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Luncheon meat

Where do people buy there's my local shops only seem to stock spam I used to use princes or plum rose but don't seem to be able to find any tia
 
I brought 10 tins of the black pepper spam the other week. Would of brought more but it had gone up 50p a tin since the last time I used it. Iv been using the cheap stuff from the shop next to my house. Bigger than the small tins of spam and cheaper. Have you had a look in the pound shop?
 
I have a problem with plain , from the tin Spam, call it greedy , but I cant help but take a cube or two for personal consumption .
TBH most tinned meats of the Spam persuasion tast the the same to me , I can only assume that the same applies to fish , any fish, not just Barbel.

Lets be honest, how many of us actually do the taste test to Boilies , I cannot for the life of me think that a fish has a more refined sense of taste than a human being does . Its all down to preference .. Do you like a Tikka Masala or an Bum burner ? I can remeber the taste, amd more importantly the later result of the indulgence , therefore I plump for Spag Bog !

Can a fish remember the later effects of a spicy meal ? I dont know.

Dave
 
I never buy plain spam, only the flavored stuff, any old chopped ham and pork will do if it isn't flavoured.
The likes of B&M, home bargains etc usually have good deals on flavoured spam.
Don't use luncheon meat as it's too soft and comes off the hook too easily.
 
Always preferred plumrose ham and pork, getting harder to get hold off , most varieties all come from the house of Tullip, must be cost cutting exercise why numerous flavours are getting rarer , was a bit miffed at the generous sized tins shrinking a few years back.
 
I think they’ll all work equally good. Spams a little bit soft for a buried hook power lob but it’s nothing that 5 minutes in the frying pan can’t sort out.
 
I never used luncheon meat as I always had problems with keeping it on the hook or hair. I bought some polish garlic sausage ( the stuff with a rind which I peel off) last season and it stays on a hair no problem, it's a really tough consistency. If you like garlic spam you will love this stuff - it stinks!
It was on special recently and I've bought 7 of them for about £3.50. Now chopped and frozen along with some spices!

Added a photo of anyone wants to try it - it's in Sainsbury's & Morrisons, maybe others. It does also catch fish - I was surprised at the results when the river was up.
 

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I never used luncheon meat as I always had problems with keeping it on the hook or hair. I bought some polish garlic sausage ( the stuff with a rind which I peel off) last season and it stays on a hair no problem, it's a really tough consistency. If you like garlic spam you will love this stuff - it stinks!
It was on special recently and I've bought 7 of them for about £3.50. Now chopped and frozen along with some spices!

Added a photo of anyone wants to try it - it's in Sainsbury's & Morrisons, maybe others. It does also catch fish - I was surprised at the results when the river was up.
Nice one Adam good tip there for another alternative.
Ref keeping meat on the hair the enterprise meat mates are absolutely brilliant things and there are lots of cheaper ways to replicate them as well by use of straws and tubing etc.
I use them with Softer spam and I was flinging it 50 yards on Tuesday with absolutely no issues whatsoever
A very much worth while bit of tackle
8A3EE75D-0B82-4052-8D9D-B38FFAD23844.jpeg
 
Hi Richard.

I've used those before and they are very good. Part of the problem I've found is that I normally use meat when the Thames is up and 5 or 6oz leads seem to pull soft meat off the hair, or at least that's my thinking? I use the garlic sausage now, with straws in the meat and I use a small piece of tubing to trap a thick piece of plastic in place as a hair stop.

Seems to work a treat. That said I don't normally fish for barbel until around September - conditions and all the Noddy's on the Thames in the summer!
 
I have never had any ptobs keeping span on the hook, I just pull the hookling swivel through the spam cube, pull the snood line thtough and the hook just neatly pulls into the meat , I use a bit of grass from around the grass “ node” to act as a stop to prevent the hook pulling back through.

I sometimes use a Hair rig for larger spam baits , you know the size, really big, and as a rig stopper for years I used small tile spacers, the ones you use to keep wall tiles neatly aligned when tiling bathrooms etc, the spacers are cross shaped and really keep the meat on the hair. The spacers spread the load on the bait evenly , I finally ran out last year, must get some more.

David
 
It’s posts like that that really make the forum. I’ve got a handful of those tile spacers. I’ll definitely be putting some in the tackle box with some cut down straws
Wicked little tip
 
I mostly use Tulip Bacon Grill (Tesco etc). I cut it (with apple corer for tubes, or small fluted pastry cutters for balls), put pieces in a pellet pump with garlic paste, get a vacuum, shake it up ...then vac/release, vac/release a few times. Not sure if that does get more garlic into the meat, but it seems to. As far as keeping the meat on the hook ...I've never had a problem with Bacon Grill. I usually just pull the hook though with a bait hook and twist it 90', or sometimes mount it on a Stonfo bait holder. For trundling big lumps in streamer weed with a lead wired hook I often push the baiting hook through the meat and then pull the hook-length through loop first...then feed the meat down onto the hook. But basically I find Bacon Grill stays on the hook superbly.
 
I never buy plain spam, only the flavored stuff, any old chopped ham and pork will do if it isn't flavoured.
The likes of B&M, home bargains etc usually have good deals on flavoured spam.
Don't use luncheon meat as it's too soft and comes off the hook too easily.
Black pepper spam is £1.79 at B&m now. That was why I only brought 10 tins. It was only £1.29 last year when I was buying it
 
I can't say I've noticed any luncheon meat type product out-or-underperform another - everything from el cheapo bulk processed Mattesons type stuff through to the neutral buoyancy stuff made specifically as bait (and therefore costing about £6 a tin) and everything else in between has been equally successful for me, so these days I just buy whatever is available and/or on offer.

As for keeping it on the hook - the turning the hook 180 never worked for me and I still had every other piece of meat flying off the hook during the cast, ditto when using a piece of grass or straw as a stopper. A few years ago someone on here pointed me towards the metal spring-like meat screws and I've not used anything else since. I know some are a bit dubious about the extra metal, but I've never had one lodge in a fish's mouth like an extra hook, and apparently they rust away completely when permanently submerged in water so no need to worry about bits of plastic lying on the riverbed for a couple of thousand years.

I'm sure someone with the correct guage fine wire, some tools and a bit of patience and DIY nouse could easily make their own, but I just get mine on eBay.
 
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