The big and ugly fired up bait recipe

[Leo Nguyen]

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.

[Dwayne Denison]

Thanks for the post Leo. Have you ever tried soap bait?

 

Thanks Mad Cracker

[Leo Nguyen]

Yep. Cats love them..carps hate them.

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

I'll let you know from the right coast Leo.....I have good luck with the catfish using shrimp soaked in vanilla extract......the cheapest extract (imitation) will work just fine......

[Leo Nguyen]

Tried that method too Jeffrey. For some reason, the cats around here are very picky when it comes to shrimp alone or laced with sweet scent. They like stinky milky products..expensive combos no less. Such spoiled cats around here..like spoiled Californian's females LOL

[Dwayne Denison]

I use to fish with cheese alot. We have a dairy down the road. The plant mgr is a friend of mine, when they had a bad batch, he would bring it to me. But it was 55 gallon drum at a time.

[Florida Boy]

Thats alot of bad cheese!

[Dwayne Denison]

was great bait after set in sun for about three months

[Florida Boy]

lol I bet!

[Leo Nguyen]

3 months? how the heck you get the stink off your hands?

[Dwayne Denison]

Bleach, even after wearing gloves. The kicker is use to mix with old meat and blood. It would knock you down, but the cats loved it. We put it on jugs and trotlines

[Tony Livingston]

Did you have to psych yourself out to put it on the hook?

I'll bet they don't make soap strong enough to take that stench off!

[Dwayne Denison]

yes and had to hold breath, had to wash clothes outside