Those who know me know that I love playing around with bait and whenever a box of goodies arrives in the office I’m usually the first one to open it up and take a look because, make no mistake, bait DOES make a difference.
OK, so it’s not quite as important as location because you cannot catch fish that aren’t there in the first place but, given a quality bait, you can pull fish from a surprisingly long way – especially on rivers – so even if you cock up slightly on the location front if there are fish within 100m or so you should be able to pull them. Given a REALLY good bait you can possibly pull them upstream further than that, and past other anglers too…
So what did I find with the Bait-Tech Envy Method Mix?
Well, to be perfectly honest I didn’t find an out and out ‘method mix’ and the name really is a bit of a misnomer because, to my mind, it is more of an all-round groundbait that can be used as a method mix if required, but it can also be used for balling or as an active cage mix.
The reason for this versatility is that Envy is a mix of ground hemp and ground halibut pellets; the ground pellets giving an oily, rich mix which sticks well for method work with the hemp ‘diluting’ the fishmeal to provide a more active groundbait with a faster breakdown time than one would anticipate from a wholly fishmeal mix. I would hesitate to call it an ‘explosive’ mix – there is not quite enough hemp and larger particulate matter to create that effect – but it fizzes nicely giving plenty of small particles off almost immediately with the fishmeal component breaking down over a slightly longer time frame. Instant attraction with enough body to pull fish longer term too.
As a method mix it produced good, solid feeders which I could chuck a fair distance; it held a bit of extra particle in the form of corn and hemp (the match lads frown at me for adding particle to method mix but horses for courses!) but if you really wanted to load it with bits I would suggest adding a little more fishmeal or binding agent to keep it intact for a big chuck on a feeder or in the groundbait catty.
For the cage feeder I played around a bit and mixed it a little on the dry side and laced it with dead maggots and it produced a terrific active mix which would be perfect of roach and bream but when I added a handful of pellets and bit of extra moisture with a spray of water and a glug of flavour the result was a much heavier mix with a slower breakdown which would be ideal for barbel and river work.
You can certainly experiment and tailor the Envy to your session requirements and that works for me. I would say it’s a first rate choice for carp and bream with uses beyond that for barbel too. I’m told it’s one of Alan Scotthorne’s first choices for balling in when targeting roach and skimmers too – and I’m not going to argue with him!
Envy is supplied in 2kg bags and there are ‘fishmeal brown’ and green variants available from all Bait-Tech stockists.
