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haha!! neither is the Aldi version at 99p for 50mtrs

It really depends on how you want to fish said pop up. If you want it critically balanced so it slowly settles on the bottom then you need to weight it so it just sinks. A heavy weight will make it sink fast and pin it to the bottom. I tend to use this route when fishing hard bottoms as I think it helps hook grab the lip. If you use a heavy weighted pop up on soft bottoms then there is the potential the hook gets dragged in to muck and masked. Then you have the arguement of the fish. A critically balanced bait acts more natural and will waft up in the water column as fish root about. Some wise old fish have been known to flank the bottom to see which food items move and which ones don’t. Barnwell mirror and the nutsey fish are just two of them.

I’ve not ever thought about trying to find the stuff from elsewhere. Used the Korda stuff all my fishing. £3.50 for 50m. Not really expensive

It comes from Sainsbury's and mine is so old the 'best before' date has long gone😉 I also use braid hooklink materials for hairs as crayfish can't cut through it as they sometimes do with dental floss.

Lol.... I didn't count the tench I caught! Sometimes there's just no stopping them..... .... which just so happened to be a lake record in your first season...... Food for thought eh......

Very interesting reading lads 👌🏻

tell that to the hordes of small bream and tench I had on the country park fishing 18+15mm snowmen pop ups 3 inches off the deck with size 4s!! if they are ravenous then they will try their luck. But on average yeah, they do pick up the bigger fish and avoid the small stuff. Yeah, I have dropped down to 15mm pops for the estate and fish them tight as possible to the deck most of the time however after a bit of maths... 53 fish landed since June 16th, 2 on bread crust and 3 on snowman baits... leaves 48 on pop ups Total combined weight of these was 855.07lb with an average of 17.12lb approx. which sounds about right... 48 fish including 20 fish over 20lb, 5 of those being over 25lb, and one of those breaking the 30lb barrier. Coincidentally all the fish on snowman baits and off the surface were below 15lb... or maybe not? Luck does come in to it as I said above about the tench and bream! But I do think pop-ups, blatant high ones do pick off bigger fish most of the time. Main reason to use pop-ups is that 90% of those gravel spots you find will have a bit of something on them, silt, silkweed, etc. and it's why I use pop ups just over hook height, to keep the hook point clear of it all

go for the 13s mate, I have used them and they were ideal. 15s youll need a fair bit of weight even with size 4 hooks.

wont catch anything on them if you dont use them. I'm like yonny and use pop-ups for 95% of my fishing, I will put on a snowman no problem but not used a straight bottom bait for years. My go to rig doesnt even suit using one.

I test pop-up rigs Either in the margins, or my dogs bowl😅😉😱 I would prefer to use putty than pop-up weights for critically balancing, but sadly crayfish mess that up as they pinch the stuff. Can reel in a popped up wooden ball not knowing if I have been fishing a mini zig...