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I'm guilty of: 7, 12, 15, as for 19, I have quite a nice dslr camera that lives in my rucksack but never set it up to take shots, always use my phone instead 🤣

If I remember correctly, isn't there a rule for most fisheries that a tent can't be used? It has to be something that doesn't have a fixed groundsheet? Something to do with insurances I believe? Or is it just to stop people turning up with blue tents etc? Lol I've given up trying to beat the carp tax, end up buying something [censored]e then buying something decent afterwards anyway 🤣

I would like to know people’s opinions on rod license cards is it something people still want ?? as I myself would love one but I don’t know if it’s a good idea to start a side hustle making them

Suit yourself. I still think you will end up needing a bivvy and bedchair. We've all been there trying to beat the old "carp tax" lol , then realising actually we need certain things because they are built for that purpose and work better.

Can’t lie …

1. For the ultimate in being a tart, take a bivvy, brolly and gazebo. Don’t laugh, I saw it last weekend on a commercial where you can park your car behind the swim. 2. Have a splash mat under your reels, the ultimate in tartyness. 3. Carry 20 different types of pop-up but only use 1. 4. Take a 2 man bivvy but you only do over-nighters. 5. Take a powered fridge despite the fact you only keep your sandwiches and lager in it. 6. Own a 5-season sleeping bag despite the fact you hang your rods up in October. 7. Have a power bank that could keep a family home going for a couple of days in a power cut but you only charge your phone and torch. 8. Your rod-pod has so much stainless that you have to wear sunglasses to look at it. 9. You have a power barrow with so much grunt it could stop an average scrum but you only fish a 2 acre lake with manicured lawns. 10. Your phone is permanently on FaceBook so you can keep in contact with both of your friends. 11. A pair of 10x25 binoculars is more than ample and fits in your pocket when folded down. So why do you take a set of field glasses that can spot a mouse a mile away? 12. You wear bivvy slippers to keep your groundsheet clean. 13. A head torch is a necessity after dark but you need to keep it down to keep your night-sight when you turn it off. Your 8000 Lumen monstrosity resembles the Blackpool illuminations. 14. You bring your camper van to a commercial that allows rear of swim parking and stay in it all day and night watching TV or reading a book and only come outside once a day. Don’t laugh, I have seen it. 15. You own 2 sets of rods/reels/buzzers because you fish different waters and don’t want to handicap yourself. 16. Despite having a double burner and family sized returnable gas bottle and associated cookware, your meals are delivered to your swim from the local greasy spoon and pizza shop. 17. You have a bait boat with GPS and Sonar despite your lake being as pancake flat as the day the bulldozer created it. It also has a 4kg payload despite the fact you only use PVA bags. 18. Everyone loves a bivvy table. A small one just big enough for your tackle box, scales, phone and receiver is ample. A true tackle tart pushes it to the max and I saw 2 blokes in adjoining swims with a decorating table that you use for hanging wallpaper. 19. You have a top of the range DSLR with an impressive pixel count but the deal clincher was the 40 frames per second burst shooting rate it offered. Despite the fact you will never use it. You only shoot in Auto and use the photo’s unaltered on your FaceBook page. 20. You take 3 nets with you, “just in case.” The water you are fishing is rock hard and 2 fish a season is considered good going.

completely wrong, i am 61 and still take the wife camping several times a year, for this we have a fairly large tent, double air bed with electric pump, the pump is 12v and can be used with the new single bed, so i am just fine sleeping on a decent air bed, and dont have a barrow, there is zero point spending £400-700 on a bivvy, bedchair and carp sleeping bag to use for 2-3 nights in a year

that kinda camping when we were younger? yep now .."…… no chance

I have another pond down in the main garden with goldfish in.... the heron can have them! Otters...... now there's a scary thought. We're 3 miles away from the Nene... but there's a small brook just 250m away. Fencing the pond, or the garden, isn't really possible. Maybe a steel mesh over the top of the pond when I'm not around?

I'd hate to see the size of the heron if it was to eat "whopper". That said the otter protection is a good shout if near to waterways.

Hello Yonny . Don't you mean you bought a Koi Pond , and a house came with it ? 😁 . I hope you have Heron and Otter protection ? .

I couldn't do this I need a proper bed, the SP Tech is so good for my back I use it at home if I'm struggling. When I did single nights on Welly the bed was so bad I wouldn't have been able to do the second night anyway.

Gotta have a decent bedchair👍 I'd struggle getting off an air bed these days lol and pumping it would drive me mad 🤣 If you're using a barrow I'd deffo be taking a bedchair/sleep system, fish under the stars, shroud, brolly, bivvy, whatever suits 👍 @salokcinnodrog I rate it, thats hardcore but no thanks 🤣

Sugar, salt and glycerine are all taste stimulants. Just not all at the same time. Glycerine is fine in winter, as you would expect.

I'm wary of sugar and salt, but even though glycerine comes from fats being processed, and supposedly needs emulsifying in winter, I found glycerine/glycerol flavours still produced in winter, even compared to the same flavours on ethyl alcohol as the solvent. It has made me convinced that glycerine is an attractor in its own right. I'm not sure if any of the bait or flavour specialists have written about it. I'm going to have to try to find out.

