I am very sad to hear this. I met Fred in his very early days on the banks at Brooklands, Dartford. He was about ten years older than me, so I guess he would have been in his late 80s. He was a splendid chap who never received anything from the sport that he gave so much to. I have huge respect for this. His name will be remembered far, far longer than the present so-called 'stars'. RIP Fred

You can make your own hemp pellets from cold pressed hempseed powder and a little hemp oil. If you roll them into little balls about 3 mm size and boil them they will look just like the real thing. LOL

In reply to Post #1
It is easy to make an aminos liquid, but having a bait full of aminos won't necessarily do you any good. Some aminos are more potent than others at different times of the year. Some have a negative effect. You need to know which ones and when. You won't get this information from any scientific papers, as these people have no experience of fish behaviour throughout the year in the wild. Only an angler can discover it.

In reply to Post #5
Sorry, but I don't have an opinion on present-day boilies or their additives. I no longer use or have any interest in such baits. With respect, it would be like fishing in the past.

I wrote about this several years ago.

CSL contains phytic acid (phytate) which binds to certain minerals and can therefore contribute to mineral deficiencies because the minerals do not get released from the phytic acid and are thus unavailable to the body. The effect of phytic acid can be reduced to some degree by heat treatment. More effective is the enzyme phytase which can be used to break it down and release the minerals.

However, wild fish get all their mineral requirements naturally from the surrounding water, by absorbing them through the skin. Worrying whether carp have got enough minerals in their diet is the last thing that an angler should worry about.

So, phytase addition was all nonsense, like many other claims you see from bait sellers.

Indeed Peter,

It seems very strange that a substance known to occur in many freshwater and seawater organisms, including algae, krill, molluscs and fish, should be a danger to the very creatures that contain it in Nature. Perhaps krill should be banned from baits!

See: A New Feeding Attractant, Dimethyl-beta-propiothetin, for Freshwater Fish by Nakajima, Uchida & Ishida, 1989.

I am deeply saddened to learn this. I crossed paths with Jim Gibbinson in the 60s at Brooklands and at Horton Kirby, and in the 80s at Sutton. He was a gentleman, a great angler and my favourite author. His main books were:
Carp 1968
Carp 1974
Big Water Carp 1989
Carp Sense 1992
Gravel Pit Carp 1999
A Glorious Waste of Time 2006
RIP Jim

It is simpler to wind all the main line onto an empty spool, then fill the spool up to the lip with backing. Next wind this all onto a spare empty spool, then reverse wind it back onto the reel.

Science shows that hungry fish are attracted to food by chemoreception and that food signals come from the components of macronutrients. Please enlighten me as to how synthetic compounds that are totally alien to the aquatic environment could possibly influence their feeding behaviour. This is sheer quackery.

In reply to Post #26
I feel for you!

I binned my collection of artificial flavourings over ten years ago. They are nothing but smoke and mirrors. Absolutely pointless. Sniffing them does seem to make many anglers happy though! It's a great pity the carp cannot appreciate an airborne odour too!

Fish get caught despite them, not because of them.