Dear Spug

I have accumulated a number of flavourings in my garage. Would it be possible to use them to make up a few bait dips and what ingredients, quantities and strength would be required? Could you also give me any advice on a particular summer flavour?
Yours faithfully

Steve Booth, Cheshire

Hi Steve, and thanks for the question. I also have a collection of flavourings in my shed and use them to make bait dips. It’s dead easy to do and can definitely help you to put more fish on the bank. As you can make the dip to your own specifications, no one else will ever know the recipe – nice.

All you need to do is go through your old flavourings and decide what type of dip you are trying to make up, by that I mean do you want a fishy/savoury one, or a sweet/fruity one? I would normally use fruity flavourings such as pineapple with toffee/plum/strawberry, etc., and flavourings such as lobster with crayfish/garlic, etc.

The way to make your own dip is to buy a neutral glug, and then, having chosen the flavouring or flavourings you want to use, quite simply pour them in at a level of 5-10ml straight into the neutral dip and then give them a good stir. One very handy thing I have noticed about the Mainline range of flavourings is that the bottle top has a capacity of exactly 5ml, so I simply pour the flavouring into the bottle top and then straight into the dip.

In the summer I tend to use a fishy dip, and it’s Red Lobster all the way for me! You can also mix and match savoury and sweet flavourings and I find that Red Lobster mixes well with Strawberry Zest. I will usually put in slightly more of the lobster than the strawberry (7.5ml of lobster to 5ml of strawberry). Trial and error is the best way of finding out, and to be fair, as long as you don’t put in more than 10ml per flavour, you'll usually be OK.

I hope this helps, and be lucky!

Spug