You will end up buying a proper bedchair and bivvy after one night, No way I would be sleeping on an airbed these days, by morning I wouldn't be able to move. Some things are a good investment I see a bedchair, sleeping bag and bivvy quite essential, there are some good deals about if you know where too look.

Fish to your own limits and conditions. I think that we have conditioned ourselves for fishing to be plotting up at the lake Friday night, popping the bivvy up, making ourselves super comfortable, then catching or not and packing up Sunday. That's 'carp fishing'. I went through a stage on a particular park lake where I didn't want locals knowing (a) I was there. (b) I was catching. I would sleep on a camping air mattress roll, with a tarpaulin cover after arriving as darkness fell. I could get the rods out more quickly, and in unfished areas. I've posted this pic before, but I could get up close with minimal disturbance and be off very quickly in the morning.

Ignore your Dad kids "Whopper" is a great name for a fish. And it is a whopper too mega, Sounds like you have found a great way to scratch the itch, such a great project, I'll put my name on the waiting list 👍

Things like glycerine,salt and sugar I would only use at the appropriate time of year, when the carp are expecting to find them and will be stimulated by them.

So I did my best to get shots on the phone - apologies for the poor quality. This fish is one of the bigger koi in the pond. It's a Gin Rin Platinum Ogon. Gin Rin meaning 'scaled' i.e. a common, Ogon meaning metallic, solid, single-coloured koi, and Platinum referring to the white/silver colour. In our carpy language it's basically a pure white common. The kids have named it 'Whopper', which imo is an absolutely rubbish name, but they love it so the name stays. I put Whopper at about 28 lb despite the local pond/koi expert being adamant she's a 30. Stick to your pond building mate... I know a 30 when I see one😅 Whopper is actually a young fish, possibly as young as 5 or 6, so if I want to grow a real monster (which obviously I do😅) she's probably my best bet in the shorter term. She's probably the most friendly fish too and will always be first up at feeding time. I'm taking it easy with the food at the moment due to dropping temps, but next year I'll up the feeding during growing season. Whopper should easily be 30lb by this time next year. I've taken a lot of advice on how to grow as safely and as naturally as possible. I don't want to heat the pond, I want the carp to have a 'natural' annual cycle, so I just need to optimise feeding at the right time.

Not automatic but it is the 'Eazy' version so no need to get wet when cleaning. You just shut the pump off, isolate the central chamber, turn on airlines to the central chamber, leave it for 5 mins and drain to waste with a ball valve. Top the pond up with water and you're good to go. Takes about 10 mins, and of course while you're doing it the carp are milling about next to you at about chest height. I'm still loving this little job.... but it's still the honeymoon phase innit. We'll see how much fun it is in January in -4 C with no carp on top to stare at. Looks like a great set up. I was thinking about putting some 'proper' carp in mine. Will see what happens in spring. There are 3 or 4 ghosties among the koi and while they're all a bit different I might want to take 1 or 2 out and replace them with fish of my own choosing. I found out last night how difficult it is to get good shots of the fish with my phone camera. My proper camera isn't yet onsite (it was relocated prior to our house move, with my fishing gear, separately of the removal trucks, to avoid damage) and I haven't yet collected it. For now the rubbish phone pics will have to do.

Hi Jules . I'm glad your pop up tent is green as my local lake has a green or camo only rule for bivvies . 😄

Having been back at carp angling for a year after the massive long break, i did not figure to go back to doing any overnight sessions at all, years ago i sold of my bivvy and bed chair, i also promised my good lady i would not do nights, so as a compromise i have found a lake i can do 24 hour sessions on and my mrs can stop at a good friends house close by in catterick 5 mins from green lane fishery. Seeing as this night fishing is gonna be limited to less than 5 24 hour trips in a year i have decided to do a bad thing and get a pop up green tent, single air bed and generic 4 season sleeping bag, all this gear is a nice way to avoid carp tax with the whole lot costing less than a bedchair and taking up a tiny bit of room, i have brew making and cooking gear in our main camping kit, sadly this will have to wait till next year before i can go, but moving in right direction

Lovely sized pond mate, I'd love one that size but I know they are pricey to build/maintain etc. Do you have the automatic self cleaning nexus. Looking forward to seeing a few pics of the fish. I've got a tiny 2 metre square pond by 900mm deep. I built it soley for goldfish originally but I did have 6 dinton carp in it once upon a time and believe it or not one of them grew to just shy of 10lb and the rest all over 5lb. Sadly they all died due to a freak accident. I've now got a few goldfish, one gold tench, 3 x carp that i grew from spawn in 2020 from my old lake, one of which is probably 6lb and 2 x koi that are knocking 7 or 8lb.They've out grown the pond really and i do need to upgrade mine really. Time and money holding me back at the moment. I've got a bog filter on my current one and boy do the plants grow in that, especially when I up the feed in spring. The first picture is after I built the bog filter. The next picture is after one month, second picture after 2 months and last picture after 5 months and cutting it all back after 4 months.

I foresee that you are right😅