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If Maple 8 came back would you buy it ?

Gerry Giles

Gerry Giles

Senior Member & Supporter
I am just interested as I have read on this forum
and other places
one of the best Barbel baits was Mainline`s Active MAPLE 8 (a different bait to the current Active 8)

so my question is was it that good ? and more important would you buy it
IF it was to become available again from Mainline ??
 
Might still have some in my freezer. It's either that or that mark 1 or whatever it was called. Never used it for barbel but the carp liked it
 
Just had a look in the freezer and have around 4kg each of Active Maple 8 and Active 8 along with 3kg AM8 of 15mm and 18mm boilies. Also found a full bottles of AM8 and Activate liquids. Guess I'll just have to give them a try.:) again.
Caught a fair few large roach on it fished barbel style.



Cheers
Bob
 
Used active 8 for years, both home rolled small from the base mix and shop bought 15mm frozen, before i made my own.A natural bait that worked everywhere,my mate fished the maple 8 version and had similar results when he was out so yes Gerry if it was as good as the ones we used to use.
 
tried it when it was all the rage and tbh didn't catch more on it than 2 other flavour boilies i use.. i wouldn't go out of my way to look for it but if there was a bag in my local then i'd probably pick one up.. at the end of the day i always catch more on pellets than boilies it's just when using 2 rods i'll pop a boilie on for a change bait..
 
I would certainly buy it if it came back, apart from boilies for barbel it also makes a great paste for crucians, down to about half a bag now which won't last long.
 
Hi men,

Loads of good baits out there that could match it , I'm afraid nothing touches the original Grange , it was a game changer.

Hatter
 
Activ 8 smells TOTALY different from the activ 8 from when I used it years back not sure if they have changed something in it but definitely not the same. And it's activ 8 I'm talking about not maple 8.
 
Mark Anderson said:
Hi men,

Loads of good baits out there that could match it , I'm afraid nothing touches the original Grange , it was a game changer.

Hatter
Click to expand...

This.

Unfortunately, most of the bigger bait companies bait is poorer in quality compared to what is available from other companies out there, and as such i don't think I could ever be tempted to use anything from any of the big boys (Mainline, CCMoore, Nash, Sticky etc) to name a few..

I just wouldn't have the confidence in what I was using.
 
Nash change there baits like the weather why do they do this
 
I'm using baits from Glynn at three rivers rolling great bait and he is a diamond bloke that's knows a lot about bait highly recommend him
 
The barbel market is small compared to carp and this maybe some of the answer. Think there has been some ingredients that have become unavailable or economically unviable or subject to new regulations.
Even the larger bait manufacturers change their baits without notice and may substitute ingredients, change names to protect 'the guilty' or change for economic reasons and so on.
I usually, if not making my own, buy a larger quantity as a basemix and bung in a freezer until needed.
I have some base mixes that still work effectively many years after buying.

Bob's tip - try Fenspice.

All food for thought,
Cheers
Bob
 
Joe Fletcher said:
If certain baits are so good ? Then why do bait company's stop making them ?
Click to expand...

Money basically...

Either they cut quality to increase margins, and the bait becomes less effective, or they create new bait to generate the hype, marketing etc that goes with it and coin it in that way...
 
Joe Fletcher said:
If certain baits are so good ? Then why do bait company's stop making them ?
Click to expand...

There a so many possible reasons. Sometimes a key ingredient becomes unavailable, or so expensive that any bait made from it would have to cost a fortune. Sometimes such an ingredient is changed and the bait ends up less effective. Occasionally a key ingredient has turned out to be less than desirable for fish welfare or the wider aquatic environment. As often as not, marketing strategies simply demand a new product.
 
Hi men,

Guy , I used to drive down to the mainline owners bungerlow in Essex and pick up great big bags of the origional grange bait . Before that I used to roll my own Grange as a confidence thing , making sure of the right levels of everything going in , but after chatting to them at length I switched over to their rolled versions . It was a real game changer of a bait , but once they could not get the components to keep the bait 100% the same active8 and the follow on baits were used more . I can quiet confidently say if the very early grange was available I'd be using that still.

I now use a lot of stuff from DNA baits , but if you look into where they are supplied from , along with other bait companies you can pick up great ingredients as they come on the market . Other smaller bait companies are getting their baits rolled by bigger firms and repackaging them which can give a false impression . In amongst the smaller bait firms can be real gems , a bit like The Bait Asylem which feature on some carp videos by Kevin Ellis on Vimeo , where they roll in house and have some interesting baits , but are under the radar . Nice to see some firms showing their base mixes ingredients etc like DNA or the Fen spice range from Custom Baits , which are all barbel friendly . I'm sure the bigger bait firms do produce baits you can have confidence in , if the capture reports in the mags and Facebook are to believed .

Hatter
 
Mark Anderson said:
I now use a lot of stuff from DNA baits
Click to expand...

Mark,
ask Jason about their barbel specific bait, B1. Long gone, but not forgotten. I was told that a key ingredient was lamb meal, an ingredient that got so expensive, with flakey availability, as to make it not viable to use. I loved B1 on the local river, the river it was developed on, though I couldn't replicate similar levels of success on the Trent.
 
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