Sausage meat is now part of carp and cat fishing history having proven its worth as a very effective cheap bait ingredient for small and big fish (many thousands of times, and for decades.) It is far cheaper than using the popular Pepperoni and similar luncheon meat type products for example. But how do you make extremely effective but very cheap baits and ground baits using it; see a few very proven big fish suggestions right now!…

The first ideal part about sausage meat is how cheap and easily available it is. It comes in various forms and grades and as usual it is best to get the freshest product possible. This kind of meat is just not fashionable today which means right now is a perfect time to be exploiting it!

Making baits from congealed or minced sausage meats is really simple, fast and easy. It contains many nutrients that stimulate big catfish and carp with many oils and amino acids etc. Although many sausage meat products contain rusk and cereal is great bulking and binding agent, you can use extremely cheap wheat flour for example, plus eggs to bind it into a dough, to use as bait, or to make paste baits or produce boiled baits.

Making one of the cheapest protein based homemade baits is simple, fast and very easy to do:

Use a large pan or bowl to make a bait mix using a test batch of about half a pound of meat plus about 2or 3 hen’s eggs and enough wheat flour added to bind into dough. This is practical bait to use immediately, or you can store it in plastic bags and store in the freezer or fridge for future sessions. Although these meat baits (like any bait ingredients) may vary in nutritional profiles and fish effects and catch results, they are normally instant type baits and reliable fish catchers straight from the first cast.

Pre-baiting with a new bait is definitely a good edge putting things far more in your favour. (This is not totally necessary with this bait though.) I got a friend to do this for me in a swim (not such a clever move,) and I never got in the swim as incidental catches by other anglers meant it was too popular as a result of the baiting; so bait less obvious swims! Even just introducing a few pounds of bait in golf ball sized pieces the day before fishing can make a big difference!

The effect of pre-baiting is that the fish will be far more prepared to eat your bait with even more enthusiasm when you start actually fishing; so hold onto your rod! Sausage meat in this form makes fantastic ground baits too. Fishing paste balls has always been extremely effective, but these days you might prefer to make your baits more resilient to smaller fish (by par-boiling,) so they are still intact when the bigger fish arrive; but add some dough to your bait or hook or PVA bag anyway too!

As most commercial rolled baits have uniform shapes, your homemade baits in odd shapes have the advantage over more wary fish by disrupting their reference points! Boilies are just made by placing your dough baits only a handful at a time in half a pan of boiling water in a pan for a couple of minutes; this makes a resilient skin when they dry-off on conveniently placed absorbent towels or trays etc. keep your water boiling at all times by not adding too many baits at once and keep taking baits out after around 2 minutes or so.

Boil your baits for anything from a minute to 5 minutes; the longer boiling makes them harder, but this loses more attraction in the process. To help attraction there are so many choices to add to your bait, or just to keep results coming. For instance you could add sea salt at about a teaspoon per 2 eggs worth of bait mixed, or add curry powder at a heaped teaspoonful per egg used in the mix or more depending on the form of curry powder used.

You might just add a teaspoon of black pepper powder per egg used. Other examples of well proven kitchen favourites are yeast extract products like Marmite or Vegemite; add at a heaped tablespoon per egg, or even Parmesan or blue cheese powder which is ideal in sausage meat baits. You can simply add some Minamino or proprietary fishing liquid amino acids supplement like Nutramino to boost feeding stimulation and nutritional profile of your bait; or add fish meal, keratin, or poultry meal, or ground bird foods and lecithins for more digestible baits in winter, for example…

The fact is that there are thousands of additives, liquids, flavours and some very refined and advanced bait ingredients and extracts you could use. Many ingredients are often used to most exploit the food detection systems of fish which have internal and external specialised cells which enable fish to instinctively home in on your bait. You might use a proprietary flavour like Secret Agent, Megaspice, Mulberry Florentine or Maple steep liquor, vodka, spice oleoresins, or add MSG to enhance taste, or simply add salted liquidised liver or liver pate, (just a desert spoonful per egg of 2 these will keep big results coming your way!)

If you use proven fish feeding triggers and proven fish attractors with a nutritional or other physiological beneficial effect then they will pay their worth for sure. Even supermarket oil based citrus flavours can be very effective not least due to being unique and containing beneficial bioflavonoids, acids etc, but you can make your own homemade flavoured oils, flavours and nutritional glugs, dips etc for very little expense anyway. Homemade sausage meat baits do compete even with the latest enzyme-active commercial baits and catch big carp and catfish at a fraction of the cost of very many popular baits. Being different is one of the top edges in fishing even simply using the bait ideas here to adapt add an unusual bait paste moulded round your readymade bait is going to get you thinking about more productive possibilities in the future; and the more you know the more valuable cheaper edges you have!

By Tim Richardson.