Artificial baits safe ?

Artificial baits such as Maggots, Worms, Dumbell, Dog Biccies etc. How safe are these for the fish? Once they have ingested them do they break down in the gut can they pass them naturally?. Most of the time these baits are still on the hook or hair but some must get eaten.
The chemicals these baits are made from can take many, many years to break down on their own. I still have a packet of Maggots that i got from a mag many years ago and they still look new without any breakdown showing.
So how safe are these baits not only to fish but birds that may pick them up after someone has dropped one or two.

I think you raise very valid questions.

I'm not a big user of fake baits, very rare in fact, and I'm not knocking 'em either but the same questions have cropped up in my mind too.

I would imagine it's a very different story when they're subjected to digestive acids but it's only a guess, after all we're talking about plastic and rubber (?) here and it would be interesting to hear an informed view.

I have Emailed today a couple of well known makes in the UK. Asking the same questions. Most seems to be cast in Silicon. This does break down after a while in UV light but Silicon is also waterproof. Some Silicons can resist petroleum and Acid products Which are a lot more corrosive than gut Acids

I feel that very few would be ingested. My take is that when fished over a bed of natural feed they are taken in the belief they are real but spat out when the realisation of falsehood is apparent. Hence their effectiveness on the bolt rig.

Strong tackle and care is the by word I hope?

iain t said:

Most seems to be cast in Silicon.

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I wonder if that's a clue, Silicon being used for things such as breast implants which sit happily inside the body?

Different again I suppose when they are in the digestive tract and could possibly cause a blockage??

Just a wild and uninformed guess, it will be interesting to see what if any response you get.

John, some must have got eaten by mistake. Maybe a small percentage

In this video Duncan Charman starts pulling bits of Crayfish out of a chubs arse (honestly - about 6 and a half minutes in.....) so I reckon if a Chub can cope with Crayfish claws coming out of its bum then a silicone maggot shouldn't hurt too much.

fishing4luckies said:

Duncan Charman starts pulling bits of Crayfish out of a chubs arse

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And there isn't a law against this?

It's the last time I'm having the poppadoms

fishing4luckies said:

In this video Duncan Charman starts pulling bits of Crayfish out of a chubs arse

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I seem to recall Derek and Clive discussing doing something similar with Jayne Mansfield....

They are possibly dangerous to the fish, or us, or any other animals if eaten, but they are not eaten are they? Unless of course they are hair rigged and the stop comes off, then I think the bait would simply pass through the gut, undigested. I have been using the same artificial baits for many years.

The Runner said:

I seem to recall Derek and Clive discussing doing something similar with Jayne Mansfield....

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That's gonna take some beating for post of the year!

Sorry, back on topic...

A-herm...

Chuckle...

The Runner said:

I seem to recall Derek and Clive discussing doing something similar with Jayne Mansfield....

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I think they tried it with Vivien Leigh first



But it was Gone with the wind :wh

What on earth would either Vivien Leigh or Jayne Mansfield be doing with Crayfish claws up their respective (and no doubt very lovely) backsides?

Are you hinting that either or both of these fine thespian ladies may well be responsible for introducing the blighters to our waters by employing the old 'anal smuggling' trick?

I think this warrants further investigation....

iain t said:

John, some must have got eaten by mistake. Maybe a small percentage

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I must admit to wondering about this since your post. I would be very interested, as others would, if there was a definitive answer to the safety aspect.

Any fishery biologists out there?

lets face it artificial baits represent a dip in the ocean compared to the filth that flows in our rivers either directly or through the ground, drains and sewers

Loads of Flounders get caught with lots of plastic inside them as they have a penchant for eating rubbish in the sea not sure the odd rubber maggot or sweetcorn will make any difference to fish in a small pond when there's probably hundreds of plastic bottles rotting down there.

I think we worry too much about these fish welfare issues, are we trying to get fishing banned.
When you look at the muck that fish swallow while feeding a few silicon maggots is the last of their problems.
From what I have seen some boilies and they are full of artificial ingredients take longer to digest that silicon baits.

Just to be accurate Derek and Clive discussed the anatomy of Joan Crawford!

If I ever need to regress to an infantile giggling idiot all I need is a bottle of southern comfort and my Derek and Clive album

I tend to agree, does the tiny percentage of fake baits eaten by fish do as much damage as the millions of hooks we put in them? I'm sure more fish have sore arses through being foul hooked than through silicone corn induced piles!
I put decisions on matters like that down to my conscience, if it makes me feel uneasy then I change what I'm doing.
I stopped using plastic baits even though I caught well on them after I lost a load of line with a rig attached that got picked up by a coot a couple of weeks later and tangled in another anglers line. The coot survived and everything was ok but it was definitely my rig and it could easily have been a big carp or tench that got tangled up to an unseen snag.
I also stopped using barbed hooks having noticed they were causing mouth damage in France last year. It could have been another reason but the damaged stopped after I switched to barbless hooks.

I can't really see how a fake bait can be ingested by a fish. I'm not a regular user of them, but I've never lost one yet. I can't see them being much good for a fish if they are ingested, but are only likely to be an issue if they are too big to pass through. I also suspect that most lost artificials will be rejected. Without being used in conjunction with a bolt rig, or very quick reactions to a bite indication, artificial baits are pretty useless.

There is an issue with artificial baits that does concern me. That's the fact that a lost rig remains "live" until the bait is covered, lost rig removed from the water or a fish picks it up. Fish trailing rigs of any kind is not a good thing.

When a certain company first brought out their artificial range I must admit to being a bit concerned.
Plastic is widely regarded as a pollutant the world over, particularly lost and discarded stuff that floats off ending up in our oceans. Often it tends to breakup into ever smaller fragments which are then ingested by fish, birds and sea creatures.
In the lake they simply persist 'whole' until the millennia of microbes and sunlight breaks them down - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it depends on what fillers are used. Polymers are not regarded as toxic per se, but there may be toxic residual chemicals, chemical additives and degradation products and fillers that can leach out as they are not bound to the plastic polymer. There are literally millions and millions of different types of plastics and composites produced for use in a whole range of consumer and industrial goods and situations throughout the world. Silicon is for the most part inert, it will pass through if ingested but it is much more likely to be felt by a chomp down as inedible and immediately rejected by fish. The smaller stuff that has broken down over time (or by the constant battering of waves) can be a bit more concerning when it gets into the food chain. Most 'artificial baits', bait stops and other small items should (but not always) be produced from similar safe and inert materials like silicone, but sadly most of what we use are imported unregulated without restriction or accompanying MSDS documentation.

One of the main chemicals used to produce plastics is bisphenol A, or BPA, an endocrine disruptor that is prevalent in a vast number of widely used products, not least of which are plastic food and beverage bottles and the lining of metal cans. Microbes, heat and sunlight, repeated washing or immersion, acidity, and alkalinity causes the BPA in plastics to leach out. BPA leaches into our groundwater from all the plastic sitting in landfills too. But by comparison of what is lost in a river or lake by your average angler, I would say its pretty much insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Bioplastics - its the future!