Snappa, I have no idea where you are or who you are, such is the joy of anonymity.

At last a thread that has stirred this message board into life, I enjoy reading all the comments, including your musings.

If as you say the margins on bait are very low, I can only assume the outlet selling 1st grade pilchards at $4.00 a kilo will not be around for much longer. I will get in cahoots with my relations (almost wrote Whanau) and buy a box to share between us.

From a personal perspective I note that everyone who has posted is so busy trying to shoot the messenger (you all missed) that none have made comment on the actual message: the idea of using bait as a promotion to sell more tackle.

I would like to catch or gather my own bait but as yet I have not discovered a way or the whereabouts of anchovies ... any ideas? I would like to catch a few bonito but the boat hire fees would be a bit exorbitant to make for a successful and economic end result.

Snappa, any idea where to buy reject crayfish tails, I understand these are quite hot for bait.

Now here is just one last thought and it's perfectly in tune with the reasoning behind this thread. When I visit my supermarket, very often they have green prawns that are a little past or on their use by date. They sell these at well under half their normal price and they make for good bait as they are natural tucker. If we relate this snippet to what is above, by buying those prawns I am not visiting my tackle shop, I am not browsing the shelves and my money is not going into their cash register.

Now if you can just hold off reloading the gun for personal assassination then you just may get the drift of what I am suggesting: improving turnover and making loyal customers happy. Regardless of the margins, I can't see knocking a three or four dollars off a packet of bait is going to drive any company bankrupt, you could even consider buying from the company on Trademe, at $4.00 a kilo there is huge room for movement.