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Indeed I am, nice reels solid with a good line lay 👍 Today Iv had them returned to me I lent them out to a mates kids they had them for around a month to try out carp fishing the one lad is keen and looks like he’s going to give it a go the other is defo not. Been awhile since I got all them all together so I thought a family pic was in order, all Okuma

Looks a belter 👍

Cracking fish well done Kev.

New swim, more work done, a fish but overall frustrating 48hrs. The quicker they spawn the better imo.

Mind boggling session on the syndi, arrived 6am Friday to beat the crowds and more importantly beat the long awaited weather change to westerlies. Whilst the lake was fairly busy noone was at the East end of the lake and I got the swim I had hoped for. The Easterly wind had died off and it was nice and calm whilst I quickly found some spots with the boat as you can't cast left with the overhangs. It was very weedy at 5ft to half way across but then when it dropped into an 8ft gulley the weed became more clumps with clean holes dotted about. I got 2 rods out and was baiting the last when the first was away after 10 mins and I landed my first of the year - a cracking little stocky, already looking nice and dark. The wind started up soon after and to cut a long story short I spent the next 48 hours watching the most banging conditions of the spring come to absolutely nothing, they just didn't turn up as expected. Plans to do an extra night were ditched Sunday lunchtime. I can only assume they are waiting to spawn somewhere out of sight, come Sunday afternoon the lake was almost empty.

Vitalin has gone, but Gladwells at Copdock Mill sell a very close equivalent called Vitacarp. They purchased the ingredients list and market it themselves. I don't think it contains quite as much flaked maize as it did, and it is not quite so 'sticky'. I know of a couple of 40's. It was @shakey on here who shared with me some pics of his dad with a decent 40 and a big heavily scaled fish he caught from there when I was fishing there. Dave Lane also did some time on there. The 3 biggest fish I had were all 24.12, a fully scaled, a proper leather and a prehistoric looking mirror. Ardleigh was the place I took B&F Co's Particle42 as my first field test bait, and caught from the off. Sadly Bait and Feed then decided to cut base mixes with extra semolina to customers on the baits they rolled. I stood up for them big time, and got my fingers burnt when they did it to a named angler and base mix manufacturer who tested it. They did make some very good baits that I was in on: Smokey Mackeral, Smokey Bacon (actually a ham flavour on a meat and birdfood base) and obviously the Particle42. They also rolled my Spiced Garlic pop-ups for me, which they hated as doing them everything stunk for ages of Megaspice and garlic oil. I still use them and roll them myself now. Now for some reason that Megaspice and Garlic oil does not seem to stop producing on various waters, although I've not had a repeat capture, its worked everywhere.

Actually walked around that place years ago, guessing now after the Carl and Alex video (big res carp) done years ago it is probably a secret gone? Vitalin also gone, now started to use flaked maize and extras to bind it in my method mix.

FYI: One of the main men behind Premier back then is now Active Bait Solutions

That's it, Addit Taste, Digest and Attract. I never liked milk protein baits unless The Addits (and/or Bengers) were in there as I didn't think that milk protein baits are easily digested by carp (or most humans!). Giving the additional protein breaking down enzyme helped with the digestion. There is a big theory that in some animals carbohydrate is unusable for energy, they can only utilise fats and protein, so balancing them is the important part of a bait. I mentioned that the 'prebaited food source' baits are not used like they used to be. I have seen a good bait dominate waters, Protavit Liver, Trigga, BFM, Premier, even Activ8. Not using them you may as well accept the occasional inquisitive fish rather than catching regularly. I know that numbers of anglers have written about it, with named waters, named anglers, and I have managed it myself, even a slightly tweaked bait being an improvement over the standard ready made (freezer or shelf life). The Method, underrated and now underused. It produced a number of decent carp for me on Ardleigh , where the size of the water made using a food source bait impractical. Baiting up with buckets of Vitalin and fishing balls of that moulded around the lead meant I had groundbait around the hookbait rather than casting 'blind'. I've never found a 'wonder' hookbait, or found plenty, but they only have a limited life; sweetcorn, or pop-ups, green zing, pineapple N-butyric, Monster Crab, Squid and Octopus, until the carp avoid them. It's that 'digesting a stone' point, sooner or later carp will discover it's going to result in a hook in the mouth, or it's not doing them any good. The carp rarely eat pop-ups! I think we do do sensory overload. In a water there is a natural pH, be it between 6 and 9, and attraction is a specific 'distance'. Too strong attractors, too high a level (say 5ml of flavour compared to 2ml) may create a feeding zone or acceptable level not at the bait itself, but metres away, or even become repellant.

