Mark McKenna Bait – It’s a Four-letter Word
Question One Is betaine as good as it’s made out to be?
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PART 6
Over the past few months, Carpworld has received a number of questions for Mark McKenna. To close the series, in this last instalment Mark will be answering a selection of some of the most commonly asked questions relating to making your own bait.
Mark McKenna: The short answer is no, it’s nowhere near as effective as some people would have us believe. Why? Well it doesn’t do any harm, mainly because a carp isn’t physically able to detect it, but if a carp can’t detect it then it isn’t much use as an attractor, which is what most companies sell it as. If this statement is a bit too bold for some of you, then perhaps one or two of you can provide some conclusive proof that betaine hydrochloride really does attract cyprinus carpio; if you can I’ll gladly eat my shorts. Betaine is not the miracle attractor that the bait world thinks it is.
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Perhaps one or two of you can provide some conclusive proof that betaine hydrochloride really does attract cyprinus carpio; if you can I’ll gladly eat my shorts
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If it doesn’t attract fish then what does it do? Well, there is evidence to suggest that carp that were fed diets containing betaine grew faster than those on placebo diets. A lot of people assumed this was due to increased feed uptake (the betaine making the food more attractive). However, as betaine hydrochloride is a source of hydrochloric acid it may contribute to the breakdown of fats and proteins in the fish’s diet, making these elements more digestible. As a result, the fish will show improved growth and benefit from what it has eaten. Another possibility is that betaine can also be referred to as trimethyglycine, so people may have got it confused with something else that carp do find attractive. There are also a number of products that are betaine-based but have other additives, such as nucleotides, in their make-up. One such product was the highly rated Finnstim – effective in spite of its betaine content rather than because of it and not, in my opinion, much to write home about anyway.
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Bait – It’s a Four-letter Word
Question Two Cheap baits like sweetcorn catch plenty of fish – why should I invest in an HNV bait?
Question Three With the price of fishmeal and milks going up, will they become too expensive for bait manufacture? If they do, how do the alternatives measure up? MM: That largely depends on how much you’re prepared to pay for your bait and what value you attach to the HNV principles we’ve discussed in the series. What many people fail to realise is that bait ingredients fall into two categories: 1) animal feed or 2) human food. As emerging economies east of us begin to prosper, their requirement for luxuries, such as meat, in their diet increases, and the demand for animal feed, such as fishmeal, increases with it. Animal feed manufacturers try to substitute as much of the fishmeal as possible with soya, which, in turn, increases the price of soya. The same economies have also discovered the luxury and convenience of powdered infant formulas. This has caused a dramatic increase in demand for skimmed milk powder to the point where it is uneconomical to waste time processing milk protein fractions (caseins, lactalbumins, etc.) unless we make it worth the processors’ while – so the price of milk proteins over
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Mark McKenna
MM: There is no doubting the effectiveness of the humble grain of sweetcorn and it has been used to devastating effect by people such as Rod Hutchinson and Kev Clifford on waters like Redmire Pool for time immemorial. I always carry a can of special explosive ‘carp fishing sweetcorn’ from my local tackle shop for adding to spod mixes, etc. Sweetcorn ticks some of the right boxes in terms of its visual appeal and natural amino content, albeit very limited, BUT, as it is an incomplete food it is likely to ‘blow’ quickly if used on its own by a lot of anglers on the same venue. It’s also useless as a hookbait on waters containing nuisance silver fish. The advent of plastic corn has reduced the risk of you fishing a bare hook when using sweetcorn, but nonetheless, using sweetcorn tends to be more productive on the more prolific venues where there is competition for food and anything is likely to be investigated. I have found that over time HNV-style baits will produce better results in terms of the size of fish landed and the numbers. If you are only visiting a water and are just after a quick bite, going visual is a bona fide tactic when fishing for bites. Even then I would argue that there are better baits available than sweetcorn. Going back to an earlier piece, I’ve previously stated that there is always more than one solution to any angling problem. I could sit here all day trying to blow smoke up your backside in an attempt to convince you that HNV baits are the right solution
Sweetcorn is a great catcher, but it doesn’t compare to a proper HNV bait.
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I could sit here all day trying to blow smoke up your backside in an attempt to convince you that HNV baits are the right solution for your angling situation, but the truth will become apparent if you fish one against the other over a long period
for your angling situation, but the truth will become apparent if you fish one against the other over a long period. I did this many years ago and have supreme confidence in my approach. If you’ve done the same and have a different solution, don’t try to fix something that ain’t broke. A good boilie will be highly attractive in
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the first instance. The HNV aspect of the bait dramatically affects its performance over time; if you aren’t convinced, buy a can of Jolly Green Giant and a bag of a good HNV freezer bait, take them down to your local pond, and see which outcatches the other. I can virtually guarantee it won’t be the corn, unless your name is Chris Yates.
