Is there a natural ingredient to add to boilies to make them black other than dye looking to avoid the tuftie gang

Squid/cuttlefish ink, or blood powder.

My experience is only with boilies containing milk products so the best I will ever achieve is a dark grey, something you might want to keep in mind if like me you must have milk protein in your mix.

That said I've not found any one product that achieves a black boilie that stays black in the water other than dye. However if you add spirulina powder and a bit of blood meal to your mix then you can reduce the black dye to a bare minimum.

In reply to Post #1
Just make boilies from a dark halibut pellet paste , voila!

Thanks lads didn't want the dye route thought there might have been something that would have stained the life out of the base mix but with some extra goodness I'll try the squid ink and use some blood and spirulina together and see if it holds

In reply to Post #1
Activated charcoal powder

In reply to Post #1
just cos something appears black to you doesn't mean it does to tufties & carp as their eyes are different to ours & they see light we don't.

don't go down a rabbit hole expecting it to work based on what you can see - blood meal appears very dark to us but reflect NIR light which we can't see but they can.

I've had tufties diving on my baits in 25ft of water in the middle of the night. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face but they knew exactly what they were looking for.

In reply to Post #7
Tufties can taste/smell the bait in the water, so can be a nuisance at any time of the day.
Coots are sight feeders and are much more reliant on seeing the bait.