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!…

Using sausage meat is rather more ethical than basing your baits on very valuable marine resources, but you can use it to bulk-up certain fish or shellfish bait mixes to cut costs and create different nutritional profiles, tastes effects etc. you can easily get sausage meat fresh or frozen fresh and fresh is best although catfish are also renowned for loving baits just souring, but I would prefer to use this effect with blood based baits for instance and not pork. Often the biggest fish in your water will take a new safe bait pretty quickly and certainly sausage meat based baits are not trendy so can really give you many competitive edges!

You can use the minced products or use a mincer to make a sticky pliable material to use to base you bait on. Pork meat is very nutritionally stimulating to big catfish and carp, supplying many essential nutritional needs including many amino acids and energy packed oils. Sausage meat may be made from pork alone or with other materials, but even adding very cheap wheat flour, or with a few eggs to meat with sausage rusk will bind bait to make practical bait dough for paste or boilies.

So how do you further produce one of the cheapest home made protein baits fast and easily?

For example, using half a pound of minced sausage meat, mix it in a bowl with about 3 to 4 large hens eggs and around 2 table spoons of ordinary cheap wheat flour (or more if required) and kneed this into a stiff pliable dough. This can be used as fishing bait immediately as paste, or you can bag it up in bags with a tie to make the bag air tight and store in the fridge or freeze it for use next session. This bait is pretty much instant on most carp and catfish waters even though various meat brands and grades may very results and although very basic and simple will produce lots of fish.

Putting regular batches of baits in swims is a very good advantage to get fish to really respond to your new bait. (You do not have to do this using sausage meat as it is mostly instant acting; but why miss a good trick!?) If you put out golf ball size baits a few times into swims before using it, then fish will eat this safe bait and it will definitely improve your results come the time of using when you do fish with it!

When you pre-bait fish will obviously get a smell and taste of it without getting hooked so be more confident when you do try it on the hook, so do it! You can use sausage meat baits as part of your ground baiting or with other meat baits like chopped spam, meatballs, luncheon meats if you want the extra expense; sausage meat and cheap rolled oats is fine! Scald or boil or steam your baits if needed where smaller fish prove a bother, but add some paste to your bait on your rig or on the hook to boost more soluble attraction…

You might make your boilies from small half inch odd shaped pieces and these odd baits will have a competitive edge over all those expensive uniformly shaped machine-rolled baits! Just get a half pan of water boiling and add a handful of baits at a time usually for about 2 minutes on average before removing them. Use handy towels or papers (or special drying trays from Gardener tackle) to dry your baits and remember to keep your water boiling at all times.

Boiling baits for longer makes them harder as the eggs proteins coagulate more making your baits more resilient, but less attractive nutritionally. To make your baits more attractive the choices are many to improve results. Even adding garlic or sea salt or curry powders even at a teaspoon per egg will make a difference to performance.

As sausage meat is a fatty, oily bait, incorporating additives and ingredients and flavours to boost digestion and fish metabolism is a very good idea indeed. You might simply add spice and herb powders, any of a range of essential oils and extracts, or boost attraction with parmesan or blue cheese powder and added garlic granules or seaweed granules etc. Adding some liquid amino acids supplements is always useful in boosting nutritional attraction and this can be made at home very easily although it’s not for this piece. For colder weather you might add liquid lecithins and add oat or wheat bran which improve digestion, liver function and the vascular system of fish being rich in the feeding trigger, betaine!

The choice of ingredients, additives, flavours, taste enhancers etc not only bewildering for most anglers, but often expensive. It is a giant money-saving edge when you know what you are really adding for exactly what direct or indirect purpose in stimulating fish digestion, or to enhance responses at fish receptors and the brain to induce more intensive feeding for instance. Whatever you use, be it a bioactive flavour complex, or simple monosodium glutamate or anchovy source, often keeping things cheap will provide many hidden edges over anglers commercial baits which may already have peaked as it were…

The options are limited only by your imagination; but using proven fish feeding triggering substances and metabolically stimulating substances are among the best proven substances when you look at bait components… Homemade sausage meat baits (and ground baits) for big carp and catfish are well proven against any popular modern baits (even enzyme-active ones,) and I’ve proven this myself (although my baits are sometimes rather more complex than here.) So give them a try and you might decide to get much deeper into making your own homemade baits; but beware – they can become addictive!

By Tim Richardson.