I must admit I’ve never used Polony on the hook, my only association with it thus far in my life has been seeing the US equivalent, Bologna (or Baloney), and the Italian variant, Mortadella, on various deli counters.
Although recipes appear to vary it’s basically a beef, sometimes beef and pork, sausage with added lard and it tends not to be, how shall we say, the ‘best’ cuts of meat which are included – but then again none of those processed large scale for canning or sausage making usually are! That’s not to say it’s not palatable or indeed tasty, in fact very possibly the opposite!
As far as bait is concerned I’ve used slicing and garlic sausage in the past and these are essentially similar but the Bait-Tech Polony is the first I have ever seen canned and sold specifically for the angling market and, having been very impressed with their meat range, I took a closer look, especially as it has been gaining a rather enviable track record as far as barbel are concerned.
Sold in 340g ring pull cans the Bait-Tech Polony is pork rather than beef-based and as soon as you open the can you are hit with a strong aroma of garlic and spice, not unpleasantly strong, but ‘EAT ME!’ strong! It really is terrific and I could see (or rather smell) straight away why barbel love it and it was not too dissimilar to the fried meat in garlic and spices I used to make up for barbel back in the day.
Texture-wise it was very fine and compacted, easy to slice, pull apart, or put through a cutter or riddle. I had heard reports, before I took a closer look, that it was soft and tricky to hook and all I can say is ‘rubbish!’ It’s no different to luncheon meat, should be treated in exactly the same way (chilling keeps it very firm) and with a decent meat stop it’s going nowhere.
The texture is undoubtedly greasy, more so than many meats, because of the high fat content and this lends a degree of near neutral buoyancy to the bait which, I’m sure, is another of the reasons behind its success as it helps to counteract the weight of your hook. By playing around with some thin slices of cork and some Enterprise rubber maggots I made some terrific pop-ups and neutral baits and it’s well worth experimenting in this respect, especially for carp.
The final point to make about Bait-Tech’s N-Tice Polony is the ‘twist’ in that as well as the garlic and spices there is added betaine, which is quite simply one of the best fish attractors around.
