it takes them off the feed. One way to over come this is by adding milk proteins to your mix this makes them more digestible even with high levels of preservatives.
A common fishing example of high-preservative, ready-made shelf-life boilie, is when on one or two trips out you catch a lot of carp, then on your next fishing trips using the same bait you catch nothing. This is because the carp have wised up to the fact the boilie is not good for them and they will refuse to eat the bait as they recognise the flavour as danger. By simply changing the flavour you can get back into the carp until they wise up again, and then another flavour will be required and so on.
We love our carp and, like being a pet owner, you would never feed poison to your dog or cat. So why should it be different to carp? Ocean Fresh recommends you always fish with a natural food source boilie and treat the carp with respect. Great bait is one the carp will eat time and time again. If you buy top angling products like rods, reels and bite alarms to fish with then bait should not be an exception. The carp will love you back by frequently visiting your landing net, I guarantee it.