Krill clusters

Working in the bait industry, I am fortunate and lucky to get my hands on some pretty exciting and new products. Working for Sticky, we source so many superb ingredients and products and each and every one of them is brought in because we believe it to be a complete game-changer.

Last autumn we received a bag of small, oily pellets from our supplier of the Pure Krill Liquid. Knowing how good and effective this liquid is, these little balls of oily Krill pellets were always going to be a winner. We kept them back for release until the launch of the Manilla and since then, they have been extremely popular. Krill itself is nutritionally superb and with these being a completely natural product that harnesses all that goodness.

I have played around with various ways of using them, but for me, the most effective way of using them is a simple addition to a spod mix. Their incredibly fishy smell really make a superb addition to any mix. They come in so many different shapes and sizes; I like having a mixture of sized food items in my mix, which keep the fish feeding at different effort levels.

With them being so oily, when the fish feed over the bait, it gives off a tremendous slick. That flat spot that appears over the area you are fishing gives you a great indication of when the fish are visiting the area. And, again, being so oily, they do take quite sometime to breakdown. They pump off attraction, but slowly over time. It keeps that pungent smell in your swim for long periods of time, but if you want it to be even more instant, there are a couple of things that you can do.

The Clusters are full of natural oil and it is easy to see when the fish are feeding on the spot

They make a great addition to a spod mix, which is Jakes preferred use for them

Mixed in with the Krill boilies, it just oozes big carp

Trick 1

The first thing is to add them to a bucket of freshly cooked particles. The heated, warm water will react with the Clusters and draw all that oil and attraction out of them and it will fuse in to the particles. The whole bucket smells of beautifully fresh krill, which carp simply adore.

If you are not fishing with particles, then just warm water from the kettle will aid this. You only have to squeeze the Clusters once the water has been added and you can see all the cloudy, natural attraction coming off them.

I have been using this a lot recently when fishing close in. A few Clusters and chopped boilies in the edge is a real winner. Just watching the carp’s reaction to them shows me how much they love them. Since fishing with them close in, I have used them absolutely everywhere I go.

Trick 2

Because of their oily nature though, it doesn’t make them ideal for PVA bagging. The pellets will stick together and the Stick shape you have created with the bag, will remain like that for quite some time due to the slow breakdown of them. If you are wanting to use them in a PVA bag, I would recommend mixing them with a few small bloodworm pellets, so that the Clusters can’t stick together so easily.

Trick 3

Another great use for them is to actually pop them in some mesh and use them as a hookbait. I mould a few Clusters together, like a small ball of paste. Once I have the required size, I then pop them in some tights and secure with some bait floss. This creates a lovely, oily little hookbait and you can tailor the size and shape to whatever you choose to fish with.

Cloudy attraction

How to make one helluva spod mix

Matching the hatch

When it comes to matching your free bait perfectly, it doesn't get any better than this trick from Jake Wildbore

A near-30lb Hardwick mirror, caught over a mixture of Krill boilies and Clusters

They are superb for fishing in the edge and observing just how much the carp love them