Pendragon Soft Hooker Pellets | |
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OverviewSORRY, BUT YOUR eyes are deceiving you. FishingMagic hasn’t launched itself into the soft hooker pellet market with a new wide range of flavours. The simple explanation is, these pellets are from a company way up in the Welsh hills that goes by the name of Pendragon Products Ltd. You probably won’t find them on the shelves under that name because the way they trade is to put the shop’s own name on the pots. Hence the reason my samples had FishingMagic on them. Some that were sent to Graham had his name and picture on too (that caused a bit of confusion, I can tell you!).
Now soft hooker pellets, sometimes called “expanders”, and me don’t get along too well. I have all the famous makes and some not so famous and they all vary in quality and consistency. I have had them where they are mush before you get one out of the tub and some that start okay, but after a couple of weeks they turn to a mush as well, just like the others. Robert (Dyer) who runs Pendragon showed me at the T&G show what to look for when buying a tub of these pellets. Forget the nice labelling on the top of the pot, turn it over and look for the residue on the bottom of the pot. I have done this and compared his with a famous make and where theirs left pellets and bits stuck to the bottom, the Pendragon baits left the pot almost clean.
It’s all very well though having a pellet that leaves a clean pot and is clean to handle, but how do they stay on the hook? My big disappointment in the past has been that you can’t ship out most makes on a pole, you get half way out and it’s fallen off. With the Pendragon pellets that DOES NOT happen, well perhaps the odd one in one hundred, if that. I found that I could not only ship out, lift and sink, lift and sink, ship in, ship out again, lift and sink, strike a false bite, lift and the bait was STILL there. That wasn’t just the one time I tried, so hard was it to shake them off I was at one stage dragging them through the water side to side to make them fall off. In the end I had to give up, ship in and remove them by hand to re-bait. So they stay on the hook, but how do they catch fish? Like with many expanders, there’s a fishy base to the flavour that you can smell even through the strong strawberry flavoured version and I believe it’s basically this that the fish like. The flavoured dressing is more to attract us, I believe, but it’s what gives you confidence that matters. Certainly the colour might help on some days when the fish might prefer red baits to green baits; but again, you decide. Another problem I have found if preparing my own expanders is getting them to sink. With another make I tried recently not only did they all float, they lifted the hook off the bottom along with my no.8 shot! With Pendragon’s baits 70% or more of them sink of their own accord and of the floaters, most sank with the weight of the hook alone. So you could even throw the odd few in as loose feed and most go to the bottom where your hookbait is. I tested this many times with a dozen baits and never did more than three float and with a 14s Animal hook stuck in them, they all sank. I would imagine that goes for most hook sizes too. Tests: (see photo) The beige pellets are the floaters that lifted the hook and no.8 shot. They stayed on the hook reasonable well, but I want a pellet that sinks straight from the pot. The dark green ones are mushy, they don’t even hold on the hook even on dry land any more. If you do get one on the hook, it will fall off as soon as it hits the water. The red ones are the Pendragon baits and so far I have no complaints whatsoever!
So Pendragon baits
I’ve gone on a bit because I am really excited about these, they have destroyed the myth I’d held that all expander or soft hooker pellets had to be handled with care and even then they probably would deteriorate over time. These haven’t as yet, I’ve had them for five months now since opening them and I will be mightily surprised if they do before I use them. I do like the convenience of tubbed pellets and I have proved time and again that if you can get them to stay on the hook, they are economical and they will catch fish. So what do you look for? Look for the shop’s “Own Brand” and ask the owner if he gets them from Pendragon Products. If he doesn’t, recommend he looks into it by contacting sales@pendragonltd.co.uk or your dealer can phone 01639 830999 or fax 01639 830111. You might expect to pay up to £ 2.99 per pot or even less for them, which is the norm, but they work and they last well. That’s all that matters to me.
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