Packed with heritage

The Crafty Catcher brand is one of the longest and most established in carp fishing, so where the hell have you been for the past seven or eight years?!

“Yes, it certainly is! Crafty Catcher was formed in 1984 by the late Don Smith and Mick Richardson and was originally based in Braintree Essex.

The early product lists showed mainly ingredients, additives and flavours and when you look back at the products on offer, you realise how groundbreaking and cutting edge Crafty was back then. What once seemed strange, mysterious and exotic have become proven carp-catching classics over the years and taken for granted today.

“For much of the company’s life we have used our innovation and manufacturing expertise working with other brands,
and although confidentiality stops me naming names, I guarantee most anglers would at some point have used a product designed and manufactured by Crafty but sold under a different label.

“It was three years ago we decided to launch Crafty back into the market and in all honesty what has happened in that time has been remarkable. Our products have always been at the forefront of innovation but it’s been particularly satisfying to see the Crafty range available through over 800 shops.”

Cliff Davis: part of the driving force behind the newly launched Crafty Catcher.

You currently have two collections of boilies: Fast Food and Retro. Have the boilies in this latter range changed much to the original recipes – some of which date back almost 30 years?

“Our ‘Fast Food’ boilies combine fast working water-soluble attractants in a high-leakage bird base mix with a quality foodbait rich in fishmeals and milks. You literally get a boilie that’s half high attraction and half proper food, which not only gets you a bite fast but keeps the carp coming back for more.

“Our new range is called ‘Retro’, and putting it together has been a fantastic project.

“For me personally. I bought Crafty in 2000 from then owner Roger Sherwood after spending six years at Dynamite Baits and focused my immediate attention on looking forwards not backwards, and in some ways disregarded the company’s heritage a bit. A couple of years ago I realised that Crafty would be 30-years-old smack in the middle of 2014 and decided to take a serious look back at our early boilie recipes and see if I could bring some of the old favourites back. It surprised me how good those early baits were and why they accounted for so many good fish and were the ‘must-have’ baits for so many good anglers. Peanut Pro, Caribbean Cocktail and King Prawn were rated highly and caught proper lumps everywhere, including Cassien and Salagou, as well as venues all over the UK. Top anglers were on the baits including Andy Little, Julian Cundiff, Bob Bantick and Chris Ball to name just four.

“With the Retro range I tried to stay close to the original recipes, particularly with the flavours, but I did make improvements to the nutritional profile of all the baits as well as increasing the attraction with appropriate ‘modern’ additives and liquid foods. A look at the now mandatory ingredient declaration on each bag will show exactly what is in them and any carper who knows a bit about bait will see why they are putting so many good fish on the bank now.”

Many big names were on the Crafty baits in the 80’s and 90’s.

King Prawn is one of those said recipes, so can you tell us how the bait came about and your thinking behind it?

“King Prawn is one of those baits that is much more than the sum of its parts. It’s an example of the magic that can happen when you throw things together in a certain way. Yes, it looks a good bait written down in my bait bible but I have created many good looking recipes on paper that never quite caught as well as I thought they would.

“The original recipe was a simple fishmeal base mix with an alcohol-based flavour and some shrimp meal. It caught a lot of fish so this was a good starting point for the upgraded version. I can tell you it now contains brewers yeast, krill protein concentrate, Belechan fermented shrimp, LT fishmeals, liquid foods etc., etc., etc., but really, it’s how these ingredients combine at the levels they are included that makes this bait so exciting. It dominates lakes very quickly and is eaten again and again. Remarkably, it put one 30lb-plus target fish on the bank three times in a 36hr session! When you get a bait like this, it’s best to stop thinking too much about it and just make sure it stays exactly the same every time it’s rolled!”

What do you think are the main factors behind the long-term success of King Prawn?

“It’s simply very attractive to carp, and when they eat it, it tastes good. Nutritionally it gives them an easily digestible balanced healthy diet. It’s no wonder they treat King Prawn boilies as a natural food source, and as long as it’s going in the water they will keep eating it. They can’t help themselves.”

One of the many brutes to be caught on the baits from Cassien.

The other four baits within the range – Black Cherry, Dairy Cream Fudge, Peanut Pro – a classic!, Caribbean Cocktail – all sound like quite different baits, so when would you use one over the other? Do any stand out as ‘big fish’ bait? And that’s another point: do you actually believe in ‘big fish’ baits?

“These other baits are, indeed, all different. Many boilies on the market will be a colour and flavour variation on the same base mix, and bear in mind as a manufacturer for other brands I can say this with authority. With the Retro boilies they are all completely different. From the base mix through to the additives and liquid foods, each one is fundamentally different to the next, with each boilie designed to be the best of its type. For example, you mention the classic Peanut Pro, the first nut-based boilie on the market and in the eighties and nineties it accounted for serious numbers of very big fish. The new updated recipe is now achieving equally stunning results, highlighted by Crafty sponsored angler Harvey Watson who has had three stunning mid-thirties in the first three weeks of his new campaign. Watch out for some big old girls on this bait!

“I think a range of baits gives anglers different options, and those that fish a variety of waters will always have a bit of an edge with a few good quality baits in their armoury and in these circumstances the other Retro baits definitely come into their own.

“Big fish baits? That’s any bait a big fish picks up right! Over the years I have been lucky enough to put some big fish on the bank including five fifties which were all caught on different baits – including soft hook pellets, maggots, tiger nuts, pop-ups and boilies! Consistently good angling will always sort out the bigger fish on any water but there is no doubt in my mind that good quality bait that carp will eat again and again can also play a part.”

Tip-Offs – just one of many natty little products from Crafty.

You’ve got some really nice niche products in the range, items such as the Crafty Candies, but are these just designed to catch the angler rather than edgy carp?

“The Candies originally came about because I was looking for a bright fluoro bottom bait that looked and smelled different to all the bog standard round fluoro pop-ups on the shelves. Fluoro didn’t have to mean pop-up or round did it! The unique shape of the Candies make them extremely difficult to eject, even on a simple Hair rig, and the unique blend of flavours and colour combinations allows you offer the carp a hookbait they haven’t seen before. They are perfect as single hookbaits in winter or as a change bait when it’s simply not happening, but equally effective on the end of a Stick or Method feeder. On pressured day ticket venues, Candies will often trip up the bigger residents, too.

“‘Tip Offs’ and ‘Zig Bites’ are well worth a look too, these clever products help customize and balance baits, in fact, they’re brilliant for fine-tuning any presentation and will definitely help put more fish on bank.

“Product development is simply about finding ways to help anglers improve their chances of catching more and bigger fish. That’s what I try and do at Crafty and hopefully that is reflected in the products we put out there.”

A collection of products from Crafty's 2015 range.