Talk Angling UK fishing discussion and chat

So much has been  written about Jelly pellets, a lot being made with liquidised pellet or fishmeal groundbait, a friend of mine even made some on a shallow tray and used a meat punch to punch out the pellets, he never caught on them but ten out of ten for effort. I was quite happy using my normal Ringer Bag up expanders until we started to fish the Grand Union canal at Luton for the carp. We had initially fished for the carp using meat on the hook spraying or cupping in pellet, however the fish were very wise to meat and such tactics as hair rigging meat on the pole etc were tried, various other baits were used to see if a better response could be obtained including cat meat, sweetcorn etc but the best hookbait for our tactics was the expander.  Like all things keep it simple, pellet over pellet did the trick, and the fact that it was cheap, took little or no preparation meant that I could go fishing at a minutes notice and sometimes a practice session would be just that, a phone call from a friend whose overtime had been cancelled and now had the afternoon free, so sessions over the canal after carp became a regular thing.
 

 It was only when using the pole at 15/16 metres that I started to encounter a few problems sometimes I overdid it with the expanders too much water and they became very soft bouncing off the hook or falling off on the strike a real pain when you have to constantly ship the pole back and forth to rebait especially when there is not much room behind you. Banded pellet was tried but the carp were very wary off this and the bites became very tentative and un-hittable at times.

So the search was on for a good hookable soft pellet, and while their are plenty of brands of soft hook pellet out there at £3.00 a small tub it can be a bit pricey to have a variety of sizes and alternative flavours as a change bait.

Thinking about what I was trying to achieve I finally came up with a very quick and effective method of producing a robust soft hookable pellet without too much hassle, preparation is done in minutes yet like all things good, is extremely simple and only requires household products to produce it, (however if you wish to guarantee that the pellet sinks, a pellet pump is a good investment).

All that is needed is a measuring jug, some gelatine, flavouring (optional), two small bait boxes, and a pellet pump. Firstly pour into the measuring jug a quarter of a pint of hot water.
Add the gelatine (I use half a sachet to a quarter of a pint of water) to the water stirring  until it dissolves now mix in your flavouring if required, I am adding sensas Molasses although you can add what you like from activ 8 to squid and octopus!!
Leave and let it stand to cool slightly then add some pellets to the pellet pump.