True Angling Landmarks: Chilli Hempseed Era

Of course, a few anglers had been adding chilli to their hemp for decades, but in 2005 the technique blew up on a commercial scale, and along with ready-prepared chilli hemp came all the supplementary products: pop-ups, Stick mixes, glugs—even boiled food. One man right at the heart of the movement was Ian Russell, who, at the time, was the owner of Heathrow Bait Services. Together with the likes of Danny Fairbrass and Joe Morgan, Ian was threading chilli ‘Dynamite Sticks’ down his hooklength, but he was also rolling a tonne of super hot pop-ups each week. Here’s how it all came about…

CARPOLOGY: When did chilli hemp first come onto your radar?
IAN RUSSELL: “Chilli hemp first came into my angling so long ago it’s hard to say exactly when. During my early carp- and tench-fishing days, friends and I were always adding different bits ’n’ bobs to our particle mixes to see if they’d enhance our chances of catching. Chilli flakes, along with garlic powder, were found to be the most successful additive.”

CARPOLOGY: So how many years later do you think it caught on with the masses?
IAN RUSSELL: “The masses, as you call them, only ever caught on to these types of edges once they appeared in a magazine, to be fair. The few I fished with at the time would certainly not have banded that information about. I’m not sure who covered it or when, but someone most certainly did.”

CARPOLOGY: What was the reaction like from the carp when you first started using it?
IAN RUSSELL: “We’d experimented with just about every powder, flavour and additive available from our local supermarket, but in all honesty, it was not until either the chilli flakes or garlic cloves were added that we saw any marked difference in our results. Plain hemp would be eaten when fed in the margins. The chill hemp, however, was different gravy. They would just keep coming back, even after it had quite clearly all gone.”

CARPOLOGY: What sort of hemp-chilli flakes ratio did you use?
IAN RUSSELL: “In all fairness, I never really worked out ratios. I would simply put the hemp in a bucket, cover it with water, sprinkle a good helping of flakes over it all and stir them in.”

CARPOLOGY: Did you use fresh, chopped chillis, or always chilli flakes?
IAN RUSSELL: “For hemp and other particle mixes, it would be flakes, I’m sure there is nothing wrong with chilli powder, but we go by our confidence levels with bait, and seeing loads of chilli flakes amongst the hemp certainly boosted mine. We used to buy so many packets from our local shops that I’m sure they thought we were opening a restaurant! I did try chopping whole chillies once, but I got myself in a terrible mess. I rubbed my eyes whilst doing it, along with various other parts of my anatomy. I promptly went back to using the flakes!”

CARPOLOGY: At the time, you owned Heathrow Bait Services, so what was the first chilli-related product you produced, and how popular was it?
IAN RUSSELL: “The first product to contain chilli included only the powder, along with Tabasco sauce, as they were red pop-ups. The use of chilli flakes would have broken up the smooth finish that my pop-ups were famous for back then. They were a winner from the get-go, and we sold tons of them.”

WHO WAS SHIPPING WHAT... 
Dynamite Baits Spicy Chilli Hemp, CC Moore Hot Hemp, Bait-Tech Super Seed Chilli Hemp, Hinders Salt ‘N’ Pepper Chilli Hempseed, Bait-Tech X-Cite Chilli Oil, Berkley Gulp Carp Chilli Hemp, Crafty Catcher Chilli Hemp and CC Moore Chilli Extract Liquid.

CARPOLOGY: What products followed?
IAN RUSSELL: “As the pop-ups were such a huge success, I followed up with a Stick mix. Obviously it contained the flakes, along with a rather smooth and lovely chilli oil, which I used to blend on-site. The follow-up products also went down rather well.”

CARPOLOGY: You fish a lot of venues around the country each year. Do you see many anglers using chilli hemp these days?
IAN RUSSELL: “Nowadays, I work for Dynamite Baits, and I try as much as I can to promote their products through my angling. One such product, fairly obviously, is their incredible Chilli Hempseed, be it in the jars or the tins, and yes, I do see it being used quite a lot on the bank, and by match anglers, too.”