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!…

Obviously sausage meat is great being so cheap and readily available without rapidly depleting marine resources as much as many other bait ingredients so such meat baits and ground baits are more ethical too! Sausage meat is best bought fresh or fresh frozen and is extremely economical like this. Sausage meat baits are not part of modern bait fashions at the moment and can really give you a great edge over many wary big fish!

Sausage meat is very simple and easy to use and you can either mince it up or use the minced product. The nutritional value of pork sausage meat is very stimulatory to both carp and catfish and has a fair proportion of those important fish stimulators; amino acids and oils. Pork sausage meat is often made with bread crumbs and it is very simple to make a bait by simply mixing it with eggs and very cheap wheat flour for example, although other more nutritional binding flours and meals are very numerous, to help bind bait into a dough.

To make these economical protein based baits is fast and very easy!

For instance, start off with a small amount of meat to practice with like just half a pound of minced meat mixed with around 3 hens eggs in a bowl and with enough wheat flour added to mould into a pliable bait dough. You can use this as bait or put into sealed plastic freezer bags to store in the fridge or freezer for later use. Such bait is usually very instant on most carp and catfish waters, although different grades and brands of sausage meat will vary in success rates so do experiment!

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.

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 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…

Fishing baits which are based on substances that trigger fish feeding and fish metabolism among many other things are well recommended, but you need to get to know the details of this to exploit them most cost effectively, but remember the advantages of using a popular commercial bait is lessened by far when fishing against more experienced, talented, full-time moneyed (or bait sponsored) anglers! Homemade baits like those based on very cheap sausage meat work against those highly hyped baits that cost a fortune (even if they are enzyme active etc,) and will catch you lots of big carp and catfish: fact. Obviously the more you get to know about bait the more edges you can have which save you a fortune and keep producing better than average catch results, and cheap baits are not necessarily crap baits; but the complete opposite so keep reading!

By Tim Richardson.