Just to add to the meaty list, black pudding is brilliant. It makes into a paste very easily, just remove the larger white bits and mould into a paste. It gives off a fantastic scent trail in rivers and a scent cloud in stillwater.
On quiet days fishing my Mum loved to dip into the family lunch boxes to try new baits - everything from chicken skin to grapes! Her two favourites over the years, regular fish catchers, were Edam Cheese and Cumberland Sausage. She always called Edam, “Cheesepaste without the effort.”
From "... the wilds of the Wirral, whose wayward people both God and good men have quite given up on ...".
I used to freeline hot dogs on the Wandle to catch chub
You had to hold the rod as takes were savage but I found it only worked after dark???
We used slugs in daylight hours
I tried the Cocktail sausages on the Swale one day, but as has been said they floated, so I tried one of those aptly named Chubb sausages of polony and that worked a treat Chub seem to love it, I also made a paste out of black pudding, sadly that never worked, although I did catch an eel, I love experimenting or going backwards with baits, there was an old chap, when I was a lad, who used to hammer the tench at my local brick pond with processed peas.