The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

Additives work best in dirty water,when smell is more important than sight.Thats when additives are useful.

I have used additives that have certainly made a difference in clear and dirty water. I think that when we see dirty water, we assume that the fish are suffering to survive the tumult and cloudy conditions but, roach a barbel love a flood and will feed heavily despite being very different species. I have caught with little or no flavouring in heavy water but, at times, have used bait that stinks.

When adding flavours to my baits, including boilies, I have always erred on the side of low doses. If you can smell it with a sniff, it's probably too strong for the fish, but this doesn't always follow a set rule, take cheesepaste as an example.

Going down the flavour route can bring great success or send you merrily around the twist. Good luck.

The only times I have in the past 'gone technical' with baits the results have been less than favourable to say the least. This I can probably put down to my being a bit heavy handed with the additives but experimenting with different ratios didn't seem to improve matters so I lost interest.
Its predominantly bread, sweetcorn, prawns and maggots now, with cheese paste and luncheon meat fried in curry powder the only prepared baits.
At least I have something to nibble on if I get peckish.

I've found Monster Crab/Absolute Seafood good for silver fish.
I think the effectiveness of flavours/enhancers depends on how good the bait is that you're adding them to. If your bait is good then additives make less difference.
I've found that commercially flavoured sweetcorn is actually less effective than plain sweetcorn bought from a supermarket. This may be because the flavour (or colour?) used makes the bait taste bitter to the fish.

Aways flavour my chick peas with strawberry great for Tench and Carp