Good morning everyone. This is my first post here and was hoping someone might point me in the right direction.

Our group has partnered up with a local who has invented the greatest catfish bait (we believe) there is. We are trying to resolve a few issues with the product... and could use some advice in the area of preservatives / additives to resolve the following:

1. The product dries out after a month or so / increase shell life. There is a percentage of water in this product. It's my opinion that we should eliminate the water and move to more of an oil base... We also realize a great deal of this has to do with the packaging which we are working on as well.

2. Improve the physical consistency. We would like the product to have a consistency similar to Play-Doh... or perhaps.. a gritty Play-Dog for lack of a better description. The idea is to have a product that is moist, easily rolled into a ball but isn't tacky.. and therefore doesn't sick all over your hands. Play-Doh is really the closest thing I can think of.

Currently we have a product that works great, but we need to increase shelf life and do something to make the product hold together better.

We were able to eliminate a mold / yeast problem in the product with the addition of potassium sorbate.

We are hoping someone can either make some suggestions, or point us to another site out there, where we might can find more information on some products that could help us nail down our recipe.

Thanks in advance.

-Lance