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Specialized Hook Baits - Catch Reports Oct 2025
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Karlos

Posts: 13677

MODERATOR

#1 3 Oct 2025 at 11.49am

In order to keep the SHB thread nice and fast (to load) I'll create a new thread every now and again. All threads (new and old) will link to each other so that no information / photos are lost

Links to past SHB threads...
1 - Specialized Hook Baits - Catch Report and Q+A
2 - Specialized Hook Baits - Catch Reports Jul 2024
3 - Specialized Hook Baits - Catch Reports Oct 2024
4 - Specialized Hook Baits - Catch Reports Feb 2025
4 - Specialized Hook Baits - Catch Reports Oct 2025 (This thread)

RKB

Posts: 1575

#156 21 Dec 2025 at 7.51am

Most forums are dead. Places like Facebook saw to that. The only forums that I know that are still getting huge post counts are where there is an actual community - people going out and doing stuff together rather than interacting online. Last forum social I sent on was to Sandhurst in 2011 I think it was.

TCarper

Posts: 4305

#155 21 Dec 2025 at 6.55am

One other thing. I see written on here all of the time by long standing members, that the forum is very quiet these days compared to how it used to be. Well I've seen monthly viewing figures that you lot commenting that, do not see. The individual guest viewing figures. Yeah some are likely bots and the like. But there's an absolutely vast number of people looking at this forum on a monthly basis, just as guests. Many tens of thousands. They may not want to join up & post, they could be older members, but there is a hell of a lot of people watching. You may not see them in terms of the online members, but that is not how the absolute VAST majority of people view this forum, they view it as a guest. It's not my place to say. But going on you lots comments over & over again written on here, you would be SO shocked if you knew the current monthly viewing figures.

Currently 9 members online. 525 guests. Before 7am in the UK.

TCarper

Posts: 4305

#154 21 Dec 2025 at 5.54am

3)

Yes that fish got an elevated taste of Strawberry that’s not really there. But it also got real liquid food signals from the actual real food itself, along with those fake attraction signals. All mixed up as they flooded out instantly from the outside of the bait. The second time that you do that process, the liquid will become more coloured than the first time. That's because the first time was almost like breaking the seal. It's when the real food item gets mixed up structurally, along with the fake attraction signal liquids that spread so well, that things really start cooking on gas. Anglers who are lucky enough to use a boat, notice the same thing over and over again whilst using our stuff…. It gets taken first… More than anything else that they have ever seen in their life. To a stupid degree. Every particle, every crumb of bait is still there. That’s because the fish are being dragged to the swim by something…. When they get there, it’s the same thing they want to have in their mouth more than anything else what brought them there in the first place. That’s exactly what your hook bait should be doing. Not trying to trick them into striking at it. Reducing the flavours themselves by reduction on the outside of the bait makes them far more powerful, it also taste enhances them by removing the stuff which you really don’t want or need. Be that PG, water, or anything else. Carp fishing is a progression. Frozen Tutti’s were THE bait back in the day. They would flood their heavy fake attractors out rapidly. The ready made versions of the exact same bait would not flood anything out. They were crap. But things progressed. Carp anglers learned that real food based baits blew them both out of the water really. The place that things did not ever progress was in the hook baits though. What is pumped out in the media constantly is akin to harking back to crap ready mades from the 90's…. Because it’s very cheap & simple to make. The profits are like nothing else. As someone who targets other peoples mistakes in my betting life to put the odds statistically in my favour. It was sooooo much easier to put the odds in my favour against the hook baits from the bait companies when we first started. They were an afterthought for them all. A good profit maker, because they cost buttons. In their heads it’s their bait which is special. The pop ups were normally just blanks doused in chemical flavours. They still are. That was so easy to vastly put the odds into my favour in terms of bites produced. The stuff I was making for myself literally pissed all over anything you could buy in the shops. They can employ as many stars as they want to sell stories. Without the actual product, it goes nowhere in the end with real anglers. It's taken me so long just to get the stuff into everyones hands. The best anglers all knew, but not everyone else. But that's the case now. Then the product does the talking. Nothing else. That's real & everlasting. I can't wait to disappear. Anyone trying to rip us off commercially, looks slightly more silly now after what you have read over the past few days. The numerous ones who sprung up telling you they were 'curing' cardboard pop ups, without ever having the first clue what we were even up to. That's just carp fishing. They are twenty five years behind, even after reading all this. I should never have had to have even publicised all this. Sadly carp fishing bait is something you can start up tomorrow. There are literally far to many companies now. There are ex moderators of this forum selling 'special' hook baits suddenly. You can order the bait & the pop ups straight from a catalogue these days. < £2kg delivered from Europe. >£1 of that is haulage. Zero knowledge whatsoever, rinsing carp fishing left right & centre. They will thin out, only the strong among them will survive. You lot should be sucking this all up, then adding your own personal spins onto it. Don’t come & broadcast them here, take those fundamentals and run with them. I have always told carp angling that the sole reason for the success of the hook baits is the process itself. It creates things that cannot be bottled up. I can sell it to you inside hook baits, but I cannot bottle it. That’s why we do not sell fake potions which would make me a stupid fortune. But it would not be real. The process itself is everything.

