In reply to Post #1511
There's a key to ordering your gear...do it well before the spring when all the fair weather lot appear

In reply to Post #1511
I hope some of you find them interesting. Both of them will get posted on here at some point. They will 100% help you catch more carp, whoever you are.

Looking forward to these

I would keep the real gold dust to yourself though otherwise it will be raped and pilfered

In reply to Post #1510
Lee, is that Dredgers point

In reply to Post #1515
Roe Deer mate

Last out in the draw, ended up picking La Plage first then moved to Roe Deer on the Tuesday, and it paid off almost instantly.

In reply to Post #1514
Quote... I would keep the real gold dust to yourself though otherwise it will be raped and pilfered.

I am not silly mate. I've kept those secrets for more than a decade. For years, I kept my mouth completely shut. But that has been to the detriment of the thing I love and have always been obsessed about. Fishing. I've now become an expert in talking about things, without giving away the real secrets about the hook baits. I can help carp anglers so massively with what I have learned over my fishing life. One thing I do know, is one little comment from me online now, leads to big changes at other bait firms. Trust me, they would all love to know what we are up too, without exceptions. Walk around any of the top syndicates in this country, and you will see why.

Self perception, is an incredibly hard thing to gauge when everything changes in your life. I have not always dealt with that the best, I know that.

So many things that you lot do not know. The real reason we stopped selling hard coated hook baits... Was because I realised that another bait firm, had sussed we were using citric acid in our F1 coating. This was very stupid of me, a real school boy error. To easy to detect in a powdered coating. There is a member of this very forum, who used to work for this firm when we first started. He had told us right at the start to be wary.... Our original coated S1 had sat in a prominent position at this firms desk, for more than a year. Everyone who visited, was asked if they knew how we were doing this. A year later the same firm tried to use this concept to sell very expensive freezer baits. It failed. Everything is scrutinised. It's big money. That's business, you have to deal with it.

I ain't a noddy, but they are.... So I can handle that kind of thing with them, no problems. We just stopped selling coated hook baits, and told everybody how to coat the baits themselves. Within a year, lots of bait firms were selling coated boilies.

There's another nauser though, who's far worse. He was copying me from before the hook baits were ever put on sale. Magazine articles about two things I wrote on the old Cemtex forum, before SHB was ever even a thing. The sands of time, have proved what a fraud this man was/is. The bait company he was with at the time, who went on to sell 'cured' hookbaits six months after we started (not their fault for believing him).... Have done fantastic things, EVER SINCE he was no longer there. He had them over as well, they found out exactly how clueless he actually was. He was then at another firm, with a budget that could not fail... Which very quickly failed, after producing truly shocking bait off of his back. Years of carp shows and magazine articles, influencing novice carpers..... Years of absolute waffle. Now the cheeky sausage is referring to me in podcasts I'm told, because he needs to remain relevant for some free boilie stops. The dearly departed Paul Forward, was so astute in his observations about the bloke in his Carpworld series.

I truly feel quite sorry for the lads who have taken up our pastime over the past decade. There are sharks swimming in the water who smell blood.... They need to be very careful when consuming media. RESULTS ARE EVERYTHING. Talk is cheap. Everything is copied, by those who do that sort of thing. I look at what happened to my childhood hero Rod, and it all makes more sense. I have literally become a jedi warrior in the art of keeping schtum over the past decade. Bait firms now advertise for 'team members'... Part of the deal for getting 50p off a kilo, is you have to help sell bait for them on social media. They openly state this. Don't matter if the bait don't work.... Just help sell our bait for us online in anyway at all possible, and you can be on our 'team'. What a truly sad state of affairs.

Here is the really good thing for us though. The explosion in novice anglers over the last decade... Eventually those novice carp anglers all become, good anglers. They start fishing proper UK syndicates, ones that do not contain 10 billion carp... Then they wake up, and realise that no one is chucking 'cheeky little' bread bombs at 60's, or pouring goo on their cardboard pop ups.... Then they come see us.

Now it's time for us to step properly into the bait arena, and me to open my mouth about what I know a little bit more. Now it's time to start selling products in every tackle shop across Europe. They all want it. I have many incredible things, that I have never even been able to even speak about... Simply because we have never been in a position to sell the stuff on the scale required if I did. That's all about to change, if things pan out well. I am now at the stage, where keeping our circle small and trustworthy, I need to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week. That cannot go on forever, or I will keel over.

In reply to Post #1517
What a refreshing honest read Mark

Hope you make the SHB expansion, as stress free as possible mate, and find some time for your own angling/Brazil trips to the beach

In reply to Post #1518
Thank you Darren. Anging? What is anging? It sounds like fun. Does that happen outdoors? Outside is all but a distant memory for me at the moment. The only time I go outside, apart from my back garden.... Is when I go to the airport, to see my missus, and that's it. Got more transatlantic air miles, than sense.

