When you think about it we all know that winter conditions will severely impact on fish activity, how can we improve our bait impacts to maximize fish responses, induce fish activity and fish feeding activity proactively? This article is new and unusually revealing; so whether you use readymade baits or wish to get into making your own homemade winter baits this reality-based highly practical article is for you; read on now!

I have been designing and making very successful homemade baits for about 35 years; since before readymade boilies appeared in the UK. Here I will give you insights and tips on the bigger picture from my experience and perspective on the subject of the composition of boilies for cold water fishing. Boilies are really bait ingredients, additives and liquids etc all combined to produce optimum feeding and other types of behavioural responses that induce fish to mouth these baits and by doing this be hooked so we can catch them. Boilies are dough or paste heated so binding substances congeal or coagulate to make such baits resilient and so more practical when immersed in water when fishing for hours.

But it need to be noted that for instance, a simple bait made by mixing together bread crumbs, sausage meat, or fish meal, or milk powders, for example, plus yeast extract and a concentrated flavour (with eggs to assist bait binding,) can be used as successfully if used as paste bait, when not heated by steaming or boiling in water at all! Boilies in my opinion are far better made to be as water soluble as practically possible and this really is important for cold water baits.

Obviously cold water can mean anything below optimum carp feeding conditions which is really above 15 degrees Celsius in my view anyway, but carp feed very well in temperatures much lower even in temperatures around freezing point. At this point cold water becomes less dense and it seems that this is a trigger for carp feeding; so as your lake for instance is beginning to freeze over, then this can be a great time to get some frantic feeding activity so don’t give up!

Cold water is denser than warm water and this means that cold eater fishing baits need to be exceptionally able to disperse the substances they are made from out into the water column in order to attract and stimulate fish feeding on your hook baits. Cold water baits are about solubility and reactivity with water. These factors make them easily detected by fish and things like nutritional profile and digestibility come second because an oily tight textured bait that is highly nutritional but will barely be detected by fish because it is not soluble is going to fail badly compared to a bait that is significantly optimized to disperse soluble attraction and nutritionally-stimulating substances, enhancers, sweeteners, salts, peptides and amino acids (soluble protein) and so on.

Creating highly stimulating cold water baits can be a very complex thing, but in fact you can create a wealth of baits with relatively few ingredients and additives, and other substances that work well, as long as you are aware of basic key points. Obviously baits that have been optimized for their potency of feed-triggering and digestibility teamed with their ability to be detected as easily in cold water and dispersal of bait substances, will out-perform other forms of baits in many situations, especially if these baits are fed regularly to fish so they come to expect and look for these particular recipes of baits.

In regards to baits that are designed to be used for instant and long term use the same ingredients etc can be used, except in very instant acting baits levels and concentrations may be massively boosted to make baits react far more in contact with water and fish senses internally and externally to produce very intense responses. Some instant baits made using high levels of concentrated flavours for instance can actually work simply by inducing fish curiosity and the intensity of the flavours on fish senses can be the key these baits success as much as anything else. Often such baits can be rejected equally fast as they are tested because concentrated flavours can overload fish senses, even burn them!

Very simply baits for cold water can consist of just 2 or 3 ingredients or additives with eggs and liquid flavour for instance. At the most basic level, many successful winter baits are highly water soluble, and have very open textures. Open texture is something that really can make a massive difference to bait performance in cold water. The actions of water entering bit structure actually creates a pump action that forces bait substances from the bait out into the water column, which is exactly where it should be in order to attract fish and induce them to test and mouth your hook baits and to keep on consuming your free bait samples.

Identifying ingredients and other substances ideal for cold water baits:

Many anglers get confused by the great range of ingredients and so on that baits can be made from. The starting point that causes confusion is this; that anglers tend to think like anglers. But to be most successful, you need to think from the perspective of your fish!

When you really do understand and appreciate this then all your fishing and bait design and bait-making efforts will be maximized for success! Fish provide all the answers. So to begin with, why and how do fish respond to boilie baits? A boilie is a foreign object in the aquatic environment; so why is such a thing investigated? Fish know their aquatic environment intimately, so certainly notice something new appearing within it, and all their senses, processes and so are primed to detect all opportunities for food, the most energy-efficient foods primarily that their bodies have evolved over millennia to be able to fully digest and assimilate to gain vital nutrition they need just to live!

The need of fish to always consume vital nutritional components means this is an extremely powerful weakness in their defense against being caught; and we can maximize this weakness by exploiting their vital needs! By maximizing such needs in our baits in practical forms and concentrations that most easily leach out of baits and most impactfully contact fish all possible fish senses and internal systems etc, we can elicit maximum potential of numbers of bites on our baits and fish caught! Revealed in my unique readymade bait and homemade bait carp and catfish bait secrets ebooks is far more powerful information look up my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my biography below for details of my ebooks deals right now!

By Tim Richardson.