FAST BAIT is a term that has become commonplace in the jargon of many carp anglers!
People are looking for speed because fishing trips are becoming shorter and shorter and the concept of preventive bait remains a legacy of our past.
Those who know how to make soluble bait win all and in fact I have dealt with this subject several times on the blog and in my books, so much so that in my latest book "Boilies" there is a chapter dedicated to speed and also to competitions.
(click here for a direct link to the book on Amazon).
I have also done specific consultancy work for companies aimed at developing commercially viable products suitable for all those who need programmed melt boilies.
But are there ways of speeding up the entry of normal pellets that are not designed to be soluble?
Of course there are, and they are very simple methods to implement that were used extensively back in the 1990s!
A few months ago I had some very technical lures made by my friend Roberto Mattei of Rolling Service Bools.
The aim of this particular project was to develop boilies for difficult environments, rich in nutrients to catch the target fish, i.e. the heavy weights present in the quarry.
The result was very dense balls of natural organic stimulus, with an unsuspected chemistry and made to work for many hours on the bottom waiting for a big carp to spot them as organic food without being alarmed.
Certainly a bait not designed to melt in 2 hours!
Suppose you want to fish for a few hours near your home and there are only these balls available, left over from the more technical fishing for which they were designed...
What to do?
Quite simply the process to be carried out is the 'peeling' of the bait.
All boilies, even the most technical and professional ones, have different porosity between the surface layer and the inner layer.
This is due to the gelatinisation of the starch contained in some of the flours in the mix, which "migrates" to the surface during cooking and escapes from the bait due to the overpressure created within the bait.
With this escape and the subsequent drying, the surface microporosities are "plugged" making the surface of the bait smooth and compact.
This mechanism does not adversely affect the bait (if contained) because that starch will dissolve in a few hours allowing the bait to work perfectly.
This quality is essential for baits that need to be in the water for more than 4-5 hours (up to 24 hours for those balls that are dropped and not retrieved for several days, a winning strategy for large target fish).
But if our fishing trip lasts 4-5 hours, this results in a delayed entry into the fishery which can be detrimental if the carp are already in the fishing area when we cast or lower the terminal.
Peeling, carried out with a cutter or a very sharp knife, removes about 2 mm. of surface area or more, if you also want to reduce the diameter of the bait itself.
In my case, starting from 24 mm balls, I wanted to obtain 20 mm triggers by removing a couple of millimetres of surface.
The appearance of the hookbait changes drastically and the bait is prepared for the immediate exchange (which you can easily verify by putting in a glass of water the bait skinned and undamaged) and reducing the diameter you can point more quickly to the fish passing through regardless of size.
With regard to the bait in the vicinity of the bait itself, it is best to cut the pellets into pieces or crumble them.
To cut them up, use the same cutter to cut the bait into at least 4 pieces and then use them in a PVA net bag to attach to the terminal.
For those who prefer the bowler system, which is even faster and more responsive, the best solution is to pass the not too dehydrated baits through the meat grinder to obtain pellet-like cylinders which are fantastic for this specific use.
Do you want effective recipes for fast boilies? Find them in the book Boilies!
Click here to download the book.
