Robin Red is one of the most successful carp bait additives in the history of carp fishing! However, it is a real winter winner and is now also used in homemade and ready-to-go baits all year round! How can you best exploit this amazing carp catcher for better and better big carp catches in winter and all year long? More is revealed here to stimulate the senses of carp, so read on now!
Robin Red is a deep red powder originally formulated to improve the health and coloration of bird plumage. But it has a lot of controversy, myth and legend due to its exceptional carp-catching powers! Within this mysterious mix of sweet, spicy, seed-based, fudge and red oily factors and elements lie the secrets of an amazing carp catching history dating back to the mid-1960s. Among the ingredients or additives for carp fishing baits, Robin Red is in the top ten of many anglers, however, there are many anglers who have never used it and do not realize what they can do with it to improve your catches.
Two of the earliest anglers known to have developed the use of Robin Red in the context of carp fishing baits and big catches were Ian Booker and John Holt. Many other anglers, including Rod Hutchinson, would spread the word about the benefits of using Robin Red as part of their baits, especially in boilie making. The distinctive color of the rod in your hands when fishing with Robin Red Boilies was a signal to fellow anglers of what you were using, even though in the early days of carp fishing, the pioneering Robin Red was part of the cult of secrecy! of carp baits!
Robin Red has been discussed, debated, and generally featured as a topic of debate ever since it became more widely known because anglers really wanted to know what the secrets to its success were. It seems that the recipe may have changed, perhaps due to EU legislation, but some feel that the recipe is not exactly what it was. But still, the recipe is similar enough today that I think it’s very similar to the same product I first used in the early 1980s.
Getting hold of Robin Red is quite easy and one of the cheapest licensed providers is CC Moore. Many bait companies use this exceptional ingredient in at least one of the baits in their range of ready to use baits and certainly CC Moore Meteor ready to use bait is a mix that has caught countless big carp over the years. the years, including an old record from Rainbow Lake, and me for example. I have been making homebrew versions of baits for many decades using Robin Red and more recently adapted and altered CC Moore Meteor to fit my own lines of bait design principles and internal and external functions and optimizations.
One of the first things you notice about Robin Red is how similar it smells to paprika, and the molasses content is also very noticeable. I have used both to great effect, especially in low water temperatures, and indeed Robin Red is a legendary winter bait additive. Robin red was originally so associated with winter and low temperatures that most anglers I met in the early 1980s in North Kent and South Essex only switched to fishing Robin Red in mid-October, depending! of how fast the temperatures dropped and the frosts approached!
The two factors of cold weather and Robin Red intertwined, and over time, with experimentation, we home bait makers realized that this sweet, pungent additive was actually quite good any time of year. This was a time before ready-made boilies were available in fishing stores and personal experimentation was a key part of personal fishing success.
In fact, for me, this journey has never stopped to this day, as the benefits of knowing for sure what a bait is made of and knowing why and how to really optimize and maximize a bait for particular conditions and seasons of the year it’s just so incredibly important to maximizing your success!
Anglers who use off-the-shelf baits without developing this first-hand knowledge are simply blind to the bait and are fishing on faith without knowing how to improve the bait they have purchased!
Being a homemade bait maker is not about choosing a mix and how many eggs go into a mix for me. What matters to me are the factors that all fish tell me, regarding their internal and external processes and much more, and how to induce feeding even when the conditions and metabolism of the fish seem to be at odds with feeding. This is where the notable aspects of Robin Red are significant to me and I have often used this additive as a starting point to develop bait additives and baits of my own design, to gain unique advantages over well known and established commercial food baits.
This additive is often used in ready-to-use baits with low inclusion rates, because that way a company can call their bait Red so-and-so and claim to include this renowned additive, without necessarily putting much at all! To me, this is not a win-win situation for those who, for whatever reason, do not make their own baits!
The fact is that there is a huge difference in catch results between making a homemade winter bait using as little as 25 grams of Robin Red, compared to using 100 or 200 grams in a kilogram of base mix! Pepper and chili can be overwhelming due to the very powerful trace elements they contain, so balance is key.
I have made baits with too many spices that have made them repellant and only testing will identify peak levels if you create your own spice mixes and I test all my baits very rigorously! With Robin Red, if you use 100 to 200 grams per kilogram in boilie bait recipes, you can be sure you haven’t overloaded your bait and have enough of this additive to make a difference. Revealed in my exclusive ready-to-use carp and catfish bait secrets and homemade bait ebooks is much more powerful information. Find my unique website (Baitbigfish) and see my bio below for details of my eBook deals right now!
By Tim Richardson.