I don't know if this will help you any. But I've heard so much from people fishing with bran flake. I've read that back in their native land the Carp ate fruit that have fallen out of trees into the water. And they have a very sweet tooth. So I made my dough ball out of bran flake, flour, bread crumb, brown sugar and cherry juice. I've also heard some older guys say that the stickier your bait the better. I made a ball about the size of a half dollar coin on my hook. I did that because the bran flake dissolved quickly. I was just experimenting. They hit hard. I took my son and daughter out there and they had a blast on the Carp. Because they had not caught anything that big before. The other thing is that after watching the Carp come up to the surface thats where I dropped my line on a bobber and it dangled about 2 1/2 feet into the water only. I don't know if this had a factor either, but I had fished an area I know there was a brown water snake. So no one else fished that spot. Also it was a little bit of a steep bank and had a fallen limb. I can tell you that when I was pulling in the carp I almost fell in the water. Good luck and catching them. And by the way I used a treble hook that held my bait better, but was also completely enveloped by the dough. They are sensitive to the feel of it, so as fast as sucking it in they spit it out.