Red Factor Canary Food

Since my return to angling last year I, like most other anglers, have been caught up in the quest for a bait that is consistently good for catching carp, tench and bream, etc. There is an absolutely immense amount of literature that is now available on these baits, the ingredients that they contain, and the reasoning for their formulation. If you are to believe even a small part of what is being written, you have to take it for granted that carp, above all fish, posses unique qualities in being able to differentiate between a bait made with top quality ingredients, as opposed to another seemingly identical looking, tasting and smelling one that has been made with inferior ingredients. This may or may not be a fact, but one thing that you must not lose sight of is that there are a number of bait-making companies and suppliers that are making a very good living by selling you the theory and the product.

Haith’s Red Factor Canary Food

There are hundreds of different baits on the market, each being slightly different in some way to all of its rivals, and each claiming to be the be-all and end-all of baits, and offering the angler an advantage that other manufacturers cannot match. The list of ingredients grows by the day, with even more obscure formulations being conjured up. I do not doubt that all of them have at some time caught fish, but does that validate the claims that are made for them? Probably not, for it seems reasonable to argue that almost anything that is deemed edible by the fish will be taken. If that assumption is true, then do we, as anglers, need to pursue the very expensive option of purchasing and using these convenient baits? You can read in the specialist carp magazines where an angler has taken the place apart by using such and such a bait. He will tell of fishing the water for a week, and using five or six kilos of boilies a day while baiting up. As boilies are about £ 10-00 per kilo, then by multiplying kilos per day, by days, you end up with something in the order of 35 kilos of bait valued at £ 350-00 minimum. Now unless you are being sponsored by one of the bait manufacturers then it is a fact that to most anglers that sort of money is just ridiculous.

Like most anglers I’ve have tried all manner of ingredients to try and find something that is both affordable, easily prepared, and will catch fish. That all sounds very reasonable to me, so where do we start.

I have used lots of preparations, some have caught fish, and some have not. As I fish mainly alone, and only using two rods, it is just not possible to make a true evaluation. So the quest continued. My wife Doreen keeps Blackcheeked Lovebirds, and one of them is a poor mite, who right from his birth, has had problems. Being the good girl that she is, she has put heart and soul into all of the birds well-being, but particularly to Clyde, who survives almost entirely on “Anjou Millet Sprays”. Doreen buys all of her seeds from Haiths, as it is the same firm that I used to buy all of my seeds from many years ago when I was keeping and breeding Abyssinian Lovebirds.

An unashamed plug here for (Haiths). If you want seeds or pulses, etc, for fishing, then this is the firm to go to. Super service, and products that are of a quality that you will not be able to beat. Seeds, etc, are all that they deal with and have been doing this for something like sixty years, and in the bird world are renowned for their products. They are the masters of good service and products.

Right, back to the plot. One of the products that Haiths sell is Red Factor Canary Food. This is essentially a biscuit preparation that also contains a small amount of seed, plus vitamins, minerals, sugar, olive oil, paprika and Carophyll Red, which, to the best of my knowledge, is used to retain a good feather colour in a canary. When purchased this mixture is a dry yellow biscuit material with a few spots of red in it and also the above mentioned seeds. When mixed with a small amount of cold water, it assumes a whole new being.

Put a cupful of the biscuit into a bowl, and slowly add cold water a little at a time, turning over with a fork. You are aiming to finish with a mix that is on the dry side, and still retaining the large particles. Take a small amount and put it into the palm of your left hand. Place the palm of the other hand over the top, and rotate the hands. Slowly the piece of dryish paste will form into a ball, and the more that you continue with the process, the firmer the ball will be. After just a few seconds you will have a boilie. When you have made enough place them on a plate to air-dry overnight, definitely NO boiling. I leave mine for about twelve hours.

The next day you will find them to be firm and slightly pliable. Used on a hair, they will stay attached for hours. Left to continue air-drying they will go as hard as concrete. If you need pop-ups, then mould the paste around a small cork ball. I always make up more paste than I need, and put half of the mixture into a plastic container to take with me the following day. This dryish paste is kneaded around a Fox method feeder, and a short hook length of about four inches is used. The paste slowly breaks down, the time it takes is dependant on how much kneading you do to the paste. This provides the attractor for your hook bait. To flavour of not? My answer is a definite NO. If you smell the paste, and the finished boilies, you will be able to smell that they have a unique aroma all of their own. Why spoil this by adding yet another flavour? Let the fish become accustomed to this top quality bait. I also make the paste into very thin sausage shapes and then simply cut them into pellets, leave these overnight and you have a good supply of the same material, only this time in pellet form.

Priced at just £ 42-64 for 25 kilos (smaller amounts are sold) this works out to £ 1-70 per kilo, which is a big difference to the £ 10-00 per kilo charged for commercial boilies. I am going to continue to use this mix exclusively for all next season. Hopefully at the end of a full year I will be able to give a very detailed account of its success. So far it is doing well, and more importantly I have great faith in it. Is this the perfect bait? Well, time will tell. But, it is cheap and easy to use, and it is also clean and easy to keep, and is made from the highest quality ingredients.

I have changed the way I mix up Red Factor Canary Food. I used to make it with a small amount of cold water, as this made it easy to roll. I now put the required amount into a bowl and add a fair amount of hot water. Stir with a fork until the mixture turns a nice browny-orange colour as the Carophyll Red breaks down. The downside to this is that you finish up with a mix that is a bit soft and sticky. I roll a ball in my palms and then put it onto a breadboard and roll it into a sausage shape. Cut it into small lengths and then roll between the palms to make the size of baits you require. Due to hand rolling my finished baits are all sorts of sizes, but I think that this a good point as it presents the fish with varying sized pieces of food, and is handy if you are fishing for smaller fish than carp. Because of the softer nature of the paste, it is advisable to make the baits two or three days before you will need them, as this will give them more chance to air-dry.

Remember that the baits are made without eggs, and without cooking, and without any preservatives. This means that if you store them in any sort of sealed container they will go mouldy. Try and keep them with plenty of air circulation and they appear to last forever. The only difference is that they progressively get harder.

I use the dry mix for groundbaiting. Simply put some dry mix into a PVA bag, together with a few broken boilies, plus your hook bait and weight, cast out and you have a nice layer of dry mix on the bottom. Most of it will just swirl about, but some will float slowly up through the water, hopefully to entice any passing fish to investigate further.

Haith’s say: Birdfoods are one of the most widely used CARP BAITS in current use. They are HIGHLY DIGESTABLE and very attractive to carp and are very easy to make. Birdfood baits are usually almost instant with no need for extensive pre-baiting campaigns. Our Red Factor features in many recipes for simple yet effective carp baits. In fact it’s quite likely that the seed and other birdfoods obtainable from Haith’s are among the most widely used ingredients by those carp anglers who prefer to mix their own unique recipes, rather than be confined to the dictates of the bait companies. Red Factor is a brilliant product; it contains some small seeds and is formed by blending Egg Biscuit and a small Quantity of Carophyll Red TM, the active ingredient found in Robin Red TM.