Caring for your bait

  • 21.09.2021
  • incQbait

This part of our site may seem may little irrelevant to most, but its a necessary evil looking after your baits, so with what we have learned over the course of forming incQbait, we'd like to offer you some guidance to look after it, that we feel, is worth its weight in carp.

The trusty boilie can be made from a source of many or even very few natural ingredients and  has the possibility to go ‘off’, whether it's shelf life or a freezer bait.

The following is the best advice we can give you , so just think of the bait like the food in your cupboards at home, except its for the fish. Keep it at its best for them as you can. Whether its our bait or another.


SHELF LIFE BOILIES. Yes, these suckers, can still go off if not looked after as well.

  • 1. ALWAYS keep them in a cool and if possible, dark place. They are still a food source, so anything that causes them to over heat and sweat, will cause a form of mould. 
  • 2. If you’ve had a rainy session, and with left overs, give them a couple of days on a  towel to dry, then back in the packet, for the next session. 
  • 3. Pop ups can get sweaty in their plastic tub if left in the sun, so again, keep them cool and dry. If they get wet, on a towel for a couple of days and also dry the pot out too. 
  • 4. Although we use preservatives in our shelf life baits, they can  go off in the end, just like a human grade food source can, even chocolate bars go off and those have way more preservative types than us!

  • 5. Shelf life boilies can go hard and shrink over time if kept in the wrong storage conditions, so like freezer baits, add some liquids to pump them up a bit before a session or during if its a long session, a bit of lake water can help too.


FREEZER BOILIES. Now although we don’t make them as much as we did,  its always good to give a pointer anyway.

  • 1. If you get an idea of when you are ready to use them its always best to give them a good air drying for a couple of days. 
  • 2. During the thaw out process, hydrate them with glug or liquid foods until you are happy with them or continue to do so right up until your session. IncQbait would advise hemp oil, instead an off the shelf brand, as we dont use brand liquids in our baits. NB:  any thawed (not just ours) bait will only rehydrate up to 80 -85% of its original moisture. 
  • 3. Keep them in a cool place. In the packet in the bait bucket is great. But keep them from direct sunlight, unless you want to advance the aminos to the surface. 
  • 4. The longer you leave baits to dry out the harder and smaller they will get and this can be advantageous if the water contains pest fish and/or crayfish, it can help deter them. 
  • 5. If for any reason they are kept out of the freezer and in some cases they can be forgotten about after a session, we suggest you keep them in the packet in a bait bucket storing the bucket somewhere dark and cool as mentioned in 3. With this in mind you are going to have 2 weeks maybe 3 at a push before they start going off. 

We’ve tried and tested this, and 3 weeks is probably a good limit to leave them out. Something to be aware of especially if you don’t want to refreeze and go through the whole dry out phase again. But again, if you keep them correctly like you would fresh veg, they will keep longer.