Mistral’s Hookable Pellets Range | |
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There are quite a lot of anglers that are looking for a pellet that will withstand a substantial cast on float tackle. Well, look no further! Mistral produce three types of hookable pellet, the Soft Hookers that come in a screw-top pot, the newer Squidgy Pellets that come in a pot with a clip on lid as well as a larger Soft Dusted Halibut pellet. Soft Hookers The Soft Hookers are also known as ‘skinned’ pellets because they form a skin around them in the manufacturing process. They have been around for quite a number of years although Mistral now only do them in 6mm size. I was using them at least seven years ago and a pack will last for ages. They float so you wouldn’t use them to loose feed, but they are easy to put on the hook and they STAY on the hook. Four flavours are available: Carp, Rosehip, Strawberry, and Trout Pellet. Over the time I have used them I have caught fish on all the flavours. On one small lake I could just turn up with just these, no loose feed, and catch 50 or 60 decent fish over a couple of hours. The Strawberry and Rosehip flavours have landed me a few decent tench too on other occasions. Squidgy Pellets New to me are the 6mm Squidgy Pellets. When I first looked at these they reminded me of the pre-soaked expander pellets, which I can’t get along with as they tend to fall off unpredictably either when you cast out or ship out on a pole. These ones from Mistral are NOT like that, these stay on the hook even through several casts and yet they are very soft. How do they do it?
Split one apart and it’s very fibrous. It also carries a lot of attractant, see the picture above of the one that’s squeezed, and the smells, like with the Soft Hookers, are very appealing to fish. Just three flavours in this range, Pukka Fish (similar to Carp in Soft Hookers), Rosehip, and a very rich smelling Strawberry flavour that just oozes confidence. Soft Halibut Dusted Pellets Again something new to me. Available in either 8mm or 11mm these are dark round shaped baits. Very soft so you can side-hook them easily, but not so soft that you couldn’t hair-rig them. Yet again, these will cast again and again, well at least 3 or 4 times like the one in the picture, but do remember that all pellets will come away from the hook in time.
These have a distinctive meaty/fishy smell. The dusting adds as an extra attractant as the bait sinks through the water, a clever little touch, but it also makes them nicer to handle. To be frank, I didn’t see much difference between the 8mm and 11mm sizes and would like to see one slightly bigger still, say 14mm, for the greedy-guts fishes. JWbaits – Hook Pellets Not really another type of pellet, these are identical in form to the Squidgy Pellets above. Nice to see they put my initials on them!
Not really, they’re John Wilson’s baits and come in two additional favours. There’s Marine Extreme and a very tasty smelling Dairy Crunch (smells very much like a toffee come vanilla cream flavour). The JWBAITS also come in matching hard feed 6mm pellets and groundbait, both in 800 gram resealable stay-fresh bags. Sadly there are no small hard feed pellets for the normal Mistral hookable pellets, but hopefully they will come soon. They are available in 11mm size though and could be fished banded to your hook, but perhaps match and pleasure anglers would want the smaller sized feed pellets. There are some clonking big Halibut feed pellets in 17 and 22mm sizes on Mistral’s list, which would have been nice to test for the breakdown time for if they hold on, I can see them being popular with the barbel boys. JWBaits Feed Pellets and Groundbait are £ 2.99 for the 800 gram bags. And there’s more to come – pastes review soon.
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