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Just got back from a 52 hour blank. Very few fish came out and the lake looked pretty uninspiring being incredibly low. A dead fish drifted into the next swim to me and this is on the back of 2 of the biggest fish in the lake turning belly up recently. Hopefully it's just natural although I did wonder how low the oxygen levels were. One bloke did catch one in the next swim about 50 yards away to me and he asked me to take a photo during the day. During the night I heard 4 very loud bleeps and assumed he was doing alright despite my rods being static. It was bad enough blanking without it being rammed down your throat how well he was doing! I was having my breakfast the next morning and I heard the really loud alarm again but he didn't come out of his bivvy what seemed strange. It began to dawn on on me something wasn't right and I concentrated a bit harder and when there was another loud alarm, I realised it was coming from my pocket! It wasn't a run but the low battery warning! Luckily I had a spare and wasn't disturbed again.

If you were to use a curry powder mix as your spices, are there any spices within that, thinking stuff like nutmeg, ginger, fennel etc that might have a negative impact on your bait? Also I want to make some pop ups matching and maybe coloured? What % of cork dust would I need for matching roughly? And what could you do to make the hookbaits stand out more than the base mix? And if I was to use a coloured pop up mix what ingredients should I add to make it similar and what kind of % please ? Thanks in advance

I can remember most of the captures just about, not sure about all the rigs and hookbaits now though,maybe a p42 pop up for some though, too much life in between and I've always been bad at keeping notes.

I'm sad enough to be able to remember the majority of my captures from over 25years ago, albeit some do take a picture reminder.

had a trip to Green lane fishery a couple of weeks back, my Sonik 10foot rods

Brilliant idea to turn up the speaker or silent I was gonna take the p by saying now need an adjustable volume but they got it sorted 😉👏👏 edit Just under £90 also

https://www.facebook.com/share/19dC17gyV4/

I only went back 3 years because that's how long I've been pretty much exclusively using pop ups and my version of the spinner rig with the avid kicker. I just penned those figures to highlight that really 😉

Thanks , Yonny , thanks , Nick . 😃

Have to eat hunble pie now: https://gardnertackle.co.uk/product/atta-audio-bite-alarm/

I'm positive that my average is well over 20lb over the past 18years on the big fish waters. On Nazeing from 2008-2018 I can recall only 4 fish below 20lb; 3 high doubles from Brackens and a 10lb mirror from Central Lagoon. On Alton I did have a couple of doubles, both on snowman baits, a couple of 20's on pop-ups, one on a snowman and the rest of the 20's came on double 18mm bottom baits. I was catching a lot of fish from the syndicate until August and the personal problems. The syndicate has seen 20's and 30's caught on trimmed down 12mm pop-ups, 15mm pop-ups,, snowman baits and 15mm bottom baits, over just boilies and over particles, with only 3 doubles I think. To me the base of the pop-up to the lakebed. Be aware though, that not every pop-up rig sits perfectly upright. The rig shown, I may need to trim down the pop-up, and with that balance weight, you need a buoyant bait to lift it to that angle.

Exactly what I was meaning to say.... Lets be honest, a Carp is just a fish and shouldn't be treated any more 'intelligent' than any other imo. Fishing situations obviously make any fish more wary, unless in overstocked commercials I deff agree with, think the term is a 'carp soup' puddle? 😂 Not sure about your comment about sparsely populated lakes, deff hardest to locate fish and I for one can't be bothered anymore,, when located they would be 'relatively' easy to catch on any bait given an application of bait in that area?

Why oh Why don't Gardner do stuff on their website about this rather than some brief FaceAche clip??? Even I. who was critical of the new alarms might want to do now get them...... subject to if they are ever released and also some unbiased reviews if they ever do come out

If I get more of the good ones it will be a good decision though. I don't catch that many anyway lol.

Bear in mind it'll likely mean less bites..... if you have the time to wait for the ones that matter that's great. If not - you could be screwing yourself over. I don't measure, I just do it by eye. I guess I'm talking about the bottom of the pop up to the deck/substrate.

Hello Everyone . While we are on the subject of High Pop Ups where are you measuring from please ? . Some seem to measure from the hook eye to the balancing weight , whereas others take the measurement from the weight to the bottom of the pop up . Ta . 🤔

I think I've already started using soft hinge rigs in my head now. Going to go longer and towards the sky with them, even with a hit and run leadclip they should fish on most substrates bar thick weed.

Another great example 👍

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19Umg4Z88Z/

two little 2lb test 11ft shimano aero rods with little shimmy bait runners out this evening, left rod to the tree in the water opposite, right rod next to the platform right of shot. Had 3hrs out, landed 5. Nothing huge, but nice to be out again

That's certainly made me think! I have tried hinged stiff rigs and even Ronnies for a while but didn't really set the world on fire with them. I always test my rigs in an old ice cream tub before I cast them out to check that they behave as "natural" as possible. Your analysis on the average size of fish using blatant pop-up's is really interesting. I remember reading a Dave Lane article where he forgot his rig putty and so cast his pop-up's out anyway and had a red letter session!

Thanks for info 007,I'll carry on my search ,I don't want a broomstick, but hopefully I can find one that actually bends a bit

Just reading through this thread and it got me thinking 🤔. I'd say about 95% of my UK big fish captures (35lb plus) were on pop ups and they were nearly always different colours to my free bait.That being said, I fished nothing but pop ups for a very long time so if I hooked a lump then it would have been on a pop up. It was only in the last 4 or 5 years of my carp fishing that I started using wafters a lot. I'm pretty sure that most of my French fish were on wafters though. A mate on dinton once asked me "how come you catch a lot of bigguns?". I put it down to the spots I was fishing if I'm honest and a large slice of luck but this thread has maybe changed my mind on that as I virtually always fished pop ups, he was a snowman or bottom bait angler. Interesting for sure.

I bought the NGT stalker 9ft 2 piece, it looks very well made nice smart modern looking rod but seems rather stiff for the given test curve, so i ended up getting and angling direct 7ft river ambush 1.75lb rod and its pretty soft in the tip, very sensitive and have to say rather nice, im super pleased with it but would not want to fish a lake that has carp above mid to high double with it

This is the one that comes straight to mind, it was proof beyond doubt - he showed them alright!