So recently I found a fishing spot near where I live that’s AMAZING for carp, I mean it has the biggest carp I’ve ever seen and the water is clear enough that you can sight-cast to them from the bank. I’ve been fishing it regularly and have caught some very big carp there, but so far it’s been a very time-intensive process because I have been fishing with corn on the hook and have to basically wait until a carp happens by who is dumb enough to take the bait (these fish are smarter than you would think, and 90% of them will sniff at the baited hook and then GTFO).
The other day I tried using old bread, mushed together with a can of corn and a little water. I had some success with this method, by mushing together a ball of the mixture and molding it around the hook. The problem is, it can be difficult to get it to the right consistency where it will actually mold around the hook and STAY there, rather than just falling off after the first cast.
So today I happen to drive by a tiny hole-in-the wall bait shop and I went in there for the hell of it. They had a huge wall of carp bait mixtures - big bags of grain, like oats, wheat, rice, various flavorings and seasonings - that are meant to be mixed with water and then used in the same manner described above. Well, later I went to my carp spot with it and threw some into the water to chum the area and get carp actively feeding around where I wanted to fish. It worked like a charm for that - the carp were all over it. The problem is that when it came time to mold it around my hook and cast out into the water, the goddamn stuff would NOT stay molded around the hook, 9 times out of 10 it fell right the hell off, and the other times it would disintegrate after sitting at the bottom of the stream for a few minutes.
What I need to do , is add some kind of BINDER to the mixture, to get it stickier, with a heavier consistency, more like dough or clay and less like mush. The question is, what do I use?
My go-to carp doughball is made from bread. Remove the crust and dribble some vanilla extract onto the bread. Knead. Knead some more. Add more vanilla as needed, but don’t add too much. Then knead some more. You’ll be able to tell when it’s done. It covers and stays in the hook so well, it can impede setting the hook.
I catch - and - release carp. They are the hardest fighting freshwater fish short of a muskie. Some people do eat them - they’re an ingredient in the Jewish dish gefilte fish (they are ground up along with pike, and mixed into balls with matzah flour) - but I don’t bother.
We used to make dough balls with just a simple flour, corn meal and water dough using very little water. I forget what we put in it for flavoring. The commercial versions they sold around here smelled like licorice.
My ex was working near Clear Lake in northern California, which has a BIG problem with introduced carp that have wreaked havoc on the native species and which are regularly dredged out in their millions to try to help fix the lake habitat. Anyway, they were drinking some beer after work and salvaged some fishing line and hooks left behind in a tangle of underbrush, put a cigarette butt on the hook and pulled out a truly amazing number of carp. Those nasty suckers will hit on basically anything!
They’re sold at every fishmonger’s around these parts, and occasionally in supermarkets too. They turn up fairly regularly on restaurant menus. They taste good enough but are full of tiny bones that need to be removed individually, and for that reason I rarely eat them.
Carp will eat pretty much anything as long as it sits on the floor. We used plain boiled corn in my parents’ pond, that worked fine. Then again it might be because there really is a ton of carp in that pond.
OTOH, carp is nasty as hell to eat. Tastes 100% like mud.
What about psyllium husks or powder? It’s usually taken as a fibre supplement. I remember when I first started using it that I thought I could mix it up and store it in the fridge overnight. Only once - it formed a thick solid gel. A few teaspoons in a bit of water turns into a gel almost instantly and you can use it as a thickener for foods and make desserts with it.
