Home made boilies catch big carp

Took some customers out for a day of carp fishing on Sunday. Fishing weekends is very rare for me, as I hate the shore crowds. Planned to meet them early enough to beat the rush, luckily, it rained Sunday morning, so we had first dibs on the spot I wanted.

Set up some lines, 3 using home made boilies, and one with the store brand. Sure enough, my new home made peanut butter boilie drew first blood, about 1 hour into our session. We released the carp and prepared for more.

Unfortunately the carp wer'net co-operating with our plans. Tried a variety of different flavors an texture I cooked up over the last few weeks, but the carp seemed to be fasting. 4 other carp fishermen spent their day not catching anything either . After about 4 hours or so, I decided to change spots. Sure enough, after 1 hour at our new spot, my home made vanilla / hazelnut boilie did the trick. Christian landed his first carp, I nice 24 lbs:

About 1 hour later, I got another run, this time on a store bought boilie. the carp dropped it before we had the time to pick up the rod. First hit I've got on a store bought boilie this season.

Here are some quick impressions so far.

Carp seem to hit pale colored boilies when the water is stained. So far, all carp caught on my home made boilies have hit pale colored ones. As the water clears up, it will be interesting to see if come after the darker ones.

Flavour / scent doesn't seem to be much of an issue. I've caught them on the following flavor boilies.

Garlic, Maple, extra maple, Vanilla, vanilla / hazelnut and peanut butter.

Texture is important for rolling them, as well as having them stay on the hook. I finally got a base mix that works well, so it will be a matter of testing flavors, scents and probably will get into food coloring somewhere down the line.