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This effective, simple, and easy to make homemade fly trap can be assembled in minutes with an empty soda bottle and some old produce as bait. Outdoor protection during any season of the year including summertime picnics.
No matter where you live in the world, there is probably at least part of the year when a fly trap is very much needed! If repelling flies alone isn’t getting the job done, this DIY method is sure to take up the slack.
Are you are one of the folks for whom the water and a penny in a heavy duty ziplock bag aren’t working to eliminate your fly issues? If so, try this different fly trap instead. It is easy to make and the three steps shown in the picture above are described below.
The idea is courtesy of my goat milk farmer who uses it with fantastic success. The picture above shows just how many flies it will trap over the period of a few days!Â
As you can see, the fly trap obviously works well as the picture is of one of the traps behind my goat farmer’s house. It is loaded with several inches worth of dead house flies!
The trick to this fly trap is that it actually catches and traps the flies rather than repelling them like the flybag approach.
The flies get lured into the trap by a potential food source and can’t escape. Bones leftover from making bone broth work well as does old produce.
When the fly trap becomes full of flies, you throw it away and make another one, or two, or three!
Note: If larger biting flies are more of a problem in your area, use this homemade deer fly trap instead.
DIY Fly Trap in 3 Simple Steps
The only supplies you need to make your fly trap are a clean, empty 2-liter plastic soda bottle, some heavy duty packing tape, and some bait. Rotting potatoes work really well for my farmer. The pictures included with the steps show how quickly you can make your homemade fly trap.
- Cut an empty 2-liter soda bottle in two. The bottom half should be larger than the top. Making the cut about 1/4 – 1/3 of the way down the bottle works well (see photo below).
- Remove the cap from the top of the bottle and turn it upside down. Place a few pieces of cut up, rotting produce in the bottom half of the bottle and then, place the upside down, open end of the bottle inside the bottom half (see photo).
- Tape the two halves of the bottle together so they stay secure.
Tips for Using Fly Trap Most Effectively
Note that the better the bait, the more effective these fly traps will be. Here in Florida, potatoes that are soft and starting to rot work extremely well. Any type of decomposing fruit or vegetable would work too – you can try different ones and see which attract flies in your locality most effectively.
Here’s what it will look like after the flies start swarming.
Because you are using rotting food to attract and trap the flies, make sure you place the homemade fly trap in a place where the smell won’t bother you or the neighbors. The trick is to put it in a place close enough to attract the flies away from the area you are trying to keep fly free, but far enough away so you don’t smell or see it. In my experience, the trap will attract flies from a radius of about 50-100 feet/ 15-30 meters.
Let me know if you have tried this approach where you live and what you use as bait inside the soda bottle. Did you find it worked well?
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I’m in N Texas (North of DFW) what’s the best bait for a fly & mosquito traps (can be one & the same or stand alone units
And tough ones ! I hit them from 6″ away with a thick rubber band and they fly away !
I have used a milk jug with a dish soap bottle top put into a hole on the side opposite the jug handle. Used duct tape to secure the top to the jug which was placed just below the curve. Used a small piece of meat or some cheap fish type canned cat food, and filled with water to two or three inches below the dish soap top. The jug handle makes it possible to hang the jug in a good location away from the house so the rotting meat smell will not be noticeable. Water may need to be added if placed in the sun before it gets filled with flies. This may also work for trapping some wasps. I do not use anything that smells sweet as I do not want to trap, and kill any bees.
the bottle must be clear or they will see the light coming through the hole, they are confused by all the refracted light when a clear bottle is used, someone said to use small rotten salad shrimp for a bait, I am going to try shrimp, apple cider vinegar, a bit of sugar and a piece of fruit to cover all bases, we have tons of flies in the desert this time of year, disgusting, hope this works, again, do not use any colored plastic or glass bottles !
Can we please use your idea as a basis for our investigatory project? We’ll acknowledge you. We would really appreciate it.
Hi Tracy try cutting the top of the bottle where the curve just starts so that the opening is higher up near the top of the bottle with the bottle shown as soon as the trap starts to fill up the flies will just crawl out hope this helps cheers
Tried this the flys get back out. We’re in Texas and must have smart flies.
I use Jaggory and crushed banana..with fer drops of oil & water…. its quite affective, crushed banana’s smell attract flies more effectively…
This trap works extremely well. There were so many flies in my front yard it was almost unbearable to sit outside. I noticed the flies gathering on the ground where some beer had been spilled. I put some paper towels in the bottom of my 2 liter fly trap and put some beer in it. It took about three days and the traps were loaded with hundreds of flies. Now there are only a couple of flies every once in awhile that bother us. I tried the same thing in our chicken run but they didnt react the same way. They must like chicken poop better than beer.
I was just going to comment that flies LOVE beer! After buying the horrible smelling stuff from the hardware store, we started using beer. It seemed like they were just as attracted to our beer as they were to the foul smelling expensive stuff.
I use a roughly cut beer can with a little left inside, placed on the ground near my plants to keep slugs away. Might try making a combo that works for our bluebottle flies too!
I tried a similar trick,where the author said to put an inch worth of soda pop in the bottom, but in three days we only caught one fly. So I tried your method wusing rotting luncheon meat (ham) and a rotting lime cut in half – within 20 minutes over 10 flies were trapped before I left the garage to run an errand. What a relief, with the heat up to 100 by mid day, they were chewing on my husky’sears and driving us nuts. This way works here in Fresno, California.