Making boilies - first attempt

After doing some online research, I decided to attempt making my own boilies. From what I read, it's more rewarding to catch fish on home made baits, so I figured I'd give it a try.

I bought a few basic ingredients after researching many recipes online. When I finally tried to follow the recipes, I failed miserably on my first 2 attempts, couldn't get the dough to work properly. Fed up, I improvised and created my own recipe, substantially changing the fundamentals of what I'd read online. The dough worked on the first shot, I was soon rolling the "sausages".

With my boys off school for Labor day weekend, I took advantage of some child labor, and had them roll the sausages into a couple sizes of boilies, somewhere in the 10 mm and 20 mm range. The balls were a bit on the crude side, but it didn't matter at that point, I just wanted to boil and dry them to see of the dough worked. Sure enough, it did.

My kids were pretty excited to go out and try the boilies they made, so I took them out the following day. One of the local experts mentioned how bad the carp fishing had been all week, so I figured it would be a real good test. I set up 2 rods with my home made boilies, and 1 rod with the standard store bought ones I've used all season. I immediately noticed that the crude shaped home made boilies were very tough to cast accurately, especially into the wind. They took wild turns while flying, kind of like a curve ball having a bad day.

Despite not being able to efficiently chum my lines, the home made boilies got hit first. I was letting my kids try to fight the carp, so we lost the first couple fish. I eventually took the rod, and landed our first carp on a home made boilie. Not a monster, but a good start, and proof that they worked.

Throughout the day, the bite got really good at times, then died down for 1- 2 hours at a time. Levi ended up landing his biggest carp at 14 lbs, and lost another one in that size range.

Avi landed a couple big carp, lost another as well.

The home made boilie lines ended up hooking 6 carp, store bought ones only 2. All this despite running out of home made boilies halfway throughout the day, and not being able to efficiently chum due to their lopsided shape. To top it off, 4 groups of locals were at it that day, fishing different spots in the same area. They ended up landing a whopping 1 fish all day!

I didn't dream of this kind of success on my first attempt at boilie making. Now, I'm ready to get a couple small rolling table to make proper boilies for next season. I foresee more research in the future...