I've been thinking about trying my hand at carp fishing for a while, because it would be neat (for me, not for the fish) to catch a 20 pound fish. Then I starting reading about carp fishing (which until recently has been mostly a European deal), and got hooked on all the technology. You can fish for carp with corn on a hook, but you can also fish for them with boilies and other baits on hair rigs. There are many variations on the basic hair rig, like the pop-up rig (with floating boilies or bits of sponge sandwiched in the sinking bait), the bolt rig, & etc.
I decided to use this recipe from fishforcarp.com because it made sense to me. I didn't have any weird-ass professional carp-fisherman mulberry extract or anything, so I just got some banana extract (imitation, the sincerest form of gag-reflex-inducement) and molasses to flavor it. Left to right, I have semolina, brown rice, and soy flours, molasses, fake banana juice, and red food coloring:
I made a ball of dough:
I made little balls of varying sizes, from about 12 mm to about 20mm (you have to talk about boilies in the metric system):
Most of them I boiled for 2 minutes; they didn't change in appearance, so I neglected to post an image. But some of them I microwaved three at a time for 35 seconds per batch, and they became pop-ups (floating boilies). I want to try my hand at a snowman rig, because it looks and sounds cool. Yes, I do believe I will be the coolest kid in class if I can fish a snowman rig. Unfortunately, these buggers swell up when microwaved, and even my smallest raw boilies got huge -- but dammit, they float a treat:
I started out with hooks that are way too large (4/0) because I'm an ignorant Yankee. I figured out that I really need 8s, but settled on 6 because the size 8 hooks I found in my local fishing shop looked rather thin and piddly in the strength department. Tonight I will tie a hair rig, and tomorrow I shall go bollocks up the swim near my place of employment. I fancy I'll be skunked, for a full monty of reasons.
Cheerio!
Warning: jokes about balls, and floaties (as in "to pop a floatie", which concerns certain actions of the buttocks) are inevitable, if you set about to make boilies in the company of other human beings. If you are lucky, you'll perhaps have an exchange like this with a friend:
Me: "Watch out, they're still hot!"
Them: "Please! I'm not going to touch your 'boilies'!"
Me: [waiting for them to drink some flavored fizzy water]
Me: "I know you want to chew on my boilies."
Them: [fizzy water coming out of mouth explosively]