Milk protein fractions are getting more and more expensive…
the past 12 months has seen the most dramatic rise since the late-’70s. There is a global protein deficit which means that the cost of protein ingredients is surging irreversibly upwards. And that’s not all the bad news – last year there was a shortage of wheat, which meant the cost of ingredients such as semolina shot up 40%, and demand for corn from the bio fuel industry led to a similar increase in the cost of maize. The US corn harvest
failed this year and the demands of the animal feed, human food, and the bio fuel industries are not going to be met. This will push up the cost of maize even higher and will increase the demand for wheat, which will remain at least as expensive as it is now. Many firms use rice in their formulae and there’s bad news here also. Global demand for rice has now reached a point where at least one of the main producers has stopped exporting in order to be able to feed its
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Question Three How much bait do you need to use in a session? MM: Good question – like how long is a piece of string? This is what sorts out the men from the boys in this game – knowing when to pile it in and when to limit the amount you’re putting in. There are a lot of one-trick ponies about who get their bait for next to nowt, pile it in, and live on top of it until they get the result they need. I’ve tried this style of fishing and to me it ain’t half boring – breathe in the morning and out in the evening and eventually you can bore ’em into submission. The anglers I really respect are a tad hyper, mega visual,
How much bait to use – how long is a piece of string?
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always on the lookout, and ready to move at the mere hint of an opportunity. They live by the old cliché ‘you can put more in but you can’t take it out’. How many times have you stayed where you are because you’re fishing over a kilo of bait on each rod? If these guys find fish they’ll flick a hookbait, and, at most, a little PVA bag, to where they’re feeding. If the fish remain in the area, as it gets dark they’ll put out about 30 freebies per rod and top up after each fish. They bait up at the end of their session, and that’s the tactic I’m most likely to adopt, where possible. However, on many waters these days it is not possible to move around freely because there are five other geezers on the pond with exactly
Mark McKenna
own population. If drastic action to increase production of staple food crops is not taken, the price of a boilie will soon be the last thing on our minds as we struggle to afford to feed our families. There have already been food riots in developing countries. My point is that all bait is going to increase in price unless manufacturers are prepared to take the hit on their bottom line to stay in the marketplace. At the moment no one wants to be the first to raise the bar so the weaker firms will disappear and the stronger will survive until the price rise plunge is taken – that’s the way of free market economics. In answer to the question, fishmeal used to be more expensive than the ingredients considered cheap by most. The cost of a single tonne of rice today stands at £800.00 ex-works and there is no guarantee it won’t have gone up by tomorrow. That’s exactly the same price as a single tonne of LT94. We may see an increase in the use of fishmeal if the carbohydrate prices don’t stabilise and, therefore, an increase in quality of bait in general by default because it becomes a cheaper alternative. As if all that wasn’t enough (get your hankies out again, fellas) there’s more doom and gloom on the horizon. The fact that we are an island state means the vast majority of ingredients come across the Channel. The fact that we are outside the euro zone means
Bait – It’s a Four-letter Word
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the current strength of the euro against the pound means we get a lot less for our money, putting even more upward pressure on current bait prices. Alternatives to fishmeal? There aren’t any in a genuine HNV bait. Carp do worse on diets where the non-fish proteins exceed the fish protein content. I’ve seen claims lately from one firm stating that they’re using a plant-derived protein which is more digestible, ergo more beneficial than fishmeal and milk – this claim is totally unfounded and unproven. Sure, a carp’s digestive tract might break down a refined plant product more quickly but it will be of lower nutritional value than a fishmeal-based product and, as such, will have a much shorter working life on any water. There are alternatives from the meat industry including a fairly cheap poultry meal with a very high protein content. But again, the bait must include fishmeal in the right quantity to be as useful to a fish as an entirely fishmeal-based bait. Including some milk protein fractions in a bait in the right quantities will increase the food value. It also gives the bait a longer working life and gets a better response from fish in cold water. As an angler I don’t want the trauma of establishing a new bait every year, or changing to a different one for the winter. As a bait-maker I’m only interested in producing high-quality food source baits that will go on working year in, year out. If there comes a point in time when I am forced to make bait of a lesser quality to make a reasonable living, I’m going to think of something else to occupy my time.
