Whilst our sensational new bait N-Gage XP is not being launched until January, you can now get a head start by ordering yours first. To buy these baits Click here

LATEST FISHING BAIT
There are so very many different types of bait available, both at the angling shops and on the Internet – it's hard to know what to believe without spending a lot of money to find out. Even the recommendations of fellow anglers are not suitably scientific to really get a good feel for how the latest bait is going to perform in your local waters. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when evaluating what should and what probably won't live up to the claims.

For starters, the old adage is certainly true for the latest bait as well as just about anything else for sale: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Sure, they all claim to “drive fish wild,” but how many of them are likely to do so all the time. As a general rule of thumb, the more selective the effective range of claims, the more likely they are to be true. Of course, if a product claims to drive barbel wild at 2am on a Saturday in only a few select Welsh rivers, that doesn't mean it's true – only that its a bit more likely to be true than baits that swear they'll have every coarse fish in the UK hopping on your hook, summer or winter.



Consider just how conditions on the water and the requirements of fish change at different times of day and different times of year. Even if the latest bait for summer fishing works great while the weather's nice, doesn't mean it will do a very good job when the snow flies. Also dubious are claims that a bait that provides a balanced diet for fish will be one that actually attracts them. You are not always attracted to the foods that are best for you, and neither are fish.

The claim that a bait has been formulated by the greatest minds in science also doesn't mean that's true. Not all chemists make good anglers and not all good anglers make good bait formulators. It is also true that a good bait doesn't have to smell like the dead to be effective. Science has found that many of the chemicals that attract fish and are chemically related to the substances they encounter everyday in the water can actually smell pretty good. However, if the latest fishing bait smells too much of something you might want to eat, it might be a good idea to do some investigating before you start shelling out pound-notes.

It's always a good idea to approach bait purchases with a healthy dose of scepticism. Baits are a multi-million pound industry in the UK, and all that money attracts con-artists and the merely incompetent, better than their baits attract fish. Ask successful anglers on the bank what they use, and you'll likely get the best advice of all.

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