Anyone got any reviews on crafty catcher retro baits

[Carp123_0]

As above

[hutch]

Think Nick might be well equipped to offer info on this 

[salokcinnodrog]

Think Nick might be well equipped to offer info on this 

Yes and No!

 

I work for the company that produces Crafty Catcher Boilies, I know the ingredients; they print them on the packet, I've even used them myself, and caught fish on them.

 

However it's not really for me to big them up as that could be seen as advertising, and it's a bit difficult as I'm sponsored by someone else (before I started working for the company).

 

The Retro baits are as close as possible the original recipes, flavours that made Crafty Catcher famous back in the original Crafty Catcher days. They catch fish as an attractor bait, although I would be happy to use King Prawn as a food bait.

[Carp123_0]

Cheers nick as I just purchased some king prawn with wafters and bait boost dip

[newmarket]

On 05/01/2016 at 21:49, salokcinnodrog said:

Yes and No!

 

I work for the company that produces Crafty Catcher Boilies, I know the ingredients; they print them on the packet, I've even used them myself, and caught fish on them.

 

However it's not really for me to big them up as that could be seen as advertising, and it's a bit difficult as I'm sponsored by someone else (before I started working for the company).

 

The Retro baits are as close as possible the original recipes, flavours that made Crafty Catcher famous back in the original Crafty Catcher days. They catch fish as an attractor bait, although I would be happy to use King Prawn as a food bait.

Hey Nick , sorry to bump this thread up but I thought it better than starting another thread.

What , if anything , do you know about the more recent Crafty offerings the “ carry outs “ ?

I like the look of their Spicy krill & Garlic bulk deals but they are ridiculously and suspiciously cheap and wondered if you’d heard anything since you used to be a bit itk on the subject ?

[salokcinnodrog]

15 hours ago, newmarket said:

Hey Nick , sorry to bump this thread up but I thought it better than starting another thread.

What , if anything , do you know about the more recent Crafty offerings the “ carry outs “ ?

I like the look of their Spicy krill & Garlic bulk deals but they are ridiculously and suspiciously cheap and wondered if you’d heard anything since you used to be a bit itk on the subject ?

No worries. 

The honest answer is I don't know anything about them

[yonny]

16 hours ago, newmarket said:

they are ridiculously and suspiciously cheap

Agree.

The website says they all use the same base mix, just different flavours added. Regardless of how effective you believe flavours to be, this raises serious questions about the thought process/development behind the bait.

The fact that said base mix can be used to carry everything from sugar sweet (Coconut – Maple) to seriously savoury (Spicy Krill – Garlic) tells us straight away that the claimed base mix ingredients (birdfoods/milks/fishmeals) must be in such low qtys that they're easily covered by a few ml of flavour/sweetener. This suggest that the bulk of the base mix is your fillers (semo/soya/cereals etc).

The saying 'too good to be true' springs to mind on this one.

 

[newmarket]

2 hours ago, yonny said:

Agree.

The website says they all use the same base mix, just different flavours added. Regardless of how effective you believe flavours to be, this raises serious questions about the thought process/development behind the bait.

The fact that said base mix can be used to carry everything from sugar sweet (Coconut – Maple) to seriously savoury (Spicy Krill – Garlic) tells us straight away that the claimed base mix ingredients (birdfoods/milks/fishmeals) must be in such low qtys that they're easily covered by a few ml of flavour/sweetener. This suggest that the bulk of the base mix is your fillers (semo/soya/cereals etc).

The saying 'too good to be true' springs to mind on this one.

 

Yes Yon that’s what I’m thinking totally . 
In years gone by I’ve tended to stick to my old fave raves XXX and/B5’s , but then I was pretty much fishing the same lake and I felt it wasn’t a disadvantage even though my sessions were pretty infrequent.

Now though I’ve a feeling I’ll be fishing a multitude of different venues , at least until I find my feet again in this game so was exploring the attractor bait possibility to maximise my chances in one off situations.

I’ll mostly be forced to fish at weekends and school holidays as well so couldn’t see the point in long term food source baits such as the ones I’m used to using.

Having said that , the shorter term better- than-the-norm shelfies now on offer from my favourite bait companies don’t work out much more expensive than the cheapies above if I buy 10kg upwards anyway so maybe I’ve answered my own question.

Maybe it’s not the right thread anyway but I’d be interested to read the thoughts of those in a similar position to myself , re bait for different day tickets etc .

 

[Carpbell_ll]

I Tried a range of shelfies last year at the start I wanted the convenience of being able to grab out the shop when needed as i was a bit more skint than normal, and didn't want to bother Andy the local bait guy for the odd kilo here and there. Couldn't catch on them and not for want of trying, the fish in that lake just will not eat them for me, I switched to JB base mix and flavours made hookies and bait and seen a big turn around first time out with the Milk and Honey had a few good uns out, didn't fancy rolling multiple kilos by hand so I genuinely found a bait company out the blue local to the lake i fish  Whacker Catcher, i didn't know nothing about the history of the chap who owns the lakes and the lads at the bait place, it used to be called The Dogs Bs years a ago started by the lads father, i bought there feed bait one called Ecton Berry, a load of the lads seen it on the lake and had a chuckle about will it catch wackers and did it it was not long after that things got a bit hmmm. those lads do a good bait and great post service, i didn't say anything about the Super Milk paste from JB i was using, never leave home without it a bag makes a nice amount of paste.

[salokcinnodrog]

Personally I think that the days of fishing a shelf life attractor bait as it stands are gone. 

