2009 A Bait – Review of the year (12 months down the line)
January. Having experienced unbelievable results on the first sample of additives I had to get more and the suppliers were good enough to grant me this. 3okg of bait was made up with a 10g inclusion of each additive and added to each kilo of sardine fishmeal base mix. Small amounts were sent out for pond and tank tests and apart from one failure in an acidic water environment all the feedback was encouraging. More than one person took them fishing and caught from the off.
February. Nash kindly agreed to let me test the additives in their amber attract base mix and an order for the additives, enough to make 3,000kg of finished bait!
March. The first 350kg of Amber strawberry arrived in time for the 5 Lakes show and sold out in 15 minutes.
April. I went to France with Steven Ross and shared a catch of 84 fish with 40 over 30lbs and 15 carp over forty pounds. Great results on the bait all round and upped the level of additive to a combined level of 30 grams, A2 and A3. The feedback was that this made the amber to soft but boy did it catch carp and catfish.
May. Continued great results but problems in keeping up with the demand, it was just impossible to get the bait made fast enough. The small barrels 8mm x 14mm proved too brittle to fish with practically and in future these would be 12mm x 20mm. The first A5 was launched, a red HNV fish mix with a variety of flavours including Bacon, pimenta, Red Karpi and eventually Green Zing. This bait was particularly popular with the barbel boys and was responsible for a fish within 8 ounces of the British record.
June. More supply problems and hours and hours of research and development. A friend did some under water filming in France and the A Bait was torn apart to the exclusion of all other baits by the poisson chat. Further evidence that all fish species are attracted by the A bait. Anything with whiskers or barbells seems to love it.
July. Had to re-order the additives and production increased but still unable to keep up with the demand. I went to Slovenia fishing for a fortnight and received a whole lot of new product samples all of which were rejected. The time spent sending out the orders as well as owning a full time job was beginning to take a toll on the bait development side. The flip side of this was the amount of satisfied customers who had caught PB's.
August. I had been working on a number of flavours all year and the Ultraspice I had ordered came out as a 99% match of the original; I added slight amounts of pimenta leaf oil and skunk oil to make spice upx. Toward the end of the month Geoff Bowers started to make the A Plus for me, a really high quality fish meal with skunk oil and liquid fish protein.
September. Great results for the first users of the A+, the biggest disappointment of the year for me was that more people did not get the chance to try it. This will be awesome bait in 2010 and will be stepped up to the 30 gram level and maybe switched to the spice UPX flavour. Many anglers have asked to keep the skunk oil however.
October. My eyes were well and truly opened to the other potential uses for the additives and working out the right levels when applied in pva products and ground bait. The A5 was switched to a winter version which has proved to be equally as good if not better.
November. Further new flavours arrived including a diacetin plum to make the plum zing and the liquid illusion an incredibly complex blend that took an astonishing 6 months to complete.
December. The dip and stick product was finally finished. A bought in sugar syrup that is used to coat the boilie before lowering in the powder. The leak of is controlled and will gradually release the additive over a period of time depending on the water temperature. The additive is complemented by, Betaine, CSL, MSG, dextrose, condensed milk powder flavour, soluble milks, enzyme treated fishmeal, yeast and more. 4 different limited edition baits rolled on the amber attract using my flavours finished and ready for the Brentwood carp show, 9-10th January.
For the last four months I have been looking at making an A Bait from scratch to best utilise the additives. I have christened the project FUDE. (Feed utilisation Dietary Enhancement) The concept is a base that will be stripped back to its crudest form in order for the carp to digest in under an hour. I know this is possible and have witnessed it. The Bait will have an incredible vitamin and mineral profile and there will be nothing in it that does not serve a function. I have a liquid product that quite incredibly has the same components as the liquid illusion on a base of liquid minerals. If the product ever sees the light of day will depend on a large scale production as the base mix needs to go through an industrial grinder to make it possible to roll.
I would like to thank all the A Bait customers for all their support and incredibly feedback which has made the whole project a reality. Back in January I knew I had something special and wanted to create bait with a difference. This is still the motivation and I for one will be out there reaping the rewards again in 2010.
Very best wishes and tight lines 2010.
Jay
