Making Your Own Boilies From Scratch

You get more satisfaction when you catch on your own home made boilies

You can make hookbaits to whatever specification you require, for instance, baits which imitate pellets but do not dissolve! There is also a certain amount of pleasure to be gained from catching on baits which you have formulated yourself.

So how do you go about formulating your own baits on the cheap?

Well, initially it is very much a case of getting off your bum and experimenting. How do you suppose the bait companies come up with their wares? There are starting points of course.

Before I go any further, let me say that I have no time for complicated theories regarding why a fish will eat one boilie in preference to another. I have noticed that the barbel on my local River Trent do seem to have a definite preference for baits containing fishmeals but one fishmeal type bait seems pretty much as good as any other. From this I have drawn the simple conclusion that barbel like fishmeal!

You can be blinded by science and believe that you have to invest in the most expensive, complicated bait you can lay your hands on to produce a sweet/fruity tench bait. But I promise you, in my experience you would be far better off knocking up a sweet/fruity 50/50 boilie and concentrating on location and bait presentation.

That last statement might seem slightly contentious and no doubt the bait firms wont like it, but so what?

Base ingredients

I mentioned a starting point. This involves selecting a cheap bulk ingredient or a number of such ingredients that allow me to do whatever I intend with regards to smell, colour and texture.Baits consisting entirely of semolina and eggs will catch fish but do not roll very easily. I do think that there are situations when baits with some sort of aroma, or a gritty texture, will prove advantageous if only because it gives the angler confidence.Combining ingredients is a far better option in my opinion.

Bulk ingredients

Semolina, maize flour, ground cat/dogfoods, soya flour, biscuit meal, ground Vitalin, ground trout pellets, pig pellets, chicken pellets, white fishmeal, ewe nuts (csl pellets), nut meal, meat/bone meal, Nectarblend b/f, shrimp meal, millet meal, Vitamealo.

The truth of the matter is that with any three of these ingredients, used in equal quantities, you could make a boilie that would catch a great many fish. It might have a bland smell and be an absolute pig to roll. It may be crumbly or a bit on the soft side but I have no doubt at all that it would catch fish.

The choice of base ingredients depends largely on what you want to achieve.

For instance if I wanted a fruity bait I would have to rely largely on a chemical smell to produce it so the base ingredients would have to be fairly bland. Semolina, Soya flour and vitamealo for instance. If I wanted to produce a savoury type of bait, the ingredients could be chosen with this in mind, say white fishmeal, ground ewe nuts and ground Vitalin. If I wanted bright coloured baits I would have to use light coloured ingredients so that they could effectively be dyed.

Production in miniature

It is a simple matter to measure out each ingredient in tiny quantities. If you do this by volume (say by using an egg cup) you are not going to be wasting much. Simply break an egg, whisk it and add it a tiny bit at a time to your powdered ingredients until a stiff paste is formed. Now try rolling it and boiling it for a couple of minutes.

It may be that you are happy with the bait as it is. I have not found it imperative to add strong smells by means of additives of various types and sometimes you get lucky and a combination smells attractive, rolls beautifully, and after drying it has a satisfactory texture. More often than not though you will have to add certain ingredients to make it bind better, boil harder, or smell a bit stronger.

Secondary ingredients

I will go through a list of the additives I use to achieve these things. You are unlikely to get the quantities right at the first attempt. To avoid too much wastage use your egg cup again, along with a teaspoon, a syringe, and a pipette to add the various additives. It is imperative that you know the ratio at which you are adding each additive to your mix. Find out exactly how many teaspoons it takes to fill your egg-cup and using the syringe find out how many millilitres of water your egg cup will hold. Do the same with the pipette to find how many drops make up a ml.

Write everything down. That way when you finally have the mixture you require, simple mathematics will allow you to produce the bait on a larger scale.

I always start by including any powdered additives which will affect the smell. Things like Robin Red can have a marked effect on the consistency of the mix so there is no point in finding how much binder you require until you are happy with the baits basic smell.

I have listed the additives I include for this purpose, but you can try anything smelly so long as it is edible.

Powdered smell/taste enhancers!

Robin Red, Liver powder, Instant Whip (or similar products), yeast mixture, curry powders (various types), spices (black pepper, cinamon etc), sugar (bog standard silver spoon).

Once you are happy with the smell/taste of the basic rolled bait, it is time to get the consistency right.

I have listed the ingredients I use to fine tune the consistency along with their functions.

Vegetable/fish oil: removes stickiness from the mix. Milk powder in particular can cause this.

Milk powder: makes the mix more sticky!

Coarse bird-food ingredients and some ground pellets can be too crumbly and may fall to bits after boiling.

Milk powder will help.

Wheat gluten: binds in a slightly different way to milk powder in that it plasticises the mix. The inclusion of wheat gluten is preferable if the binding problem is marginal.

Soyaflour: Adds body to the mix, some very fine mixes (milk proteins in particular) can become a distorted shape during boiling. Soya flour will help without making the mix so hard that it will not go through the bait gun! It also reduces stickiness.

Egg Albumin: Makes the final bait harder.

Bloodmeal: Makes the bait harder, cheaper than egg albumin for savoury mixes.

Record the levels at which these ingredients have been included and increase the powdered smell/taste enhancers accordingly. For instance, if you have to include around 5% of the total mix in wheat gluten to make it bind then increase the smelly additive by 5%

There is very little more to say except give it a go and let us all know how you get on!