There has been a big jump forwards for us in the special edition S2, especially the Fizz S2 & the Curry’s. Our best ingredients now come from absolutely worldwide. I’m still learning all of the time.

TCarper

Posts: 4305

#153 21 Dec 2025 at 5.53am

2)

Carp anglers want the signals to remain to please their own nose. The fermentation that I am speaking of in the centre of your bait. It will have no real smell to your nose, just a subtle change to the food itself. Changes the taste massively though. Intensifies it. Exactly the same as it does in particles that you ferment. Real food signals locked inside a freezer (food) bait do not travel through the water as well as the, lets call them fake food signals that we love to drag fish to our bait with. But they are far more important when the fish gets near the bait than the fake signals. They are real, from the edible itself. You will see on underwater videos that can only be shot in daylight on lakes that are totally overstocked, that when a carp takes the cardboard pop up it normally does it at speed. It’s almost the predatory instinct that is triggered. Elevated signals, something that stands out, it’s often as if they strike at it like they would strike at fry. Long before underwater selling videos carp anglers watched all this in the edge. The particles mentioned above, they do not provoke this same ‘predatory’ type strike. Not ever. It’s a completely different thing that is not to do with colour either IMO. Sweetcorn is bright yellow. But it’s not full of artificial signals. It’s full of real food signals to the fish. You don’t see fish ’striking’ at sweetcorn. Or sweetcorn ‘blowing’. The fish know that they are all good food. When you see fish actually stay in the swim on the underwater cameras, that’s why they only want to eat the hemp, sweet corn, pellets and everything else once the actual real feeding response is triggered. That cardboard pop up has zero chance of being taken then. It provokes a snatch response, or it does not tend to work. The boillies are not being eaten either. Till last. When carp anglers want to make their free bait, full of long lasting fake attraction signals, they are actually working against their best interests. You want them yes, but not how you are employing them. Anything related to smell in a carp anglers head should be WIPED. Totally forgotten about. Anything you do that is linked to your own smell is useless. It lies to you. But we all do things which are only linked to smell. Like the cracking of an old bait open and expecting it to please our nose with smell. It sends you down fake paths because your brain is wired to the smell you pick up from the flavours we are speaking about. But the fish does not smell them in our medium, the taste is the important part in hers. You can trick that fish with elevated levels of chemical or even natural flavourings. But there had better be the real mcCoy when the fish arrives if it’s not living with 1000 others where it will eat pretty much anything. The signals you are sending out are not real. Even natural ones. They are not what the actual food itself is. What I am advocating you to do below is actually mixing up the real food signals of the food itself from your bait, the IMPORTANT stuff, with the fake attraction ones that travel a distance. That is what is happening when your liquids change to the colour of the bait. They may get sucked back in. They may seem when it’s dry again, that it is back to solid egg bound surface. It’s not. The structure has now absolutely changed. How it reacts under water has now changed. When it goes into the water the real food signals get carried around the pond with the fake ones that travel so well. When the fish arrives at source, what do you imagine he is looking for? What brought him there?

TCarper

Posts: 4305

#152 21 Dec 2025 at 5.50am

1)

The coating was a Jamaican spice mix that came in a big jar for the S1. I think it was used for jerk chicken. With MSG & some other stuff added by me. But it was the coating of the dry roasted peanut that was being replicated. If you look into how they apply the coating to a dry roasted peanut, it’s quite hard to find. But when you do, it’s the same way in which I told you all to hard coat your hook baits during Covid. I just told you the more industrial way to do it. But it was taken from a dry roasted peanut. Give a carp some peanuts…. It will hoover them up instantly & ingest them instantly. Give them a few dry roasted peanuts, they will play with the individual nuts. They are taking them in & out of their mouth over & over again to experience the tasty coating on the outside. They love the taste. They will eventually ingest them, but first they will play with them. This action of a carp sucking & blowing something over & over again is the whole ethos behind our hook baits.