…and so is rice, which is used by many large-scale bait manufacturers.
the same idea as you, or there are already three bivvies where the fish are, one right on ’em and one either side. If you’re lucky enough to be the one in the middle, you’ve got many variables to consider. How many fish are out there? How do they respond to bait being introduced? How are the climatic conditions likely to affect how long and how hard they feed? How hungry are they likely to be? These are all aspects that need to be considered. You really need to think about what your goal is when you turn up. If you are hell bent on being top rod I’d urge you to consider what is realistic for the water. Is a fish a night realistic? Are two a distinct possibility, given the conditions? If not, put enough in to catch one. If the water you’re going to be fishing is a busy one and has a huge head of fish and you’re determined to have a ‘big hit’, by all means fill it in and hope for the best. But as a general rule, a nutrient dense bait (more than a kilo a night) spread over three rods is probably overdoing it during the warmer months on your average water of, say, 10 acres with 150 fish up to high-30s. People catch on more and less, only you can decide which to plump for on the day, and experience behind that decision cannot be bought. Welcome to carp fishing – we catch on the fish’s terms, not ours. The art of carp fishing is judging what those terms are on any given day.
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Mark McKenna Bait – It’s a Four-letter Word
All boilies are hyped up by adverts…
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Question Three What are the most over-hyped bait items? MM: What a question to ask a baitmaker – how very dare you! Well, let’s be honest here, it’s got to be the boilie, right? But hang on a minute, let me ask you a rhetorical question – if I’m bringing a product to the marketplace and I say, for example, “Here’s my new bait, buy it, it’s just another little round ball but it’s OK,” would you be tempted? Or would you need to know a little more about it? Does it catch fish? Does it catch big ’uns? What’s in it? Where has it been tested? Will it work abroad? Will it ‘blow’ quickly? How many do I get for a pound? What makes it better than the bait I’m currently using? Do I need to prebait for it to be effective? Is it ‘a little bit different’? If so, why?
…but the catch reports and Internet forums are the place to find out what’s working.
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If I was selling a BMW M3 and my advertisement said: ‘It’s got four wheels and will get you from A to B’. It wouldn’t even register as a blip on your list of desires, but call it ‘the ultimate driving machine’ and you’ve just got to have one
Bait according to how many fish you think you will catch.
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I’ll wager if I just said it’s OK, you wouldn’t buy it, in much the same way as if I was selling a BMW M3 and my advertisement said: ‘It’s got four wheels and will get you from A to B’. It wouldn’t even register as a blip on your list of desires, but call it ‘the ultimate driving machine’ and you’ve just got to have one! We bait manufacturers are damned if we talk up a product and we’re damned if we don’t. I’ll give you a little clue as to what indicates whether a product does what it says on the tin, or not. Listen to the grapevine, have a look at the Internet forums, and talk to people who aren’t connected to the company concerned and who actually use the product, or at least ask your local tackle shop to put you onto a good product. You can soon wade through any hype surrounding a product and establish whether it works or not. At the end of the day, if you’ve bought a bag of bait and given it a fair go and you haven’t caught, you know what to do when you see their new product advertised – turn the page and read on! 56
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Good luck to you all.
Mark McKenna
MM: The short answer is that generally it would appear not – but there is an issue with eggs, which my mate Colin Booker brought to my attention a few years ago. That is that egg whites contain an antinutrient called ovomucoid. Ovomucoid is an inhibitor of the enzyme trypsin that the carp relies on entirely for the digestion of the protein in its diet – not good! In very basic terms, the worry was that an element of egg white, ovomucoid, blocked a carp’s ability to digest protein. What makes it worse is that every unit of ovomucoid ingested has the potential to render 1.2 units of trypsin useless, superuber-mega not good! Don’t panic yet though, the problem is easily overcome because ovomucoid works by binding to the part of the enzyme that binds to and alters the protein it is supposed to digest. This is known in
Eggs are only a problem in low protein ‘crap baits’.
Bait – It’s a Four-letter Word
Question Three Some baits are now being sold on the basis that they don’t contain eggs. Are eggs bad for carp?
the trade as competitive binding. The high protein concentration in an HNV bait is high enough to out-compete the ovomucoid for the enzyme’s active site, so if it’s a problem it’s only really a problem in ‘crap bait’, so everything is
actually good. Eggs provide a good dose of essential amino acids to our bait as well as a good tough skin, but it’s probably not wise to go mad with products such as egg albumin in bait unless that bait has got a very high protein content. Well, that’s about it for the series. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my last few articles as much as I’ve enjoyed putting them all together. Bait-making is a dying art and it’s a skill which, once mastered, can bring you some great results. However, when all is said and done you’ve still got to be able to put that bait in the right place. MM
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