For those of you who carp fish and use boilies, does anyone put their wheaties or cornmeal or whatever in a mesh bag in a similar way that trout and salmon fishermen use spawn bags? I’ve never been able to get a boilie type bait to stay around a hook long enough to catch anything.

We used to use pieces of pantyhose to hold the bait. Putting batting fiber in the bait works well too.

Keith

Wait how are you using your boilies ? Actual boiled should be kinda hard and have to be drilled to go on a hair rig. Now if you talking about pack bait you pack the bait around. Your weight and press your hook bait /boilies into it..it basically just a ball of chum

I slow boil shelled field corn , when it starts to soften I add some raspberry jello mix to it
Better than can corn and will stay on the hair rig or hook better

I could never get boilies to stay together either

never heard of boilies up here, just another dough bait?

Only dough bait we used as kids was just a piece of white bread and a little water or spit, formed around the hook. We used that to catch what we called "roach" which are apparently large Golden shiners.

I smash the barb on the hook down and slide canned corn on the entire hook and dump a can in the water for chum. I used to buy all the dented cans on sale, caught an 18-pound channel cat doing that too. We used light action rods with big reels to hold lots of 6# line. We would jump off the pier and walk them out in the open so they couldn't wrap around any pier poles. Great fun!

The big deal years ago was burger, grape juice and mozzarella cheese for making dough balls.

I make carp dough by mixing flour and corn meal half and half. Add a little vanilla. Make a paste with water then heat it on a low heat stirring constantly ( dont skip the constantly) till its thick. Let it sit a bit. Stays on a hook just fine. I use a small hook and a walnut sized dough ball

I use PVA mesh. It will hold your bait mix, but disolves in water. Generally you would use a differant hook bait(like corn or a pop up) and put your ground bait in the mesh to make a package you can "hook". Cast it out and the mesh will disolve leaving your hook and bait sitting in a small pile of your ground bait.

I dont doubt you could catch em using a "spawn sack" kind of bait if you already have the netting.

We host the WI carp championship in my town, and I have fished with some of the guys that fish the tournament. Many of them fish nationaly. I learned the methods I use from them. A lot of it comes from European techniques, and they think a lot differantly about carp than we do in the USA. It has drastically improved my catching. And those guys still can easily out fish me 5-1 or better.

Back sometime around the late 1950s, a salesman for English lace made the trip across the pond to see why so much English lace was being bought in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Samuelson’s clothing store seemed to be THE place for lace sales. When he questioned Samuelson staff, he learned most of it was bought by trout and salmon fishermen for spawn bags.

As a kid, I remember tying spawn bags with dad. We’d roll them in 7-Mule Team borax to keep them firm. Then place them in baby food jars because the jars fit nicely in the gear pouch of our waders. Sometimes one spawn bag would last all day. And when you finally got that 6-pound brown, the spawn bag only had 1-2 salmon eggs in it.
Good times!

I fished alot for carp when I was young then again with my kids when they were young.
I used dough balls, either just flour and water or sometimes I'd add cornmeal.
Put the dough in a plastic bag and off I'd go.
Just would make a ball about 1" in dia. and work it around the hook.
Never had any issues with keeping the dough on the hook.
Might have something to do with the consistency or the dough.

I fished a river that had a moderate flow.
Gravel/rock bottom.
Maybe one or two real small sinkers if any at all.
After you casted out you'd have to let the dough ball settle, it may roll along the bottom a bit at times but usually not.
You'd want it to settle with a sag in the line.
You'd watch the line for it to move up and down, would signify the carp sucking the dough in and out.
I often wondered if the dough balls would settle in the crevices of the rocks and the carp had to work at getting the dough ball out of the crevice.
Grab your rod and wait till the line would start tighten up then set the hook.
After some time the dough would get water logged and get real slimy.
Maybe an hour or so. Time to put on a new dough ball and recast.

Corn meal flour corn syrup and water. Heat it up in an old pan (not 1 of your wifes good ones) til you can roll it into a small 1" ball. Takes some practice to know when its solid enough to hold on the hook.
just

Just posted this on the other "Dough Bait" Post.

Wet your hand and grab a handful of Wheaties, Kneed it with your fingers till it's sticky and forms a ball. Works great for Carp and Cat.