I used to make a 450gram bag of Salmon Supreme, Honey Yucatan or Tutti Frutti last a few weeks, fishing every weekend. The only way I could ever get them to catch was to fish a stringer of 5/6 boilies with the hookbait. Prebaiting with them was a waste of time and bait. 

The way to fish now seems to be:

A) fish over spod mix. 

B) heavily glugged or soaked hookbaits

C) a and b together

D) the few who still fish a food bait. 

 

It is a few years since I was fishing day ticket waters, Bromeswell was the last, and most of the fish I caught were on bright overflavoured pop-ups; pineapple and n-butyric or plum and my garlic spice and my food bait. 

There is one Crafty Catcher bait that I would happily take anywhere, the old King Prawn in shelfie or freezer. 

If I was on various days waters, I would also be probably fishing with PVA bags loaded with hemp and pellets, and quite possibly sticking with the bait I know. Even on day ticket waters I found the fish would switch onto the food bait at times in preference to the pop-ups. 

[yonny]

15 hours ago, salokcinnodrog said:

Personally I think that the days of fishing a shelf life attractor bait as it stands are gone. 

I completely agree Nick.

Obviously a bright smelly single will always have a chance of getting picked up but real genuine quality bait is so widely available/used nowadays that attractor/shelfies cannot compete imo.

[salokcinnodrog]

51 minutes ago, yonny said:

I completely agree Nick.

Obviously a bright smelly single will always have a chance of getting picked up but real genuine quality bait is so widely available/used nowadays that attractor/shelfies cannot compete imo.

@yonny do you think that there are decent shelf life food baits out there? 

I'm convinced that some shelfies are as good as the freezer version of the same bait, RH Infusion, Crafty King Prawn, or even some shelfies being a food bait in their own right like RH KMG, where there is no freezer version. Solar did some, Seafood Takeaway was as good in both versions and for bait hardness I preferred the shelf life as a hookbait. 

KMG I took onto Alton and caught, and I am positive that it was not just down to the background feed (groundbait) as at times I simply could not spod groundbait at over 100metres, but could throwing stick boilies out that far. 

I think I have mentioned earlier in the thread about how Crafty Catcher preserve the shelf life King Prawn, a glycerine sugar syrup bath. The recipe is the same just the preservation, freezing or bathing. 

Going back to Tim's @newmarket new question, I have used the pale pink Krill and Garlic pop-ups, they are a match for the KMG in a colour that produces in the winter on the syndicate, (even better with around 5ml of garlic oil tipped and shaken in the tub) and a good top bait on snowman baits, BUT in terms of the Big Catch shelf life, I have not had any experience of baiting up with them. 

 

 

 

 

[yonny]

34 minutes ago, salokcinnodrog said:

@yonny do you think that there are decent shelf life food baits out there? 

Yes. Lots.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still go frozen every time, but there are defo decent shelfy food baits out there.

[newmarket]

8 hours ago, yonny said:

Yes. Lots.

Don't get me wrong, I'll still go frozen every time, but there are defo decent shelfy food baits out there.

Please tell me that you consider XXX and/or B5 to fit that criteria ?

[newmarket]

10 hours ago, salokcinnodrog said:

@yonny do you think that there are decent shelf life food baits out there? 

I'm convinced that some shelfies are as good as the freezer version of the same bait, RH Infusion, Crafty King Prawn, or even some shelfies being a food bait in their own right like RH KMG, where there is no freezer version. Solar did some, Seafood Takeaway was as good in both versions and for bait hardness I preferred the shelf life as a hookbait. 

KMG I took onto Alton and caught, and I am positive that it was not just down to the background feed (groundbait) as at times I simply could not spod groundbait at over 100metres, but could throwing stick boilies out that far. 

I think I have mentioned earlier in the thread about how Crafty Catcher preserve the shelf life King Prawn, a glycerine sugar syrup bath. The recipe is the same just the preservation, freezing or bathing. 

Going back to Tim's @newmarket new question, I have used the pale pink Krill and Garlic pop-ups, they are a match for the KMG in a colour that produces in the winter on the syndicate, (even better with around 5ml of garlic oil tipped and shaken in the tub) and a good top bait on snowman baits, BUT in terms of the Big Catch shelf life, I have not had any experience of baiting up with them. 

 

 

 

 

Evening Nick , early spring time you wouldn’t be slinging a load of bait in anyway would you ? 
Or would you ?

[salokcinnodrog]

28 minutes ago, newmarket said:

Evening Nick , early spring time you wouldn’t be slinging a load of bait in anyway would you ? 
Or would you ?

Not right now.

Until I see the fish start to move I'm on bags at the most. 

[yonny]

12 hours ago, newmarket said:

Please tell me that you consider XXX and/or B5 to fit that criteria ?

Yes I do mate 👍

[elmoputney]

If you wanted to try a new bait retro baits Bio comes in shelf life, I used the freezer bait last year and found it worked very instantly, had a couple of really quick bites within minutes of it being in the water, it's a very different and unique bait, smells lovely and works well in my opinion,I even had a couple of red letter sessions so  I would use it with confidence anyway  😂

 

[Carpbell_ll]

I think it is down to the lake and what the fish are used too, i'm pretty sure on waters that mainly see top HNV baits using shelfies or instant attract baits gets very little interest in fact they might even do the off due to other fish constantly checking and rejecting what you have put out, where as on a proper match runs water the same shelfies are fine to use?  

[yonny]

5 minutes ago, Carpbell_ll said:

on a proper match runs water the same shelfies are fine to use?  

Poor things are starving lol. They'll eat anything.