Liquid Flavors
FRUIT FLAVORS...
I think at least 90% of those who have approached carpfishingutilizing boilies have employed fruity taste baits. The reason is quickly stated, first of all the bait must please the angler and not the carp and at least in the beginning I think really few people thought of priming crab or liver boilies. Personally I am glad I started with strawberry ready-made boilies from the Molino Zombini line. How is it, however, that this type of bait has always worked...well in the meantime we can say that a bait works if a good percentage of anglers use it and if we consider the fact that many have always been admirers of fruity flavors, well the result is a given. But then we try to understand why this type of bait has always worked .
Let's start with the ready made "vintage",in a word, simple... We talk about simple baits, because fruit-flavored ready-made boilies had to be fast to get into the fishery right away and give fishermen catches without necessarily being able to select size or not saturate a fishing spot in the short time. Today, companies in the industry are definitely offering baits that are more complex and more nutritionally complete, but honestly the way I see it if I decide to go for fruit made bait surely it is because I want maximum speed performance. So after years of fishing I think I can say that in this case simplicity always pays off.
A good 50/50 mix or at most a balanced birdfood, a fruity flavor and a sweetener are all that is needed. Beware, however, that "simplicity" does not in fact mean "not quality." Fast baits rely everything on their taste qualities and to release precisely fast food signals in this case I would call them "magnet" type. To have this result we need that perfect synergies between the ingredients used in our recipes.Let's take a step back and go back to the choice of the mix, well in the summer season a 50/50 is fine as long as it is always well balanced and there are plenty of recipes around. If on the other hand we opt for a birdfood it will certainly be a good choice regardless of the season because we are still talking about a more technical bait that is on a higher step than a base mix. Certainly it will be a compulsory choice at certain times of the year such as springtimewhere the vitamins and in some cases the prebiotics contained in birdfood mixes will give an extra edge.
Now we come to fruity flavors-how and which ones to choose ... well I personally divide them into two categories, the sweet such as banana, strawberry, melon, peach flavors to name a few and the slightly more acidic ones such as citrus, red fruits (mulberry, cranberry) and pineapple. Now the formulation of an aroma of this type must guarantee 3 things and a good selfmaker must know how to recognize them before using them
- Opening a bottle of one of these aromas we should smell a more or less pronounced fragrance (depending on the degree of concentration) but constant without perceiving hidden essences after a few moments.
- A few drops in a glass of water and tasting it we should be able to smell the taste, for me really much more important than the aroma. This will have to be balanced more or less sweet without having hidden aftertastes that would in fact make the fish suspicious when feeding.
- The choice of solvent(s) is important both for the final solubility and because in case of more than one solvent some mixtures would give rise to interactions on the taste of the finished aroma.
Now let's spend a few words on the sweetener, its function is to sweeten a mixture evenly and more or less concentrated. Here again we should be careful not to choose a product that may give rise to unpleasant alterations in the final taste of the bait. Generally it is sufficient here also to do a small test always with a few drops dissolved in a glass of water. By tasting it we should get a good sweet taste always without any hint of some bitter aftertaste.
Finally if you want to know at 80% what taste your bait will have make a small mixture of your flavoring with added your sweetener in the chosen percentages always dissolved in a glass of water. Taste it and if you have chosen well beforehand you will make well-made baits.
