Commercial boilie mixtures can be used as very successful hookbaits in their soft paste form, although not all boilie mixes are smooth enough to form a paste suitable for a hookbait.
Some of the fishmeal mixes are a little coarse in texture, and have to be boiled to work properly, when they are fine.
There are many good quality ready-mixed pastes available in tackle shops.
As well as fished on their own, they also make good neutral buoyancy cocktails when fished along with bread crust.
Making Synthetic Paste To make up your own synthetic paste, a strong starting point is a high quality but forgiving base mix, such as 50/50 Promix.
You then have to decide whether you want to add any more powdered ingredients, such as flavours, colours or sweeteners, or whether those ingredients will be in liquid form.
If you opt for powdered additives, such as curry powder or cheese powder, or natural extracts such as powdered crab, mussel or nectar, these must be thoroughly mixed with the base mix before adding the mix to the binding liquid.
If based on a balanced 50/50 mixture, pastes can be made successfully with either water or eggs, but if you want the option of a hard-boiled bait as well as a paste, then eggs must be your choice.
Even with a soft paste, eggs are recommended as they give the paste a lovely, pliable, waxy feel.
Beat the eggs thoroughly, add all the other liquids, flavours, oils or enhancers, and then add the powder slowly, mixing thoroughly as you go.
Do not be in too much of a hurry.
If you pile too much powder in and make the mix too dry initially, there is no way back.
When you have a sticky ball of paste still too soft for hookbait, let it rest for five minutes.
You will find that the paste tightens up in the air and becomes perfect.
If you plan to freeze the paste it also pays to make it a fraction soft.
Pastes tighten up in the freezer.
If you do not want the expense of buying commercially available base mixes, paste baits can be made from a great number of products, such as trout and koi pellets, or tinned or dry pet food mixers, all of which are available from many stores and supermarkets.
Ingredients such as tinned pet foods, or tinned fish, are naturally sticky, and simply require a bulk binding agent to produce a workable bait.
Kit-Kat chocolate bars mixed with fine breadcrumbs is a well-known example.
If you wish to base your bait on a dry ingredient, such as trout-fry crumb, any ingredients added to the bait must have a glutinous content to bind the powders in with the water or eggs.
The simplest material to use is wheat gluten, but you should be careful not to use too much as this results in some very rubbery baits that can be unattractive to the fish.
Baits made with gluten can also be quite chewy, and it can be helpful to add a quantity of a light milk protein or baby milk powder.
This balances the ingredients and makes the bait more palatable.