I've said it many times in the past, but just to be absolutely clear I'll say it again here, there is no substitute for quality fresh bait. Synthetic bait that consistently catches a wide range of fish species would be the holy grail of the tackle industry. In the past, many have tried, and to my knowledge, all have failed. Well I say all, but that isn't strictly true, though it was in a different context. I was once given a jar of synthetic paste called Powerbait to put through its paces for trout. Reluctantly, having already taken my limit using 'real bait' on an any method water day ticket, I gave it a go.

The results were staggering. There wasn't even time to set up the bite indicator. And this happened every time. Needless to say, on many trout waters in the UK the stuff is now banned. The scientists behind that particular formulation work for American tackle giant Berkely who are now part of the same worldwide group as ABU. So you can imagine my 'enthusiasm' when the same people developed a whole new range of synthetic sea angling baits under the name of Gulp which they claim contain 400 times more scent dispersion than the real thing.

Despite the earlier success of Powerbait, I remain sceptical when it comes to synthetic 'wonder baits'. In light of what has gone before in this particular field, you have to be at least guarded. But it also pays to keep an open mind. And my mind was opened quite a bit wider during a winter cod fishing trip to the Mersey just before Christmas. Tony Parry had Steve Quinn and the ABU (UK) management team on board for an end of year bash, and they had brought along all sorts of things to play with.

Gulp was not available on the UK market at that time, but they had a couple of samples packs with them. With good fish coming aboard to fresh lug and squid cocktails, nobody seemed in any great hurry to give the stuff a go. Eventually, ABU's Graham Freestone decided to put a prawn out on his uptiding rod which came back with a half decent cod. I was sort of impressed to the point that I was looking forward to deliveries arriving at ABU's UK base so that I could give it a wider and more prolonged try myself.

When I did get a selection through to play with a few months later, the winter fish had disappeared, and the summer species had yet to arrive. I did give it a couple of fleeting tries, and while it did catch a few fish, you could hardly make any real assumptions as there were simply not enough fish on either Gulp or the real thing to be able to demonstrate consistency. It wasn't until I was invited out again by Tony Parry to do a spot of early summer smoothhound fishing off Rhyl that I really found myself if a position to give it a proper airing.

Being an ABU sponsored boat, Jensen II had plenty of the stuff on boat. And as the trip comprised a small number of invited guests, Tony requested that everyone take off their real baits and fish collectively trying the different varieties of Gulp for a couple of hours. The lugworm and ragworm versions got the most intense airing, and the most fish, but not the best fish. This was a thornback ray that fell to 'Fishy' (nobody knows his real name), using a 4 inch swim minnow.

In all, 10 species of fish were taken on Gulp that day, though there was one notable absence, it being a smoothhound on the crab variety. Even when there were lots of smoothies about on the fresh crab, Gulp couldn't raise a touch, though Tony tells me that he has had flatties on it on previous trips. We had rays, dogs, cod, pouting, poor cod, whiting, red gurnards, and a sea scorpion on the worm version, and ragworm in particular, along with dabs and tub gurnards which were the two most prevalent species. So much so that they were coming up two and three at a time. I had three tub gurnards on at one on a couple of occasions.

This more or less concurs with earlier trials by Tony, who has also had reasonable success using different versions of it on lead heads for wreck pollack. You could argue that being fished on a moving leadhead makes it a lure, which is fair comment. To counter this, a second boat on the same wreck using traditional lures struggled for fish until Tony gave them some Gulp as he was heading back to Rhyl.

One swallow (or should I say one Gulp) doesn't make a summer, and clearly more field testing is required before any big claims can be substantiated. This said, some of the variations do catch fish, of that there is no doubt. I feel therefore that the public should be made aware of this fact to widen the parameters of the trial.

Nobody other than Berkely would suggest that anglers go to sea armed with nothing else. What I would say is that as many as possible should try it to see how genuinely effective it could turn out to be, and bearing in mind that it comes in re-sealable packets, it would also be useful to carry a few packs for those days when the real thing runs out. The big thing here has to be confidence. You have to feel as though you are in with a chance when you drop your baits into the water. Certainly you don't have 400 times the chance as the labelling suggests. But you have a damn sight more chance than not trying it at all when the real thing runs out.