The Baits & Flavours Column

Part 1 – An Introduction

A new column in which Dave Dowding (Mr Wriggles) will regularly look at the volatile, often confusing, but nevertheless intriguing world of baits and flavours.

I could definitely be considered a flavour junkie, I only have to see or hear the rustle of a bait packet being opened and I’m on it like a tufted duck on free offerings. I am not satisfied until I have sniffed, felt and on occasion even tasted the contents and can identify the various ingredients.

The flavour thing is still one of the biggest minefields in fishing today. It is also one of the most difficult things to write about without being too technical. I don’t think there is an angler anywhere who can honestly say they have never used some sort of flavour to try and tempt a few extra bites. I think we must have all raided mum’s larder for a tin or jar of the new instant fish attractor we had read about in some angling publication. I can still remember mine; a brand new tin of Lyons maple syrup mum had bought for the pancakes as a treat! At that age reasoning didn’t come into it, don’t take a little out of the tin and put it back, oh no, take the whole tin, shiny label and all and dip in everything you can think of, alive or not!

Of course when it was missed you couldn’t slip the tin back unnoticed as there would be untold remains suspended within and, of course, you didn’t want to anyway as you knew just what had been dipped in it!

I think once you had moved into this part of our sport, nothing edible in the kitchen was safe, be it meat, sweet or vegetable. The quest for that new flavoured bait that no one else had thought of using was always just out of reach. Then it was just a challenge that cost a few bob from the pocket money and if it didn’t work you went back to the corner shop or the supermarket and looked again.

What about that tin of Kit-e-Kat you’d eyed up in the fridge that would gain you a death stare from the family pet but any thought of retribution due to claws was worth it because once mixed as a paste this bait would take fish in all but the worst conditions.

Remember when the shake of a packet of dog biscuits brought you running as quick as the dog! The custard powder, the semolina to make a good stiff base mix, cornflour, milk powder, sugar, ground cereals?

Well, I can stop the article right here and go and have a pint because, as I thought, you’ve been using flavours, HNV and low protein mixes all along!!

That’s because what you used then is just as effective today, in fact I smile away to myself when I read articles in the various angling mags telling about the crushed cat biscuit recipe or the paste with added custard powder.

Let me just say that the many flavours available from mainstream suppliers today are excellent. A lot of work goes into their development before they hit the shelves so I’m not knocking them in any way. It just seems the common opinion amongst anglers today is that you need a solid grasp of chemistry to get the best from the various flavours and mixes now on the market.

To me it seems the advent of the boilie also signalled the flavour explosion, the list seems endless with new ones appearing almost on a monthly basis; some still recognisable to us as flavours and some defying all description.

Anyone who has used the very effective Rod Hutchinson Secret Agent or the Archie Braddock’s range will know what I’m on about there. The main factor is that they are quite devastating flavours – but what are they and do we really need to know what they are to get the best from them?

To me the sheer amount of flavours available to us today creates both plus and minus factors. On the plus side, yes, it gives us a lot more choice on what we can use, but do we really need all those choices?

The minus side is that I have known it to put a lot of people off experimenting with various flavours and mixes as they have gone ahead and made up the baits without really knowing how to get the best from them and have obviously failed. There is also the ‘must have it’ flavour user, they read about it, they buy it, they try it and they store it, without giving the product a fair trial, even some of these guys get confused and fed up in the end.

I have had many a customer mentioning a particular flavour bought from one of the mainstream suppliers only seeming to repel fish rather than attract them! It is often only after listening to the explanation and seeing how the product was used that the reason often becomes apparent. The most common being that a lot of flavours these days are based on chemical compounds, not natural bases, and are therefore highly concentrated, sometimes as much as 1000 times. I find quite a few people new to the ‘flavour experience’ use these neat to dip baits in. Now as we all know compared to fishes taste receptors ours are almost prehistoric so you can imagine the effect this can have on the fish, just take a good sniff in many of the bottles and see for yourself.

It is thought that carp can detect flavours with a dilution ratio of one to a million! Think about it, that’s about one drop of your favourite flavour to a gallon of water, gets you thinking doesn’t it?

So you can see, misuse often leads to a flavour being condemned before it has a chance to prove its worth. This is not just restricted to ‘angling’ flavours. I still see the ‘if I can’t smell it, the fish can’t taste it’ approach with flavours widely available from supermarkets. Believe me, I personally think it is easier to overload with these as there seems to be no point at which it starts to smell too harsh unlike the artificial flavours developed specifically for angling.

In the past I have used and still use a lot of flavour combinations designed for the catering and ice cream industry. In the bottle they smell absolutely amazing but add a few mls to a mix and there is no trace whatsoever, the reason is they are designed to flavour and not smell. So in goes a bit more until you can smell it and as I nearly always taste a bait for flavour levels, a little piece of the bait goes on the tongue and you spend the next 12 hours re-tasting it with every piece of food and drink you consume. They are extremely effective when used properly but again it’s a fine balance between good use and misuse.

I can totally understand why some anglers shy away from making their own baits, I have sat in on many a bankside conversation where the words Minamino, Multimino, Casein and Albumen trip from glib tongues with amazing regularity. Once you have grasped what these various ingredients are, and their use within a mix, you will see that it really is not that difficult and your confidence goes sky high and away you go. It really can be as simple as that.

So my advice is don’t listen to all the hype and get confused, work from the point you understand well and build slowly. I’m sure the majority of anglers will agree with me when I say that there is nothing quite like the feeling of catching plenty of fish on your own bait. It’s a great buzz, so don’t give up.

And don’t forget the most vital ingredient to any bait is confidence. Without it, even if you have the best combination going, the chances are it won’t stay in the water long enough to show its worth.

So now that’s all out of the way and hopefully got you feeling a bit more confident about having a dabble, lets look a bit more in depth at what these magic bottles are and what they have to offer.