It's a wierd thing, but as you can guess I am harping back to old times, yes I used to buy the Nutrabaits catalogues, but in the day was a Premier Baits man, now sadly gone in all but name. Just makes me smile when I read (on another forum, sorry), about so called wonder hookbaits, and the domination on certain topics this person now seems to have on it, so glad this forum is a lot more chilled and sensible. Anyway, now getting back into method feeder for fishing for carp on a Sussex lake, seems to be working, well when the lake is open again after spawning again. Remember the big method feeders on Horseshoe so many years ago and did very well on them, sometimes I wish things were a lot more simple for carp fishing, but unfortunatly the floodgates have been opened and I just chill on the bank when I can..... sorry to go a bit off post

Taking a wild swing I think Digest may have been papain based but dont quote me on that, that would laso fit with your observations above

If I'm not mistaken the other two addits were, addit attract and addit digest. I used both of those in a milk protein in winter. The digest definitely worked as a fish was caught passing my bait before i added the digest as the pictures were being taken and It came out like it was paste coming out of a bait gun. After adding the digest the fish I caught were then passing the bait let's say more freely.

In answer to the thread title i think the word better suited to semolina is functional, it serves a purpose like Nick says a s a binder mainly as its make up is mostly carbs which carp cant do anything with, as for the Nutrabaits Addits they were more additives rather than making a bait a HNV based bait, i used to know what all 3 were, i think taste was MSG but i have forgotten the other 2. I think the fact there are a lot of very good products available now and the way modern day anglers use there (glugs, coating boiles etc..) i think it would be very difficult for carp at first glance to tell whether something is good for them or not as you could make a poor quality boilie initially seem like a likely food source, and fish dont have hands so the only way is to try one and find out, if you eat something that is like digesting a stone your porbably not going to go back for more. A thing that does intrest me is do we cause sensory overload and what the effects of that are to the fish by having most of our baits pepped up

They look good too

You won't regret that purchase, great alarms

Pair of Gardner ATTS IW alarms and deluxe receiver

Semolina I've always thought of as part of a balanced bait or as a binder. It's a decent source of carbohydrates and quite filling. I personally think that the days of the food bait are over as there are so few animal protein based baits around any more. What is around is, I think, often yeast based with nut meals and semolina as the binder. I put animal protein; fish meal cost became prohibitive, and few bait companies are making chicken or meat meal based baits, which I thought were as good, (The Biollix, Protavit Liver, DT did a chicken special as well). Almost every year I do liquidise my left over mackeral and herring deadbaits from pike fishing and mix them with semolina and chapatti flour and make boilies for my barbel and chub chasing on the Wensum and occasional trips to my syndicate as something different from my standard bait. Nutrition wise, if carp are eating boilies, a bed of various anglers baits, it can't identify one particular boilie as the high nutritional one and eat only that, it will likely eat a mix of them and 'notice' that the boilies are good for them full stop. It's only when a 'cr..' boilie is the only bait that they may start to avoid them. However fish in overstocked or waters with low natural food stocks will need to eat bait anyway.

Thank you all for your kind advices!

Yeah I looked at some other reels it's comparable to other loads more expensive reels from shimano and daiwa on weight and if it performs better than the 8k it would be a great reel.

Bit wierd, But got some to firm up my method mix and works well. Just wondering if anyone now makes own boilies? I don't anymore but used to do Premier Aminos base mix and had a lot of fish on it. With all the hype about certain hookbaits 'doing the business' I just wonder if semolina might make a comeback? Rob Maylin, Andy Little etc did ok on it back in the day. As for HNV baits, well Nutrabaits did drop their 'Addits' range ages ago

That's light isn't it for a large pit reel ,it's a bit lighter than my Ultegras as well.. I also like the 2nd version Inc's, especially now you can get spare spools from Johnson Ross for about 17 quid .. Okuma do some great stuff ,including the Sheffield centrepin which I use ..

The obsidians are a 12000 size so I think they are bigger than the 8k. They do look amazing though and a lot lighter than the 8k weighing in at a mere 520g. @B B is a user of the Inc6000 I believe.

So I popped out yesterday afternoon, fishing the waggler and led rod, grabbed two bags of frozen corn and some rubber bits out my carp tackle, was having silver bream on the float rod and one small carp, the led rod went mental two large carp about 15 to 20 lb just smashed my hook size 10 just spat it out after taking my gear on a lap of the lake, they really did want that corn. Got to be some of the finest close in fishing I have done in a while, can't believe I got carp looking for corn on the deck they were cruising the top all day the confidence they had on the corn was saying something.

The local stretch of the Avon do a good season ticket for 90 pounds they do ask to see the EA rod licence before selling a ticket pretty sure dog lane are doing the same as well on your first visit.

I don't understand those that fish without, yet spend loads on tackle and bait. A 3 rod license is the cost of a few kg of boilies, a couple days fishing at a commercial or something similar. Then getting violent when caught, what did they hope to achieve? Absolute scum. Self entitled <censored>!