Do you love big bluegill?

The big and ugly fired up bait recipe

Okay, recipes time. I made these in the past, tested them out in the SoCal waters, from the mountainous waters to the valley's lakes. Hope the recipes will work out for you guys. Oh, don't forget to post yours for comparison. I will update mine with your ingredients if you allow me to:

YAP CHEESE RECIPE

I took the Yap Cheese For Fishing recipe that I found back in early 1990s, and experiment with my own concoctions, and readapted the recipes based on the water's and the fishes being tossed into the lake. You have to experiment each water body, based on the nutrients content, salinity (salt), plants/weeds due to the nutrients, and of course the fishes themselves.

Here's an example of Lake Gregory, Big Bear Lake, Silverwood Lake, Lake Perris:

Lake Gregory, Big Bear Lake, and Silverwood Lake have moderate nutrient levels contributed by the local forest floor, irrigation fertilizers, producing light salinity due to the evaporation and minimal input of water during summer months. Since the fishes are pretty much exposed to light salty content already, you have to increase the content of the salt even higher to deliver the content of your bait into the water even faster and higher. So here's the bait's ratio I came up with..

1/4 oz Velvetta cheese
1 cup of powdered garlic (chunky dried form is fine too)
1/4 cups of sea salt, or just basic salt. DO NOT USE IODIZED SALT!
1 to 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 cup of either dried shrimp/krill or dried anchovies (not both)

1 cup of corn flour/corn meal/masa flour on the side for thickening.

OR

instead of 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil, switch it out with 1 to 1.5 tablespoons of sardine oil from the can, and take one sardine and mash it into the ingredient. Mix the sardine with dried anchovies. If you're using krill, stick with the olive oil.

Put all the dried ingredients together, and blend/stirred until evenly mixed. Mash the wet ingredient together in a dough mixer or use your hands to really grind the mesh of ingredients together.

Once well blended, you can add a bit of cornmeal, small pinchful at a time, until the bait becomes nice and mold-able. Toss a bit of a compacted ball into a bowl of water, and see how well the bait holds together. The Velvetta cheese will hold things very well together. Let the ingredient sit in the fridge a day or two before heading out if you want. If you have left over, shove it into the freezer. Let it thaws out overnight before using. If you can find the seaweed agar powder, mix 1 cup of hot water to 2 cups of agar and stir like crazy. Let it cool down a bit until it forms a gel like material. Mix it into the existing cheese bait. If you wish, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil into the mix, and you've increase the oil saturation level even more. The oil will linger in the water like no one's business. The cats will hunt that bait down like it's a freaking hot nuke. Use drop shot rig with two hooks on a " to 48" leader, depending on the water's dept. Can't go wrong.

Lake Perris, Diamond Valley Lake, Lake Elsinore, Canyon Valley Lake, etc., they are much saltier than the mountain's lakes, due salty water being transported to the valley via the aqueducts. And with the local urbanization around the lake, higher level of nutrients being loaded into the water, causing the salinity to go even higher than normal. So, instead of 1/4 cup of salt, try with 1/4 cup of salt first, and if needed, add at a rate of 1/8 cup of salt on top of the 1/4 cup of existing. You may be adding as much as 1/2 cup and towards 3/4 cup as time goes by. The more salt you add, you need to increase the total oil by 1tspn each time to increase the dispersion rate of the salt in the water.

Good luck, and report in.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Leo Nguyen on January 26, 2012 at 6:02pm

I don't think there is a strong enough detergent for that wash!

Permalink Reply by Dwayne Denison on January 26, 2012 at 6:04pm

good ol lye soap,vinger and bleach all worked. Might have to use that again, seems I never wanted to eat for a few days

Permalink Reply by David, aka, "McScruff" on January 28, 2012 at 6:29pm

I believe it is the protein/amino acid connection that draws catfish to cheese baits. Is that so, Leo?

Permalink Reply by Leo Nguyen on January 28, 2012 at 6:33pm

You got it! Add the smells that can peel your skin off, you got the ultimate bait.

Permalink Reply by Allen Morgan on April 16, 2012 at 3:21pm

And I thought that "sour bait" I made from some cut bait was bad. ROFL. Last week, I found the jar in the fridge, been in there for a few weeks. I cracked it open, gagged, sealed it up quickly, and chucked it in the trash. I counted myself lucky for not tossing my cookies right then and there. A minute later, my other half says, "Ronnie! Did you just rip one off?" Our son looked at her, and said, "No". Then he laughed. I had to tell my other half that I had just cracked open that jar of sours. She got all furious, she didn't realize it was in the fridge.

Permalink Reply by Leo Nguyen on April 16, 2012 at 5:05pm

OH HEAVEN'S MERCY! My wife finds that in the fridge, she would have gone to town with me..just if she had found the maggots. She would have disinfected the entire fridge from top to bottom. I'm surprised you didn't try to fish with it. It would have been the perfect bait.