Leaderboard

This is the fish in question .... look at the Hoover on it ! Lol

The bigger the fish, the stronger the Hoover from what I've seen , a mid twenty can suck up boillies from over 1ft away , leaving your rig in place & moving on , they soon work out the safest way to feed ! The thing to remember they all feed slightly differently, so for me not one rig or lead setup will catch every fish in the lake . Sometimes you get lucky & catch a glimpse of a target fish feeding & the penny drops for that particular fish.

That is excellent point. The question is how back can a carp still suck up a bait. I do tests with a suction tube in a tank and find it takes an exponential amount of extra suck the further you get from the bait? The next question is how does the carp react when it finds the bait tethered by a short link? Does it back off or move closer to take it? I don't have any ideas I just like thinking about it.

Wow. With all the time and money invested in fishing it is hard to imagine anyone not sharpening their hook each time. It must be the easiest ,cheapest and most effective thing you can do.

I can't remember the last time I lost a fish once hooked. I do use micro barbed hooks, maybe that helps. I think some people put forward a lot of theories that sound good but have no basis when actually put to the test.

Might have to try shorter then lol. I was always under the impression that it was easier for a fish to shake the hook out when fishing a really short rig because of how far away the lead is? Or something along them lines anyway 😂 Esp tungsten loaded for me. Nothing fancy about my rigs just a simple hair rig with a bit of shrink tubing lol

Personally, I would use around 6 cms. That seems to be just the right length to get the bait into the mouth before it tightens against the lead. My thinking is that any longer length just gives the carp more time to eject the bait.

That is an immaculate fish Chillfactor and congratulations ... and it certainly had a large hoover. Until you brought up the subject I had never given much thought as to HOW a fish sucks up a bait. I vaguely imagined it sucked water into its lungs or whatever the carp equivalent of lungs is - the bigger the "lungs" the bigger the suck. As far as I have been able to find out, by reading various papers on the subject on the net, the suction is caused by something called buccal pressure (no, I’ve never heard of it either). The carp opens its mouth quickly causing an area of low pressure. everything in the vicinity of the mouth moves in to replace it so the bigger the mouth (as in your photo) the bigger the suck. But once the mouth is full again the suction stops. If you imagine a carp opening its mouth 1 foot above a bait, to get to the boilie it has to take in the whole water column in between. Even with a very large mouth it is hard to see how this would work at that distance. I have just looked at a lot of the underwater videos on YouTube of carp sucking bait. They tend to confirm the action described. They open their mouth and take in one mouthful of suck then have to repeat again. I did see one clip where a carp seemed to swim above a boilie then tilt towards, it suck it up and disappear in a swirl of silt. On stepping through it frame by frame however it was obvious that, at the point of taking, the bait the mouth was very close to the boilie. So I am wondering, Chillfactor , if this is the sort of thing you observed? I spent an hour in the workshop testing this today. I have a carp mouth sized pipe fitted with a plunger. A rapid pull on the plunger replicates the reduced buccal pressure as a carp sucks the bait. I tested a normal boilie, a wafter and pop up weighted so that it only just sank. On no occasion could I get the bait to move unless I was only centimetres away from it. I cannot convince myself that I am missing bites from a carp 1 foot away therefore I will continue to use my 6 cm (sic) hooklink. I have, however, learned a lot today.

Been fishing long enough and caught enough to know my onions thanks. Luckily the circus lakes I've been, done and got the tshirts on, so will leave alone. Unless as you rightly say I can do midweek sessions, but with my work that's impossible. I only thought of going back to these waters as all the big fish I had are now deceased and new ones have come through.

I agree with everything you say apart from "a mid twenty can suck up boillies from over 1ft away". I am not saying it is incorrect just that it is a lot for me to get my mind around. I should imagine it depends on how bouyant a bait is. A wafter is obviously more "suckable" than a heavier bait. Even so, imagine sucking up some sherbet with a straw. Obviously, if you get close, it is easy but you don't have to get very far away from the sherbert before no amount of sucking will have any effect. I wish I was clever enough to work out the physics of the situation. You have certainly provided food for thought though.

It's an eye opener when it all comes together mate that's for sure . One of my best ever sessions was using no bait what so ever !

Interesting replies lads, I forgot to mention I mainly fish bottom baits. I'm gonna shorten my rigs down to 5-6" and go from there.

The only problem with short rigs , is your never catch those fish that suck up baits from a long way back or up .... quite often the bigger fish too .

Same! Quick flick with a file for added sticky point, not lost any take. A guy I fish with sometimes, drops fish due to blunt hook point, pointed it out to him, but still doesn't bother to get a sharpener!!

Never used shrink tubing, nothing simple about that with my chubby fingers, I find the KD style knot gives the aggressive hook angle with a curved shank hook, much quicker to tie for me!

Depends on material your using imo. I tended to use a stiff fluro around 6" combi with balanced hookbait

A debate is a discussion buddy, exchanging ideas and opinions. What forums are for. Your posts cite your opinion as gospel and take offence to anyone that attempts to question your beliefs. It's about as far from a debate as you can get imo. Further to that, you really need to keep any hypocrisy in check (that's not intended as an insult buddy, just an observation); that last post accuses Nick of being rude for assuming where you fish/what you catch, and then goes on to do just that in return. Think of this as constructive criticism, it's not intended as an insult. You've popped up on various forums and it seldom lasts more than a few days before you get banned. At some point you have to acknowledge it's you at fault and not the rest of the online community. You need to adapt buddy because it looks to me like it's heading that way already.

Hopefully one day you will catch then. Different feeding situations, different lakes and lakebeds, even angling pressure may mean you need to change your rig(s), from hooklink material to rig length. I wouldn't fish a combi-rig over weed, whereas I would over gravel. In weed I will likely want a braided rig, whereas on gravel I might want a short stiff rig if I am feeding heavily. If all anglers are fishing rigs between 6-8inches, I might well want something longer or shorter.