I can see that name SHB being a thing of the past soon. Maybe... SB or similar will be more appropriate... Who knows.

The next thing that gets added to our website at some point this year... Will be the Cheese. Eighteen months it's been ready to go for now.

In reply to Post #1519
Everybody say CHEESE

In reply to Post #1517
Business sounds good. As you say Mark, results are everything and the pictures in this thread are testament to that

In reply to Post #1517
Hi Mark,

This new business model you are alluding to - will there be products for the home made bait maker to use?

Or, will this be an enterprise with just finished goods?

In reply to Post #1522
There would be all sorts of goodies, on both sides of your questions. Everything you can imagine, and more Jamie.

I was asked to come up with a business plan, by people who don't mess around at all. I trust them, they must trust me. But who really knows, nothing is certain, till it is set in stone.

If it does happen, I already know that our customers will all be seriously licking their lips in anticipation. I've been begged for all this stuff for many years.

In reply to Post #1523
I'm licking my lips as we speak.

A little snifter. A very small excerpt from the hook bait part, of what will eventually get posted online about bait mechanics.

Match the hatch. A real classic 'carpy' saying. Often rolled out on YouTube or social media over the last decade. 'Match the hatch', is really just a plea to continue buying/using someones products. That's all. It's the biggest load of rubbish to someone who actually really understands big carp, how they feed, how they work. Not internet theories, or 'buzzwords', facts. I'll explain to you exactly why. If you have a bit of watercraft about you, you can test this yourself with your own 'underwater' observations in the edge.

'Match the hatch', implies you should use a hook bait that matches your feed bait. Great theory. Like so many things in carp fishing, it's actually a whole load of rubbish. Here's the big carp reality. Feed bait, and hook bait, are two completely separate entities. They need to perform completely different functions. They are not the same thing at all. When a big carp that is constantly fished for, picks up a freebie with a hook attached... It will spit that hook out 9 times out of 10. The area is then blown. It's game over. A carp is a wild creature with a natural inbuilt sense of danger, and then flight. That fish might return, if it does, it will normally clear out every other bait on the spot, except the one attached to the hook. That's 'Match the hatch' in reality. Of course, if the lake has far to many carp in like so many do, there will be another hungry mouth along in two minutes and you might get a bite. If you are not fishing a lake with starving carp in, you are literally tying your hands behind your back. You are going to blank for long periods when you really do not need too. As time goes by, we train the carp to become more and more wary. Things get harder and harder because of it.

A carp uses its mouth to test things. A carp is really a very simple creature in reality. Many years ago, I discovered through my own fishing, that you can actually override that flight sense in a big carp. Only if the hook bait excites them enough to do this though. They can take it in, and spit it out ten, or even twenty times... And there will still be a lesser flight reaction every time. But they do not bolt off and then not return. They will hardly leave the area. They will then have it into their mouth again, within minutes. And again, and again, and again. This is a monsteros difference. If it is fished on a resetting rig, you hardly need to be a genius to work out that you are now going to catch that carp. It's a very similar reaction to how a carp acts, when it becomes preoccupied on a bed of seeds or maggots. They will throw caution to the wind. The more preoccupied they become, the less wary they become. Tapping into this sense, is the sole reason you have seen that our hook baits have landed some of the biggest carp in the UK, over and over again. It's the reason I and others have been able to walk onto the busiest low stock syndicates, and start catching them IMMEDIATELY. There is no 'blowing', another great carpy saying for crap bait. A natural inbuilt instinct from mother nature to eat that hook bait, overrides that flight reaction. Any of you who own a dog, will know that greedy git will knowingly stick his/her nose into the most stupid/dangerous places, if the treat is irresistable enough.

Things that excite a heavily fished for carp enough to investigate something marked dangerous over, and over again. Are COMPLETELY different, to things which that same carp will happily feed on for many hours on end. Trying to make feed boilies this attractive, only leads to giving the carp a bellyache, and you then blanking. A very common mistake made by home and commercial bait makers. Nature holds the keys to absolutely everything.

