Idea becomes reality-2 years down the line

The birth of a carp bait
Part 1 ; The idea
Any new carp bait should be at the very least different and in my opinion better than existing products on the market. Through magazine influence and the need to find an edge the situation that currently exists is one where the big bait companies have to bring out a new bait every year. This is because the angler demands it and the “new wonder bait” will almost certainly out sell the tried and trusted one. Of course new products do become available and there is always the new buzz ingredient of the year such as Belachan, Green lipped Mussel etc have been in past years.
It is actually quite scary when you find something yourself that is much better than everything out there. An addition to a bait that, when you give it out to people, everybody suddenly catches more than they were currently doing so before. By March 2009 this is exactly where I found myself but rather than being at a final destination this was just the beginning of the troubles. I could have quite happily just kept it to myself but when you consider the minimum order of the two compounds, I would have been looking at the most expensive bait of all time. Also to satisfy my own quest for knowledge I would have to ascertain the correct level of inclusions and under what circumstances the additives should be contained.
Throughout 2007 I had been tinkering around with a few ingredients in order to lower the pH of my baits. There was definitely a common theme with relation to acids and Carp’s preferences. The very word acid puts the fear of god into some people; an acid is simply a mineral with a pH of less than 7. My early acidic baits encountered quite a few problems such as soluble boiling away and the most successful edge was to wash the baits out/in with a solution of citric acid made from elderflowers. Despite the problems my catch results were on the increase which suggested to me that the concept was worth pursuing.
Through the winter of 2008 I was busy to say the least finishing Overseas Carp Adventure and starting the second book Carping Journeys, my thoughts rarely touched on the bait problem. One of the contributors of both books Keith Moors called me for a chat about his Moorland fisheries and the problems of fishing in the silt. It seemed it was very hard to catch the fish bubbling in the silt and if you did you would get one bleep and then the fish would sit there hooked up until the angler reeled in next. I had a few conversations with Keith and I thought that the fish were simply not finding an alkaline object, the bait, in an acidic environment, the silt. The next part of the jigsaw came together when out of the blue a scientist based in South America contacted me through my website, he had a book written and ready to go on the science of fishing and would I publish it!
There has been much speculation about carp leaping and clearing their gills and also rolling tight to the bottom etc. Now this guy had been studying carp in a test environment for years and explained in greater length than I can how carp will ingest silt of periods of up to three days at a time to condition their gut. By absorbing acid material they are better able to digest and process their foodstuffs. These fish at Keith’s were not looking for food in the silt they were eating the silt!Through this contact and an old non-carping friend I managed to source two products from Europe that sounded ideal for making not only an acidic bait but also one with an incredible vitamin/mineral content and a formula for healthy accelerated weight gain. Having sourced the products getting them was a different matter altogether and I had to sign no end of trade agreements and set up international bank funding just to get a sample of 200 grams.May of 2008 I set off to France armed with 25kg of boilies made from the additives on a very high quality base mix. I was a very busy boy and ended up coming home a day early as the fish were spawning and the fish were taking a while to revive. I was still catching even though they were spawning and I had banked no less than 61 fish with the majority over 30lbs and five over 40lbs up to 47-09. The most incredible week of action I have had in fifteen years of fishing in France, I even gave up on night fishing. I had to produce this bait but as I have already said I would have to buy the ingredients by 25kgs sacks, so the implications financially I could do without especially as I had two carp books to finance. I knew the bait was a winner though it was just a case of how much? Would it be an extra fish a session, a month, a year or would it be instant success in a bag for whoever used it?
http://www.booksoncarp.co.uk