Development of Durable Bait for Fish and Crustaceans

Conventional baits with inducement agents to catch fish and crustaceans have difficulty in controlling the release rates of the inducement agents when bitten into, resulting in a rapid loss of inducement agents into the water. The present study aims to develop a durable bait, making use of an inclusion compound of cyclodextrin (CD) with an inducement agent. An inclusion compound of CD with an induce-ment agent was prepared from an aqueous solutionon containing CD and the inducement agent, followed by spray drying at an ambient temperature. The inclusion compound, thus prepared, was mixed with a resin and pelletized. Two kinds of pellet containing inducement agents with and without CD were prepared. These pellets were dipped in flowing water and the amounts of inducement agents remain-ing in the pellets were measured. The pellet with the CD inclusion compound contained 2.5 times as much inducement agent compared with the pellet without CD after 10 days of dipp-ing in flowing water. Thus, the CD inclusion is effective for controlling the release rate of the inducement agents. Demonstration experiments to catch crustaceans were carried out in the Africa Ocean. The result indicates that raw fish is more effective than pellets (bait) con-taining CD But pellets are economically superior to raw fish because of their reliability and cenvenience handling.