Cats and Dogs – Net-buster Super Soft Pellets

CATS AND DOGS – NET-BUSTER SUPER SOFT SLOW SINKING PELLETS
Price: £ 3.50 for a 900 gram pack

Over the years I have tried different makes of shop-bought paste in the hope that some might just stick on the hook. This, I might add, is for pole fishing first and foremost and many of the ones I tried came off during the shipping out. Yes, there are ways around it, attachments and even cable ties you can use on the pole to hook the bait over, but even when it hits the water it often comes off on the first dunking.

Sometimes the fish in my pond like to feed on small pellets on the bottom, especially on really cold days. In the past I have fed them with some hard carp pellets, but this year I was looking for some that were already soft and that they would readily accept.

Confused? Stay with me….

Walking around the local tackle shop a couple of weeks ago I came across the latest moist miniature pellets from ‘Cats And Dogs’, labelled as ‘Net-Buster’ pellets. I bought a 900 gram pack for £ 3.50 and tried them on the fish in my pond. It says on the bag that as well as feeding them loose, you can squeeze them around a method feeder without the need to wet them further, which is convenient! I have since spoken to Mike Loveday, who owns the business, and he tells me that when you use them on the method feeder the pellets reform back to pellets again once the feeder hits the water.

Well, my pond fish were certainly happy with them so I thought I’d give them a try at one of our club’s little ponds amongst the crucians, tench and small carp. I normally fish the pole on this water so I started off feeding a few pellets in by catapult and fishing a small punch of luncheon meat as hookbait on a 14s hook. Time after time the hook never reached the fishing area before a small rudd intercepted it on the way out. Even stepping up the punch size didn’t help much, these rudd have big mouths when they’re hungry.

I had some ready-made soft-ish pellets with me that are a bit old and quite frankly past it. I tried those, but again the rudd pounced on them straight away. So what I needed was something a little larger that was mouth-wateringly delicious (to a fish) and easy to stick on the hook.

It doesn’t say so on the bag, but these Cats and Dogs pellets can be kneaded to form a smooth paste so that’s what I did. There was nothing else on the hook, no spirals, no plastic balls or anything, just the 14s Kamasan Animal barbless hook and yet the paste stuck nicely around it. I shipped the rig out fearing the worst, but the bait was still there and I dropped it straight in the spot I wanted next to a lily pad 9 metres away.

Almost immediately I had a bite, but I failed to hook it. I rebaited with the paste and tried again. Straight away I had another bite, nothing special about this since it could be rudd again, but once more I’d missed it. This happened several more times and it became frustrating, ten or more bites and still no fish. I then decided to step up the hook size to a 10s Animal hook and that did the trick. The fish were tench and crucians mainly with the odd little carp thrown in.

The bait was performing beautifully, I was kneading small balls of paste for the hook and including a small amount of loose pellets in the pole pot to feed over the float. Give the pellets in the pot a very light tamping and they’ll stay in better during the shipping out. It was brilliant, as soon as the hookbait hit the deck on some occasions, a cloud of tench bubbles came to the surface. Fish were feeding frantically and just how many I had caught by the end of the day I have no idea because keepnets are banned, but so many I lost count ages before.

The bait is very high quality, versatile and fairly priced. In fact, mould it all into a paste and it is extremely good value when compared with other manufacturer’s pastes and this one works! The same manufacturer supplies a paste mix and skinned pellets also and all of their products, Mike tells me, are based on highly nutritional food bases. Flavours for the pellets include Monster Crab (the one I used), Green Lipped Mussel, Scopex, Strawberry, and Super Fishmeal.