Quest Baits was formed by Shaun Harrison a few years ago to bring a different slant to the bait market place. Shaun started work in the angling industry over 30 years ago, and is known as being one of the brains of the angling bait world. All of the baits in the Quest range, have been field-tested on numerous waters until Shaun has been happy that they need no further tweaking to make them any more effective. Quest only offers the finest baits, and if Shaun would not use them, then they do not see the light of day on the marketplace. One thing that makes Quest different to the norm is that Shaun is only too happy to answer any questions truthfully and honestly about any of the baits in the range, and is only happy to be of assistance rather than it being a chore. You will not meet or talk to a friendlier person in the angling industry.

To back all of this, the Quest Baits website has a superb selection of video clips explaining about the baits available from the company, as well as other great ideas that the team feel they should share with you the angler. So earlier this year a call was made to Shaun and we decided to do a long term test on the Fruity Trifle and Rahja Spice with both being supplied in 10mm shelf life. So over the past 7 months we have used both product in all weathers and on numerous venues and feel we can now offer you, the Angler an honest performanced based review.

Rahja Spice  &  Fruity Trifle
10mm Shelf Life Boilies   RRP £12.99 per kilo

Quest Baits describe the Fruity Trifle as being a bird food base boilie mixed with various fruit and cream flavourings, making it perfect bait for anglers who like one bait for all seasons. After first opening the samples sent to me in April this year, I can honestly say I fell in love with this bait. It’s one of those fruity, summer smells you remember from you childhood 10p Mix Ups and Pick n Mix days combined with the subtle citric aromas of a Sunday afternoon fruit cocktail and cream at your Mum & Dad's, I needed a second opinion.

Now as I would guess most of you reading this have found in the past, asking your wife “what does this smell of “was a bit like asking her to cut off a leg “uur!! I’m not smelling that “or “get that out of the house, it stinks” is pretty much the norm for most of us. So after a bit of friendly persuasion, the "Special one" finally stuck her head in the bag. After a couple of good sniffs, she looked up, smiled, sniffed again, then low and behold after many, many years of “uuur that’s horrible” I finally got “oooh! I like that, what is it?"  (Why did I bother?)

For the sake of the peace, I decided to open the Rahja Spice in my shed as the name promised a potential aroma that could launch a pheromone induced verbal onslaught. However, to my pleasant surprise I was greeted by spicy yet a mellow spiced aroma that reminded me of medium Madras or similar Curry. This took me back to my match fishing days when I was introduced to the potentials of using Asian flavourings on my baits, with curried flavoured luncheon meat and turmeric on maggots being very productive in cool water conditions.

The first time I used the Fruit Trifle & Rahja Spice was in early April this year, with conditions far from perfect I decided to try my luck at the prolific Reservoir at Willowcroft Fish Farm & Fisheries, Wisbech, St Marys in North East Cambridgeshire, hoping that it’s large stock of 20 and 30lb + Mirror Carp would oblige me with some early season sport. Upon arrival, I carefully selected my swim for the next 48 hours but only after talking to the a group of anglers already resident on the lake who’d had seen fish moving in the area I had chose,

I opted for a small PVA bag approach and single Hook baits, presented hard on the deck, with fish showing regularly only a couple of metres from the bank in 6 feet of water, I decided to fish2 rods down the margin shelf with Fruity Trifle to my left and Rahja Spice to my right. To my surprise my wait was a very short one, after only 20 minutes my receiver made that melodic one tone sound we all love and my left hand rod was showing the strain of a Carp bolting under the impact of the 3oz led upon the hook.

Around 10 minute later a perfect 26lb 6oz Mirror Carp was on the bank and I was eager to get my bait back in the swim as I had been told the Fruit trifle was a bait that produced results instantly so after re-casting I was not surprised when after only another 15 minutes I latched into another superb 28lb 06oz Mirror from the depths of this top quality fishery. With only a single 10mm hook bait and small bags of mixed pellets, the Fruity Trifle was performing superbly.

Not to be out done the Rahja Spice rod, which took a little while to establish itself was now taking upper double to mid 20lb Carp regularly. The critical difference between the Rahja Spice swim to my right and the Fruity Trifle swim to my left was that the left swim was next to a marginal weed bed were as the right hand swim was basically in open water. So with sport slow for other and my tally of fish rising nicely over the next 24 hours, with both baits now producing fish, I was becoming very excited about the potential of both the Fruity Trifle and Rahja Spice.

Over the past 7 months I have used both of the above baits strictly as hook baits in conjunction with spod mixes and PVA bags with a great level of success. I have caught fish on 5 totally different venues in excess of 20lb and have upmost confidence that I will continue to do so. On many occasions when I have been focused on an approach which included feeding over 10kg of boillie and the fish will not touch them. By switching to either a Fruity Trifle or Rahja Spice with a single grain of artificial pop up corn, I found the results have been quite incredible.

I applauded Shaun Harrison for the vision to produce baits that are not what I would classify as being from the usual safe zone flavouring selection. By being slightly diverse and holding a high moral in perspective to the quality of ingredients used in bait production, Quest Baits have produced a selection shelf life boillie that I will always carry. Whether it is to use as single winter bait or as an alternative to my chosen session boillies on those occasions when my usual hook baits just won’t produce the goods, you will not find me without Fruity Trifle and Rahja Spice in my bait bag.

Footnote: One of the other UKMA team members has been testing the Quest Baits Fruity Trifle pop-ups with devastating results, which will be revealed in his review that will be uploaded to the site in the very near future.