There has been a huge increase in the use of feeding pellets for angling.

On commercial fisheries waters where there is a lot of fish relative to the natural food supply, supplementary feeding is desirable and often essential. In these settings, Alltech Coppens’ pellet feeds have been used for years because they ensure that the stock remains healthy and robust.

In catch and release waters, fish are often caught more than once. Over time, these fish start to recognise certain hook baits and become suspicious and avoid these hooked baits. Pellet recognition can be based on colour, smell and size, resulting in fish avoiding this type of bait. Wising up happens not only with pellets but also with boilies, corn and other hook bait. Even if the bait is initially successful, wising up can result in declining catches and catches of smaller fish. Fish can clearly learn and adapt their behaviour.

Anglers tackle this problem by adjusting the colour, smell or size of their hook baits. This increases their catches in the short term, but wising up will reappear over time, especially on heavily fished waters. In order to reduce this, anglers must regularly adjust their bait choice. Predatory fish, like pike, behave in the same way when it comes to lures. The lure needs to be changed regularly in terms of its colour, shape and size in order to keep making good catches.

Wising up does not usually occur with natural foods, even if the fish have been caught on them before. This is because fish cannot shun natural food, as they would not be able to grow or survive otherwise.

Our new hook bait, Native, is made from insect meal in order to closely imitate the natural diet of many fish species. This applies to not only the smell and taste, but also the shape of this hook bait. Native is produced in three different larval shapes to mimic a natural appearance further. In this way, we aim to reduce and delay wising up because Native is, in many ways, akin to natural food sources.

Native can be attached to the hook with a pellet belt or, after running it through a pellet pump, mounted directly on the hook. After soaking and pumping the pellets, Native becomes rubbery in structure so that it stays on the hook while casting out and during fishing. This also means the hook can be easily set when a fish takes the bait.

During the first test sessions on ponds with a low number of carp, Native was immediately eaten. As was expected, pre-feeding to get the fish used to the feed turned out to be unnecessary. Native works instantly!