Bacon grease / Crisco Carp & Catfish recipe

Here’s another one that I’ve been toying with lately. It’s a pretty messy process to make, so I suggest investing in a pan from the dollar store or second hand shop. Also, if you can do this outside, do it. It can get smelly.  There’s a couple different ways to use and rig this – if you have dip bait tube rigs it will work great. Hair rigging requires an extra step.

here’s what you need.

1/2 can of cooking grease (bacon grease, etc. anything that comes off the griddle, and DON’T filter it.) Crisco (butter flavored) works well too. If you can find lard at the grocery store, that’s even better than crisco.

10 tablespoons +/- of garlic salt

2 tablespoons minced garlic

* ice cube trays for making water bottle icecubes (you can get them at the dollar store, and they look like half round tubes)

* very porous sponges (the cheap ones from the dollar store work great) or even cheap scotch brite type scrubbing pads. Cotton balls work as well.

The cooking is pretty simple. Warm up the grease slowly….and carefully.  You are warming up a lot of grease, and it’s flammable!

once the grease is a liquid, throw in the minced garlic and mix well. Then, add the powdered garlic. There’s no exact science to adding the powder, and the grease will start to get thick with all the “mix ins”

Here’s where the steps back differ based on your hook types.

1 – if you are using it with dip tubes or fuzzy hooks (or want to use it like dough-bait) pour the warm grease into the ice cube trays.  A little spray grease helps release once the grease solidifies also. Put the trays right in the freezer and let the mixture solidify, then take them out, cut them into the chunk sizes you want.

2 – if you want to make “bait balls” that can go right on the hook, or can be hair rigged, this is where the sponge comes in.  Cut the sponge into chunks just a bit smaller than what you want the bait size to be.  While the mix is still in the pot, dip the sponge balls (or cotton balls, etc) into the mixture and let them soak up as much goo as they can hold.  pull them out, and place them on saran wrap, or an old icecube tray again, to solidify. The cotton or sponge helps hold the grease in a ball and gives the hook something to bite on.

Grease and water don’t mix well, so it takes a long time for the grease to dissolve in the water, making the bait last longer! I suggest playing around with different mix in recipes as well. powders work best, but you can add blood and other liquid agents as well.  Just don’t add too much or the grease will re-solidify without capturing it.

happy fishing!