Just bought some Heathrow Bait Services Day Trippa hook baits in Supa Stench flavour. They have a quite tough skin and accept a baiting needle really easily. They are only something like 6mm so will either be using 1 on a size 14 hook or 2 on a size 12. As most of my fishing will be in daylight hours small hookbaits should be the way forward. I'm just doing a glass test to see how they hold up in water before breaking down.

I'll let you know how i get on with them.

If you want to go for a softer texture but know you still have bait on, why not use the hard pellet/paste combination on the hair,ive retreived my rig after an hour and still had quite a bit of paste clinging to the pellet, apart from the high leakage the paste gives the brittle pellet a bit of cushion as it crashes down on the cast, its worked well for me and i dont very often retreive baitless hairs, i make my paste from the hard pellets and dont flavour it,i ussually make a bit up on arrival using river water,the high leakage makes it ideal for short sessions.