How can you keep shelf-life boilies fresh, and will glugging them extend their lifespan?

Bait expert Dr Paul Garner considers your options…

Shelf-life boilies are normally marked with a manufacturing and a use-by date, and you generally get 12 months or more to use them.

The combination of low levels of preservative and careful drying means that as long as you store shelf-life boilies correctly (in a cool place out of direct sunlight) they will retain their nutritional value and attraction.

It’s best to use glugging and soaking as a means of increasing the attraction of shelf-life baits rather than as a way of trying to extend their freshness.

For example, shelf-life baits tend to be harder than frozen boilies. Softer baits leak their attraction faster, and I think that the carp prefer to eat soft foods.

Soaking your boilies in the food liquid that matches their flavour, diluted in lake water at a ratio of around 10 to one, will not only give them extra attraction but will soften them up quite a bit too.