However as with most so

However as with most so-called “new ideas” in fishing, there is in all truth nothing new about paste baits. Nearly a hundred years ago, both my Great Grandfather and Grandfather were regularly using special pastes. All we have done is develop these ideas using modern ingredients, most of which were not readily available at the turn of the last century.Obviously the first paste that I was introduced to was the common old bread paste which worked very well. Later, my Grandfather showed me how to make yellow saffron paste. He and his father had used it to good effect on the Norfolk Broads. I recall my Grandfather telling me how he and his old friend “Mole” punt fished on one of the Broads with saffron paste. They caught so many bream that when they bought their sacks in, they nearly sunk the punt. They claimed that if they had caught any more, the boat would definitely have sunk. Okay, we can possibly dismiss this as a anglers tale but I have heard how they used to bag up from other independent sources. This bait really worked.Saffron is a natural ingredient used in making certain cakes. What they did was grind it up with a pestle and mortar, add bread crumb, sugar and water. They would then knead it into a stiff sweet yellow paste.I remember using it when Grandfather took me fishing when I was thirteen years old. We went to a local lake which he had prebaited with groundbait made up of mashed bread, ground up saffron and sugar. As we arrived, he immediately ground baited up with the same feed before setting us up to float-fish a large lump of saffron paste on a size 8 hook. The technique really worked and we were quickly bagging up with bream to over 41b and the odd good roach. Certainly we had more good sized fish than other anglers on the water. Looking round, I never saw another angler with a fish. I was convinced that the prebaiting and saffron paste really had worked.Other pastes that they used included an elderberry paste for carp and either gravy or cheese paste for barbel and chub. All the pastes were made with the main ingredients being bread crumbs and sugar. No doubt crude by modern standards but for that time, very advanced and surprisingly effective.Since then we’ve moved on and the list of possible ingredients is endless. In the sixties, I was using two main pastes. On the rivers I was using a cheese paste for roach, chub and barbel. On its own, it worked very well for tidal Thames roach producing some very good roach, but we had better results from both chub and barbel by fishing a cheese paste impregnated with hemp over a bed of hemp. On lakes we were having much more success with a sardine based paste. We started off with a tin off sardines in tomato source which we placed in a bowl. The sardines were mashed up with a fork. We then added bread crumb which we later replaced with a 50/50 boilie mix which gave better results. An egg was then added and the mixture kneaded into a stiff paste. This paste could be frozen and used as required. I used to ledger it with a free running lead with the bait moulded on a size 6 or 4 hook. Bites were nearly always very confident. This approach yielded my first ever twenty pound carp, which was a nice mirror of 21lb 3oz from a local gravel pit. However, there was one problem with this bait in the form of the odd nuisance eel or pike. I once hooked three pike in a evening session on it.By the seventies, modern-style baits were being produced but I still kept developing my pastes. At the time the most successful paste I was using was Angel paste. It was a real winner and made from Birds Angel Delight. It was simple to make, starting from the contents of a packet of Angel Delight which were placed in a bowl. Then about double the quantity of Richworth 50/50 boilie mix was mixed in followed by a small spoon full of red boilie dye. Then 5ml of sweetener was added. Originally this was just sweetex tablets dissolved in hot water. Water was then added and the mixture stirred to produce a thick paste. Although eggs could have been used I preferred water as we were fishing in Summer and there was always the danger of eggs going off. This paste was used on a running lead, just like sardine paste but it was also very good used in conjunction with float fishing tackle for stalking fish. In practice, this proved to be a very good paste and accounted for some good carp.Naturally we did make Angel boilies by replacing the water with eggs, rolling them into baits then cooking them in boiling water for a few minutes. The boilies looked good and caught carp. However, I tried to carry out a controlled test to compare the paste and the boilie. It was late October when I set up two identical outfits with only the terminal tackle and bait differing. One rod was baited with a boilie and a semi fixed lead whilst the other had the paste moulded on a plastic bead that was hair rigged with a running lead outfit. Every two hours I changed the rod positions over in an attempt to remove any bias resulting from the swims. The water fished was a very prolific doubles water.My first two runs came on the rod baited with the paste and produced two low doubles whilst the third run, which also produced a low double, came from the boilie baited rod. Then another two doubles came on the paste. On that particular day the paste worked better than the boilie but it must be remembered that it was late season with the water temperature dropping. There was also little activity from nuisance fish. I believe that the paste allowed for a much quicker release of flavour that was attracting the