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I know we all lose and find tackle on the bank, but here is a mix of losses and finds. My obvious losses include baiting needles and banksticks, and occasional marker floats but also cover the rod holdall blown in last week, a shoe, and yes I did have to go home with only one, which was not an enjoyable walk as I had also fallen in. The admission is I own a pair of distance sticks, found at the syndicate and no-one came forward having lost them. In the past I've also found the best baiting needle I own, which surprisingly is a Nash Latch baiting needle, an original Nash Siren alarm complete with a line indicator and bankstick. We can add to that list of numerous Spombs, spods and Dot spots, marker floats and leads, the majority of which were attached straight through to braid and in the case of leads, normally still attached to the lead clip. Anymore items that you dare admit to?

So onto another session at the syndicate lake from Sunday through to Wednesday. I arrived around 3pm Sunday afternoon amidst a mix of South Westerly winds, rain shower and yuck. Syndicate rules permit putting the shelter up and putting tackle inside before taking the car down to the car park, so that is what I did. Car down to car park, and give Sky a walk back to the swim, followed by getting 3 rods clipped up and baited. Left hand rod 40metres, a 12mm purple Monster Crab pop-up and a small bag of micro pellets, middle rod, a 'greedy pig' snowman of 2x 12mm bottom baits topped with a couple of tiny Spiced Garlic pop-ups and a stringer at 50metres, and the right hand rod was a Monster Crab pop-up core. I know it's early, but I've been putting a bucket of particles in on one rod on arrival, to prebait and to try to wean a particular fish that I have never seen eat bait. This fish is a big uncaught common, that I reckon makes a 42lb common look small, added to the mix this time was a couple of pints of red maggots. Spombing out 40metres was not fun, the Spomb was on target with hardly any effort, but retrieving it was fun, and trying to catch the Spomb in the wind... Sunday night I spent much of the night awake listening to the wind shake the bivvy. No joy, and even the coots, tufties and swans left me alone. Monday the wind switched more westerly, with a touch of north. After a walk around with Sky, fish searching and putting the sheep's electric fence back up there was no reason to move. Sorted the rods out, sticking to the same formula. A really quiet afternoon, but around 10pm the tufties moved in, and with the laser pen the little gits would spook and then come back. At 1am, I got a few bleeps and watched the indicator move up and down, so picked up the rod, and landed a tufty. Expectations, and reality...

In 2024 I visited the worlds largest cork producer in Portugal with work. It was amazing.... saw all the processes from harvesting of the bark down in Lisbon (they even let me have a go!) all the way through to production of wine stoppers and everything else they make up in Porto. Was one of the best work weeks I've had. Those trees take 12 years to get to the first harvest then once every nine years after that. It takes nearly 50 years to get to the quality required for natural wine stoppers. Some of the trees were 150+ years old. It makes sense, having seen all this, that the price of decent cork balls has gone up so much. They have something like 4 million acres of trees and in the middle of one of these huge plantations they had a reservoir providing the water. I was standing there watching the water (as you do as an angler) and a big common whalloped out. I pointed it out to my host, their technical director, and it turned out he was a carp angler too. He had this reservoir full of massive carp in the middle of nowhere that only he could fish. Incredible.

Ive booked a session on the back lake at East delph lakes in a few weeks, has anybody been there?

Mine usually involve not checking wind direction before setting up the bivvy, (not this week despite nearly losing bivvy), but include leaving tackle box at home more than once, discovering I'd left rucksack at home after an 80mile drive and once leaving my rods at the reservoir as I packed and loaded car up in the dark.

Now my memory head is on ,that lake in Sussex ,was near a place called either Loxwood or lockswood .. Lake was electrofished, it had a mini wildwest town for the lake owners grandchildren ,enclosed netting for fruit n vegetables, huge place ...huge rudd ,and Tench ,all went in Bury Hill, long ,long way from Boscastle...lol,you don't forget adventures like that ,or the journey in a Ford Anglia.. .wtf...!

Seems like the same has happened to another water, a 'non publicitly' group of lakes in West Sussex.... err a fishing club who has lakes near Chichester by A27..... all lillie pads have been ripped out from one of their lakes too.... another brown puddle again! 😟

I used to fish one trotting rod for pike and got to the river and couldn't find the rod. A 60 mile round trip found it propped up at the rear of the house against a wall. Well, it was dark when I set out! Another time I had 2 conoflex barbel rods but they were slightly different. I picked up a top and bottom piece and when I got there, discovered they were from different rods and wouldn't fit together! Just drove home and sulked but after that, always kept the rods made up and held together with bands.