Everything around us was created by nature. Most land-based animals fall into one of two categories, carnivores or herbivores. Carnivores/predators consume high protein diets. They have guts built by mother nature to function well eating loads of protein. Under water, pike and perch. Herbivores, who graze, they are not designed by nature to consume a high protein diet. They are designed to eat in a completely different way. They are designed to consume vast amounts of low protein food, over a long-extended period. A cow, will eat in excess of twenty kilos of grass in a day. They can only do this, because they have a very simple gut, and as fast as they eat the grass, it's coming out the other end. Underwater, carp are designed by nature in a very similar way to a cow. They are not normally predators. They are grazers. Yet we like to feed them often very stodgy high protein boilies, as it makes them grow bigger/faster. Here's the big problem with that. Have you ever seen a carp pooh out a 20mm boilie? You have not. Because it simply does not happen. If a carp picks up twenty boilies that are still hard in the middle, she's off to sit in the snags and digest her meal. In cold water, Winter and Spring, the carp's system slows right down, and the whole problem is magnified even more. By you pre-soaking your boilies, you can completely circumnavigate this problem. You are making the boilies much easier for the carp to actually eat, especially in cold water. They can pooh them out as fast as they are eating them, in a similar way to something like sweetcorn or hemp. The way 99.9% of all carp anglers fish with dry, hard boilies straight from the bag, this simply cannot happen. Not for many hours most of the time. I have never had that time to simply waste when I go fishing. No one has really, however much time you actually get. Start the process at home first. Continue it on the bank, if you stay more than one night. The common carp in the photos, is the Swirly common from Milton Pan, a famous old Kent carp. The photo must be virtually thirty years ago now, it's a scan of a print. I fed this particular carp 17.5kg of sweetcorn in 2.5kg bags, right in the edge. I had to feed this fish that amount, before I got the bite. This was before I had come up with our original S2 hook baits, or it would never have taken that long. This fish, ate as much as its own body weight in just a few hours. I watched it eat every single grain. It truly shocked me. If this had happened out in the pond, I would never have known to keep chucking more sweetcorn in and would never have caught her. They are feeding machines, but only if the food is suitable enough to pass through them quickly enough. By pre adding water to your boilies, you are allowing the carp to eat that same food for much longer than if you do not. Exactly how mother nature built them to eat food. The longer they are feeding on your area picking up your boilies, the more chance there is that you will catch them. It's really quite simple. There are even more benefits than that though. If you are fishing a tricky pit, with carp wised up from pressure. Your sodden boilies also appear 'safe' to them. Boilies that would appear to have been in the water for much longer than they actually have been, will always be viewed as safer by highly pressured carp. They will be eaten with far greater gusto. The only thing you are going to lose, is the convenience of storing your bait for more than a day or so whilst on the bank.
Why did you add the honey? Carp, like all other creatures on this planet, adore sweet things. The reason everything including us loves sweet things, is because of simple inbuilt senses from nature. When fruit ripens for example, it sweetens naturally. This is a signal to us and other animals that the food is now ready to eat. Mix some honey with some warm water, put it outside in your garden in a dish. Everything, crawling, or flying will be attracted to it. Absolutely everything. Like so many other fantastic things that go into our boilies, if that honey had been actually put inside your boilie with the eggs and then boiled.... It would be subjected to boiling water, and all the real goodness totally ruined. The carp is a very simple creature. The honey mixed with the water which you added, will help trigger an inbuilt sense that tells that fish it needs to go and investigate that food source. Pre-soaking your favourite freezer/readymade baits, also allows all of the real food content inside your boilies to do the job of attraction for you.
These very simple things, will help catch you far more carp, wherever you fish.
Next time it will not all be so simple, we are going to talk about hook baits.

Twelve hours before you go fishing, place your favourite boilies into a bucket, and add a measured amount of pre boiled, warm water to them. If you want to dissolve a spoonful of honey into the water first, it certainly will not hurt at all. The water is the most important thing though. That is going to unlock all of the goodies that are already inside your favourite boilie. What you are looking to achieve, is to make those boilies wet through to the centre. You do not want, or need to turn them to mush. Just enough water, to wet them all the way through to the centre. Once you know how much water to add to a set amount of your favourite boilies, you are golden for the future. It takes a surprisingly small amount of water, to fully swell a kilo of boilies. All baits are different, so you are going to have to judge this part for yourself. Start with a small amount of water, less is more. You can always add some more. By adding this water, you are not 'washing' anything out from your favourite boilies. All of the attractors are still there inside. But you have mixed them up with water and changed how they are going to exit the boilie now, when you eventually throw them into the lake. Now those attractors are going to literally flood out. Water transfer will occur rapidly. They are so much more attractive to a carp this way. Your friend might be sitting in the swim next door, using exactly the same boilies as you. By pre-soaking yours before you go fishing, you are making your boilies much more attractive than his during the first day of your session. But there are far more benefits than just that. During those twelve hours before you go fishing, your sodden boilies inside the bucket are already starting the process of breaking down. A signal from nature to a fish, that something is ready to eat. You're actually making them better and more attractive to a carp, just by leaving them in a bucket sodden for twelve hours. Most baits will fully turn and go off after forty eight hours when wet in our environment of air. It's different under the water, it happens much slower. Prepare only small amounts at a time. Be prepared that you will now need to throw some bait away that goes unused quite regularly. The convenience is now completely gone from your boilies. But if you are here reading this, I am going to take a wild stab in the dark that you have progressed from YouTube carping and the like, and you will be able to deal with that problem.