Prebait / Loose Feed Mix

[sammy-boy]

For anyone new to fishing ill let you know my general prebaiting / loose feed mix. It can be used for most species both stillwaters (where hemp is allowed) and rivers.

The bulk of my mix is made of hemp. you can buy it ready cooked but i prefer to make my own. It easy enough. I take 4 pints of raw hemp and add generous amounts of salt, sugar, brown sugar and bicarbonate soda. These help to darken the hemp and sweeten the taste. Fish love salt but use sea salt as it doesn't have the anti-caking agents in like table salt. Then simply cover with water, soak for 24 hours and boil for an hour until the seeds split. It will swell by about 25% so you'll get roughly 5 pints of cooked hemp.

Anyway back to the mix

5 pints Hemp
2-3 Tins of sweetcorn (in salt and sugar)
2 Tins of tuna (this really improves the mix as all fish love tuna, break the tuna up into flakes in the mix)
You can add more salt and flavours such as curry powder if you wish
Finally free offers of your hookbaits if your not using corn

This mix is made of small particles. They will hold fish for a long time and the smell of salt and spices will stay long after all the particles have gone.

This mix can be a bit hard to catapault as hemp doesnt tend to go far so you can thicken it with some brown crum if you wish.

I don't use pellets as everyones using them at the moment and i think tuna and hemp oil are far stronger atractants. Also fish will fill up much more easily on pellets than on natural baits. Kilo of pellets also costs around 3 -4 quid, pint of hemp costs me about 25p

Prebaiting can pay off greatly if done well and consistantly. You can get fish feeding convidently on your baits in the swims your going to fish. I would suggest feeding two to three swims every other night. You dont need masses of bait, the idea is for fish to get used to finding food in these areas and have confidence in taking them.

[madcaravanner]

Originally Posted by sammy-boy

For anyone new to fishing ill let you know my general prebaiting / loose feed mix. It can be used for most species both stillwaters (where hemp is allowed) and rivers.

The bulk of my mix is made of hemp. you can buy it ready cooked but i prefer to make my own. It easy enough. I take 4 pints of raw hemp and add generous amounts of salt, sugar, brown sugar and bicarbonate soda. These help to darken the hemp and sweeten the taste. Fish love salt but use sea salt as it doesn't have the anti-caking agents in like table salt. Then simply cover with water, soak for 24 hours and boil for an hour until the seeds split. It will swell by about 25% so you'll get roughly 5 pints of cooked hemp.

Anyway back to the mix

5 pints Hemp
2-3 Tins of sweetcorn (in salt and sugar)
2 Tins of tuna (this really improves the mix as all fish love tuna, break the tuna up into flakes in the mix)
You can add more salt and flavours such as curry powder if you wish
Finally free offers of your hookbaits if your not using corn

This mix is made of small particles. They will hold fish for a long time and the smell of salt and spices will stay long after all the particles have gone.

There are two things you could add to this mix one is a seed based bird food mix and Molasses instead of curry

I would say is
1/ not too much salt
2/ let the whole lot stand for a couple of days in as much liquid as there is to cover it

this then makes it a good feed ofr lots of stuff up to and including carp and tench

[sammy-boy]

Also bear in mind guys and girls all that salt can stop the seed from spliting as much, although it is still safe if cooked properly

[sammy-boy]

Also i disagree about the salt, Danny Fairbrass one of the best carp anglers in the country adds loads to his spod mix. It leaves a halo on the bottom which keeps the fish around. Personally i'd say lots of salt

[Ally1984]

I have only just started fishing in the last year or so. At the moment I am fishing commericals and wanting to have a go at catching carp. Just wondering when all this is mixed in could groundbait be used as a carrier for these particles. How much would you put in the area to fish? what sized balls? If I am not getting any bites etc what would you recommend feeding a little bit more? at intervals?

[sammy-boy]

The key to sucess on commericials and most other waters for that matter, is little and often. Yes you can definately add groundbait to the mix to hold it together. Intially put in a couple of tennis ball sized amounts, but after that very small amounts but also very often. If your float fishing you want to create a channel of groundbait and food going from the surface to the bottom. Alternatively ou could use and open ended or cage style feeder set up. for the cage feeder simple mix your groundbait and loose feeds up and press it into the feeder. Be careless not to compact it too much though as it wont break down in the water. For the open ended feeder, mix your groundbait seperately. To load your open ended feeder, make a plug at one end off your feeder, nice and tight. Next fill the feeder with your free offerings, and finally plug up the other end and give it a little squeeze down. Using an open end feeder gives many advantages such as being able to use larger free offerings such as corn and meat which would never come out of a blockend feeder. If you opt for ther feeder method i would cast and retrieve every 5 minutes. The more accurate you are in hitting the same place everytime, the more sucessful the method will be. You want to build up a carpet of bait but you dont want there to be so much the fish aren't competing for it. As they compete bigger fish will "bully" the smaller fish away from the swim, and you often find your start off catching smaller fish, but as the day goes on the average size does go up

So to cap it all off, little and often with the bait, and accuracy are the leys to sucess

Anymore questions and i would be happy to try and answer them for you