Two of the new Marukyu products are the  AFP300 / AFP310 pastes. They are so different to anything that we’ve used in the past that I thought I’d take a few pictures to give you some idea of what we’re talking about. I used AFP300 which is a pink coloured paste. It has an amazingly pleasant fruity smell although I have to admit that I didn’t actually pluck up the courage to taste it.

Here is a new video just released by Marukyu showing how the experts mix the new paste – Part 1

Part 2

And here is one of the Japanese Marukyu Team showing how they use it.

And now here are descriptions and pictures of the experiments that I did before the video was released.

I started by measuring a small container full of the dry powder into a bowl. The dry powder looks like Ready-Brek, very unusual for a paste bait.

Dry Paste - Just Like Ready Brek

As per the instructions on the packet, I added an equal amount of cold water and gave it a very brief stir.

Paste has now been wetted but not stirred too much

Still following the instructions, the paste was now heaped into one side of the bowl

Paste Pushed To One Side

and left for five minutes. Once the time was up the paste was turned upside down

Paste has soaked for 5 minutes and now it is turned over

Marukyu advise that you pull the hook through the paste to bait the hook, so I tried that first

Hook Pulled Through The Paste

and  then suspended the bait into a tub of water. Once in the water the bait fluffed out just like bread does. I left it suspended like this for several minutes and I think it would have sat there for ages.

The paste is hanging in mid-water here.

In the picture above, you can see tiny bits of the paste dropping through the water, and at the same time there was an element of fizzing that saw tiny morsels of the paste rising to the surface. This blob of paste sat there suspended in mid-water for about 10 minutes and it needed a few sharp tugs of the line before it fell off the hook.

I next wetted the paste a little more and moulded a more traditional blob of paste onto the hook before lowering it to the bottom of the container. I left it there for a couple of minutes then took this final picture. In it you can see that tiny pieces of the bait have broken away and are now laying around our major lump of paste.

Paste Laying On The Bottom

That’s about it until I get the chance to go and actually fish with this strange substance. I know the paste was on sale in the Willinghurst shop at the weekend for the first time and Peter Turnbull used it to win the Saturday open match. That’s a great start !!