When I first started carp fishing, I bought my first set of bite alarms. They were wired to a receiver as that's all I could afford. Anyway... I got a run in the middle of the night and the receiver blurted out the tune to jingle bells.

Yep, the dove cote bank was great for tench, loads of lovely lillie pads back in the day...... On one of my last visits they had all been sadly ripped out..... probably to cater for the new generation of 'pot noodle carpers'! ☹️ Never fished the main lake again after that

Don't be shy I won't judge ,well not really ! We've all done silly things ,hopefully learnt from them ,and moved on ,this aimed at us all regardless of experience or skill set .. Here's mine ,I got left a clip on plummet by father ,it's a lightweight job... I used it yesterday to plumb a marginal swim ,learnt its not heavy enough to give correct depth readings ,the rest you can guess..lol What's yours !

I've got my father ,and two uncles and Graham Rowles ,netting a private lake in East Sussex on film in the late 60s ... The lake was known as Strowgers ,I used to get taken there before the tench got put in Bury Hill main lake .. Fished as a child by the white dove cote ...on Bury Hill.. Long way from home in those times ..

What.????? Did you mean, pay us back Boris?

@welder puts it very nicely. While PTFE may be very 'slippery', your swivel is landing on silt, clay, gravel, or sand or whatever else is on the lakebed, any of those are enough to 'jam' the swivel and stop it rotating. Add to that, your rig is in a direct line from the mainline, be that straight out on a pendant or inline set-up, or at 90% on a helicopter set-up. The swivel is basically a simple way to attach your rig to the mainline. It doesn't really need to swivel at all, unless on a helicopter or Chod set-up when it may need to spin during the fight.

Could always dull it down with a sharpie coloured pen.

Thanks mate

Just my opinion? Use a standard size 8 swivel. Ok, so PTFE has the lowest coefficient of friction known to man but we're asked to believe that this helps with rig alignment when this relatively small device is lying amongst whatever detritus is in the area of the landed rig. The PTFE thing is more a marketing ploy than a mechanical advantage. Once again, just my opinion. Ian.

Hi, Has anyone used these in a size 8 on the business end of a rig? I've used them in size 11's, but 8's look a little blatant because of their shine. I don't get on with putty, not sure if i'm best off with a standard size 8 swivel or are these size 8 PTFE swivels that are meant to spin better elite and I'm over thinking it. Cheers fellas.

Thanks for the detailed info, it's much appreciated.

It isn't.

Come back Boris all is forgiven 😂

Exactly right @Roughtor it was famous, I fished there twice with LDAS, probably late 70's! At the time none of us had any real idea about the hidden secrets the place had. When it was finally closed to fishing clubs, i think the main lake was netted and the Crucians were distributed to various lakes in the surrey area?, Milton lake at Bury Hill received lots - maybe a certain Mr Rowles - was involved too? 😀

Cork ball quality has changed, and gotten worse over the years. Over harvesting of the bark, less than 9-12 years, and drought in the Mediterranean has meant that top rated cork is no longer used for cork balls, so lesser grades are being used. The basic answer is that where a 10mm cork ball would pop-up a 16mm bait, now they struggle with a 14mm and 12mm is the real limit. I've mentioned it in the long distant past about making cork ball pop-ups, and the best results I got were sieve the base mix, remove any lumps before adding your liquid and mixing. To your base mix, if you can add 10-20% of sodium caseinate, it is a buoyant ingredient and will assist with making your pop-ups pop-up. The smoother you can get the skin the harder it is for water to get in and affect buoyancy, and even make the boilie mix come away from the cork ball. Not fun reeling in just a cork ball, and I've done that a few times long ago, hence my pedancy for getting it exact. The next thing is testing every pop-up against your hooks. Dry them after boiling, test and then dry again. It is quite possibly why I prefer tying cork ball baits on over piercing them. It reduces water getting in to the bait. As water gets into cork it expands slightly meaning the skin gets pushed off. Pedancy, or pedantry, both correct, and definitely disapproved...

Hello there, It all depends on your hook size/weight of hook, It certainly wouldn't hold up a size 4 Korda chod hook which I use as even when i've used 12mm cork balls (gardner) and made them into 15mm cork ball pop ups they have flopped on me in around 14 hours.