Two-dog groundbait...

It's okay, I am not going to show you another picture of my very nice black bowl with a plastic bag full of groundbait base mix in it, although I do have a new lot of ingredients to make my new flavour. I am thinking a savoury spicy two-dog mix might work.

Bread and biscuit

The base mix is made from bread and Rich Tea biscuits, dried bread, ground dog biscuit and Turmeric. The cut loaves (40p from Aldi) weigh 800g when fresh, and 550g+ when dried overnight. To dry the bread, the slices are balanced, slice by slice, on a couple of the central heating radiators. Once whizzed, in a food processor/liquidiser, into a flour-like constancy, it is passed through a sieve to ensure it is completely processed. Any lumps are ground in a pestle and mortar and sieved again. The resultant processed bread is fine and smooth. The biscuit is also given a blast in the processor and passed through the sieve. This is the basis of my mix. To this I will add the other dry ingredients.

Dog number one is Wagg. This is a dried dog food and is very hard. Poundland sell 1kg boxes (for a pound!) and that is plenty for me at the moment. Huge sacks can be bought at a saving but what on earth I'm going to do with 17kg of the stuff is beyond me at the moment. In its bought state, straight out of the box, is floats and breaks down in water. I suspect it will make a good floating bait, but for now in it is in its processed form, I am interested in it as a flavour for my savoury groundbait. Trying to process or liquidise the stuff is a impossible. It just bounces about all over the place and makes the machine vibrate violently. The Wagg just gets the odd corner knocked off and not much else! The only way to process the stuff, short of hitting it with a hammer, is in the coffee grinder, and in small batches at that. It takes a while to do but is worth it in the end. The result is just what I was looking for. A whole box will render 1kg of very smelly, fine powder, just right for mixing with my other dry components.

Turmeric is a yellow spice made from the roasted, ground roots of an herbaceous plant in the same family as ginger. It stains everything it comes in contact with bright orangey-yellow. It can be bought in the supermarket but is best purchased for the specialist food shops, catering for the ever-growing cosmopolitan community. Here in London we have a fantastic choice of shops selling food from all around the world, but it is the spices that are of interest. large bags of spice, such as turmeric, can be bought for a fraction of the cost (weight for weight) of those small jars sold in the supermarkets. A word of warning, if you do use turmeric or anything that has it included as part of the mix, make sure you don't spill it on anything that matters. It will stain most kitchen utensils and it is very hard to get the stains out of some fabrics. That said and with scant regard to the repercussions should I turn the kitchen yellow, I will add some of this to my dry base mix.

My Savoury Groundbait Recipe

• 800g Breadcrumb
• 800g Rich Tea biscuits
• 350g Wagg
• 50g Turmeric powder 

 

The recipe above will make 2kg of base mix. A convenient size for me at the moment. I will make larger batches if it proves successful. 

The wet ingredients will be added at the bank-side. Here is where dog number two comes in. A 400g tin of 'hot dog' sausages. This including the liquid is placed in a food processor and blended until it is still lumpy. This will only take a few pulses of the blender, any more and it will turn to puree! This will be added to half of my base mix and topped up with lake water or more base mix if required. I will let it stand for half and hour or so and add more lake water if required. This one of the mixes  I use for my method feeder. Once it has been riddled a few times it works a treat see HERE.  I also use this base mix as general groundbait. To complement the the hook-bait, I will add pellets, sweetcorn, Maggots or what ever I am using on the day.

I am still not sure if any of this is worthy of the effort. I am half convinced that if I was to ball up a mixture of sawdust and loam the fish would still come into the swim just to be nosey!  Add some food and they may even hang around for a bit too...

Ralph.