Regarding different ways of doing what we do…. I honestly thank you. There will be great ways that you can do things for you. Same as I used to. That will not suit us now though. We already run two 45l extraction per day dehumidifiers, both with special laundry modes for drying large amounts of laundry fast. These have extra large carbon filters for air purification as well. We create a lot of moist heat and a lot of smell. The dehumidifiers are not used on the baits, but to control that. After twenty years I have exhausted every way possible of doing the process. The way we now do it, utilises warm air. That is used for reasons that are not going to get spoken about here…. As well as stuff that is. We use what we use for good reasons. The electricity bills maybe stupid now…. But the adapted heaters creating 90% of that, are more than paying for themselves lol. I love them, they are going absolutely no where. We do not need to economise, we desperately need to expand again. Two have been running in the second half of 2025. Two more have been purchased & adapted already. The electric bills are about to double again. That’s a great thing, I am not complaining. It’s stupid to have even mentioned it.

Any of the S2 options will be absolute fire in the coldest water. If you had to twist my arm up my back it would be the Hutchie S2 or the Fizz S2 personally. Ricci will tell you it’s the ScopexPineapple S2. Others will tell you that the PPPP S2 or the Curry S2 blow all of them out of the water. Older anglers who will use nothing but an original S2 will tell you different. It’s the same thing behind all of them which is making them work. The variations have the taste changed. But it’s the same stuff behind the whole package making it work.

First off, I am not a chemist or a scientist. I am not consulting anyone or any books/papers about all this stuff. So any ‘terms’ that are not correct, are from my feebleness. Whatever flavours you are using SB, you will make them so much better by ‘reducing’ them, would be the human cooking term as Scaly&Dark mentioned earlier. Even nature identical flavours all come on a chemical base to preserve them though. But if you mean you use 100% natural flavourings, fresh, then you can still make them much better than they are by utilising all that was written in the posts below. Any attraction signal, does not need to be locked up inside your bait.

That’s strictly for carp anglers pre ordained view that when they reel in they need to smell their bait still. If it does not smell anymore when they crack it open, inside the head of a carp angler it is useless. You are all thinking about a heavily chemically flavoured ball of pop up as ‘attraction’. Reel in some sweet corn, a tiger nut, a peanut, a brazil nut, a maple…. I could go on & on & on…. Reel any of them in and smell them after one hour. Your human nose will smell absolutely nothing. All of them are vastly greater than any freezer bait at attraction. They don’t work in a pre ordained way, they work in a totally natural way. The signals need to attract the fish to the food source. The food source itself then needs to tell the fish to eat it, like those particles all do. Like your freezer bait does from its main ingredients.

Singlebleep

Posts: 2278

Site deviant...

#151 20 Dec 2025 at 5.02pm

In reply to Post #139
Fascinating insight, many thanks for sharing 👍

I only use natural flavours in my baits, stopped using EA’s etc a few years ago, replacing them with naturally occurring flavours, and mixed in the egg mixture or direct into the various powders making up the bait ( depending on its natural state). So my question would be based around if I followed your lead I’d need either a natural carrier or an already flavoured carrier for the flavouring? Maybe oil based?

raztwc

Posts: 388

#150 20 Dec 2025 at 4.27pm

In reply to Post #148
Just ordered some k2 thanks for help lads

808

Posts: 128

#149 20 Dec 2025 at 1.00pm

In reply to Post #139
I found a pot of s1 and the maple /type/smell one just this week having a tidy up of the garage - good few years old now still smelt ok.

carpbandit84

Posts: 3773

#148 20 Dec 2025 at 12.15pm

In reply to Post #140
Yea thats a gd bait. The K2 has the liquid from the garlic and enzyme bait on the hydra K base

Ged

Posts: 438

#147 20 Dec 2025 at 11.02am

In reply to Post #146
That's what I use, though I only make hookbaits nowadays, and only a couple of times a year.

Back in the 90's, when I made all my own bait, I would freeze the freebies whilst still quite moist. When thawed they would be a fairly soft bait. I certainly caught more then than I do now.

Perfectcast

Posts: 97

#146 20 Dec 2025 at 9.22am

In reply to Post #139
Re drying using heat and then applying liquids/repeating , got me thinking.

Would there be any merit using a dehumidifyer to dry the baits out?

Having used one for the last couple of winters for drying clothes its been a game changer and much cheaper than heating alternatives.

Neil.

Smudge23

Posts: 479

#145 20 Dec 2025 at 5.53am

In reply to Post #139
Given all the available options now Mark, is there any one in particular you'd lean towards for the colder months please?

Scot-chegg

Posts: 123

#144 19 Dec 2025 at 5.54pm

In reply to Post #140
DGT (double garlic tuna)from abs are properly garlic infused..

Smurf

Posts: 3488

#143 19 Dec 2025 at 5.11pm

In reply to Post #138
All very interesting

Thanks for the tips.

You use some heat in your process, have you tried vacuum as it will lower the temperature at which the water will evaporate off. If nothing else it will reduce your electricity cost


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