Ken Townley's mealworm discovery

Ken likes to trial just about every ingredient we have on the premises and here he talks about his discovery of Mealworm Crumble as a carp bait.

Lately I have been experimenting with a few new products, the first of which is Mealworm Crumble.

The clue to its effectiveness is in the title as it has a very high proportion of whole dried mealworms included in the overall blend. Like maggots, casters and earthworms, mealworms are a rich source of natural protein and carp find them irresistible. You can buy live mealworms from pet stores or from Haith's® and they too are very effective, however, for the purposes of this article I am going to concentrate on the dried product. There are a couple of methods you can use with this product and the first is as a straight forward loose feed groundbait. Simply mix the Crumble 50/50 with an equal amount of breadcrumb then add water to arrive at the consistency you want and form into large groundbait balls.

A useful alternative is to make Mealworm Crumble paste. To do this break two or three eggs into a bowl and add a couple of teaspoons of Green Lipped Mussel Extract. Blend in the extract then add the Crumble until you arrive at a stiff paste, one that can be formed into quite tough little balls of paste. The paste can either be used as it is, as a form of soft un-boiled bait, or you can mould it around a hookbait method feeder or specialist lead such as the new one from Fox. Finally you can even make boilies by simply boiling the paste balls for a couple of minutes.

Written by Ken Townley