carp more quickly to the bait. Unfortunately I should have repeated the experiment many more times to get reliable results, but didn’t.In colder weather many of my friends were using boilies whilst I kept using pastes. The pastes I was using were often of the same composition as the boilies used by my friends. However they certainly held their own and generally out fished the corresponding boilie. The colder the water temperature the greater the margin of success in favour of the paste appeared to be. No doubt this was partly due to the faster flavour leakage, but is this the whole picture?. I doubt it. When you cook a bait it denatures some of the proteins and loses a lot of the flavour. The more a bait is cooked, the more it’s changed.Many angler use the identical recipe for boilies to make up pastes. Although this can work, I believe they have too much flavouring present. Remember most boilie formulations make an allowance for a leakage of flavouring in cooking. I normally halve the quantity of flavouring if making up a paste from a boilie recipe.It is also worth noting what the owners are doing in the winter before deciding on the paste to be used. This is because many fishery owners try to maximise their stocks growth rate by feeding the water with trout pellets in the winter, when there is little anglers bait going into the water. Naturally the fish become preoccupied with pellets and can be easily caught on trout pellet paste and take it as natural food. This is particularly noticeable in the early season before much anglers bait has gone into the fishery. At such times trout pellet paste can be the only bait to really work – and I am not just referring to carp! On some pellet fed commercial fisheries, I have known trout pellet paste to out fish any bait for roach including top quality fresh caster and hemp.At Clawford Vineyard in Devon, I was introduced to a very interesting trout pellet based paste that appears to be deadly for roach. It consists of a third of each of the following ingredients; ground trout pellet, cheese and 50/50 boilie mix. Eggs are used as the binder. In practice it certainly produced some terrific bags of roach that included good specimens and out-fished my normal trout pellet paste. I believe this new paste could also work on river for roach and chub. It is on my list to try out on the rivers.Unfortunately most fisheries that I regularly fish are not pellet fed. I am therefore more interested in pastes that give the highest possible leakage rate. This is particularly important when fishing a river for carp in colder weather.It is well known that bird food boilies with their coarse texture give excellent flavour release. They are also easily digested in cold weather which means the food is quickly converted into energy. This makes them the ideal boilie for winter use – but I am not casting to the horizon and can use a paste.There are two types of birdfood commonly used in baits. These are a red mix and a yellow mix. I prefer the red mix which tends to be more spicy but I do not have the time to make up my own base mix from various ingredients. Instead I use “Red Menace” which is one of the Richworth Impulse range of base mixes. I crack four large eggs into a bowl then add 1.5 ml of Eastern Promise flavour, followed by half a teaspoon of Sweet Fusion Palatant and the same quantity of Dairy Fusion Palatant. The contents are then whisked up and 50Og of the red menace mix is added. This is worked in by hand into a stiff paste.Now that I am using very stiff pastes, I use a hair rig rather than moulding the paste directly on the hook. The notable exception is in using pastes for roach where less stiff pastes are moulded directly on the hook leaving the point exposed. My hair rigs normally start with a plastic bead tied on the braid. The braid is then passed through the hook and secured with a knotless knot. the paste is then moulded onto the plastic bead. If ever I need a pop up bait then the plastic bead is replaced with a cork ball. Using this method it is also possible to produce a critically balanced bait.However no paste article would be complete without mentioning the latest developments. Richworth have now produced a cold setting paste. The whole range is sold as powders in tubes. All you need do is add water or liquid extract mix it in and leave to produce a stiff paste. I regularly use the liver powder with liver extract and had some terrific results using it both with carp and barbel. It has to be one of the easiest pastes to make up. This paste can be mixed up to produce a bait that is as hard as most boilies but has not had any of its contents denatured by cooking. It lasts well in the fridge and more importantly on the hook. In use the paste appears to dissolve away very slowly giving off goodness into the water. These pastes are of a very high nutritional value and can quickly fill up fish. In practice this means very few, if any, freebees should be introduced.So far I have only talked about the advantages of pastes but like all baits they have their limitations. Firstly they tend to be softer than boilies making them less resistant to nuisance fish and they are not suitable to be cast so far. Secondly they break down more quickly than conventional boilies which means re-baiting has to be more frequent.

I have tried to present a balanced feature. There is a case for both pastes and boilies. Each have their own strengths and weaknesses. At present I tend to use boilies more in the summer whilst still using pastes for stalking then moving over exclusively to pastes in colder weather.