Lee Swords Fishing

Well it is that time of year again when the weather is just simply vile, as I write this article I am looking at about twelve inches of snow and there is a sledge by the side of the door with ice melting off the runners. Yes, it is indeed very cold, too cold for the lakes and canals where I may have been tempted to try and catch a few pike and the rivers where I could go for chub are either inaccessible to everything barring huskies or just too damned dangerous with all the ice around the edges to fish safely.

I am going stir crazy. The only thing I can do to alleviate the boredom is to stock up on my bait freezer and prepare my paste baits boilies and flavoured crusts which I have no complaints about freezing. One of my favourite paste baits for cold water fishing is one made from milk powder, semolina and eggs.

In this mini article I will discuss milk baits in brief, I will at some point expand on milk baits or milk protein baits further but as the old adage goes “Keep things simple stupid” therefore I will keep this short and sweet

Milk baits are traditionally a very expensive bait to buy but they can be devastating as fish especially chub and carp in my experience get very pre-occupied on them.

Milk baits are very high in nutrition and so an angler that wants to, can if they so wish “stitch up”  a water by introducing a lot of milk baits as they leave knowing that if those baits are eaten the fish will not feed again for at least a couple of days maybe more depending on water temperature.

The milk bait on the right actually accounted for a 16lb Trent carp that had a taste for milk baits when all else was failing.

 

Here is my recipe for a cheaper type of milk bait

(Ok, right lets get this straight from the off…I am a professional chef of twenty years…Exact measures are not something I tend to deal in unless I am making desserts ( which can be more akin to chemistry than cooking), it all about the feel)

 

 

 

You will need

1 large bowl

Re-sealable jiffy bags

 Ingredients

6 eggs

Semolina powder

Powdered Milk

A flavour of choice

Sweet version-Teme Severn toffee cream flavour or Laguna banana SAC juice

Spicy version- Garlic salt and chilli powder

Savoury version – Sea salt and black pepper oil

 

All I do is crack the eggs into the bowl add the flavour I want and mix thoroughly, I then start adding the milk powder and semolina in a 3:1 ratio ( I use spoons not weight)

Mixing it by hand I get to feel when the paste is coming together, I stop when the paste is tacky rather than stiff. Dipping my hands into cold water I am able to mould and separate the mix into smaller cricket ball sized batches that can be frozen down

As you can see you are able to tweak the final product to your own preferred specifications. The plain paste is just that…Plain. It is an empty canvas on which you can apply your own imagination. The amount of different flavours that are available to use is simply endless and as I have said if you are so inclined you are able to utterly dominate a water with this type of bait if you are prepared to invest the time and money in a baiting/fishing campaign.

“Personally I think it is dirty pool to deliberately ruin another persons sport just so that you guarantee your own success but as we all know fishing is full of characters that are so deluded they think they will have a PB list engraved on their tombstone.”

Preparation is the name of the game! Get ahead of the game and make some milk baits, cheese pastes and boillies!

 

You know it makes sense :O)