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Confidence for me is firstly choosing a swim I feel I will catch in , so if I dont find a swim I like then Ill go to a different venue , I have never been one to fit just because their a space available . I have every confidence in the rigs and bait I use ,and as I have said before I believe if im not catching its because the fish are either not their or their not feeding.

That's interesting as my percentages would be completely different. Rigs - 5% max - as long as it presents and resets it's good enough imo. Bait - more important - a good 10 or 20 %. The rest would all be location. Identifying (or creating) and fishing the spots the carp are prepared to feed on. Put me on fish and 99 times out of 100 I'm mega confident. If I'm not on fish then nothing will make me confident.

for me confidence is all about percentages... let me explain New bait that's cleaning up everywhere + 20% New sneaky rig they've (hopefully) not seen + 30% New swim where you've seen em feeding + 10% All your gear and rigs sorted ready to go + 10% Catch reports are saying its fishing well + 20% Got the water to yourself + 10% it all adds up to total confidence.... don't mean you'll catch mind😎👍🤣

I've been using the avid outline leader in 20lb for a while now, I am quite happy with that as a leader seems to work nicely with the hydrotuff

That's it right there. Confidence comes from experience; knowing what you are doing in a given situation will catch them. That is a hallmark of inexperience imo. A confident and experienced angler will determine why the chosen method isn't working as intended and fix it. I have no time for doubt. I am not prepared to sit behind rods that I'm not 100% happy with. Of course we all blank, it is part of carp fishing, but as long as you learn from it you confidence levels can continue to elevate. If you know why you blanked then you know how to adapt for next time.

Hello Lorez , which bought rig gave you most confidence / best hook holds ? . Why not take that rig and then buy the components to tie that rig yourself , unless it looks particularly tricky / costly , and you would be better off just buying ready mades ? . Personally I have never liked tying up rigs , I always seem to be putting it off ! . 😃

The local lake i fish @finchey also...there are (Flyers) that people head straight to with no thought at all "I want that 1"...spomb n spomb n spomb...so it does tend to push them away (my opinion even scare them off)...so scouring the lake and fish to shows until some time has passed and fish on the back of the spombed area...

Echo this. Sometimes I do just drop in a swim on my instincts and knowledge because I think it’ll give me the best chance at some point. Whether a change in wind overnight means it may come good in the morning as I pack up or something. A pre-planned attack.

My misses had just realised she has booked a night out watching a psychic on Thursday now so I've had to rejiggle lake bookings and days off work, you would think someone had already spotted that we had double booked 🙄 But on the plus side I am going wednesday night now 😀 This is my simple snowman rig btw nice isn't it 😏

Everything in brown it is then , thanks for saving me money , Yonny . I always have more confidence with my Guru Pear Leads in brown , but now they are a strange greyish colour and a pack of 2 instead of 3 ☹️

Couldn't put it better myself mate. Pitting our wits and experience against a living creature that is capable of its own process of thought and learning by association. This sport never stands still after all. I've moved onto a new venue, several rivers and drainage dykes all meeting at an EA pumping station, and it's like starting from scratch, the buzz of walking the river banks, wondering where the hell to start is awesome.

Well experience comes from trial and error, I have rigs that i am happy with, I reached this conclusion as a result of going through the trial and error phase in my formative years as a new carper years ago. Simple thing was there wasn't really anything in the way of dedicated carp mags that were available when I was trialling things, I remember early issues of carpworld coming out and devouring those, but other than that, if I wanted to indulge in rig information, it was reading books or talking to other anglers on the bank. I used to have junior anglers who would ask me to teach them rig tying, and why not? I learned how to tie a hair rig from an older carper who showed me on the bank. I also get confidence from choosing the correct venue, I have two club books that I fish. One lake fishes better in the summer when the other is choked with weed, yet in the winter when the first pit dies a death and the carp seem to vanish off the face of the earth, the second pit is now far less weedier and the fishing is coming into its own. It fishes well right through the winter and into spring. Knowing where to target and when is also key to catching regularly.

One thing I will say about this year is that I don't regret any of it because I have learnt from it messing with rigs has taught me loads about what I want from my rig,how I want it to present, how to make the hooklink work in your favour, how to select the right hook pattern for the job, and most importantly with a sharp hook on the line you will catch more fish

Probably buddy. Brown is the best all-rounder for blending in imo.

I'm currently using the rather funky combination of Hydro Tuff in 12 lb with a 20/30 ft leader of the SLS Specimon Tough in 18 lb. The water I'm fishing is really, really weedy and the fish do sometimes hang out a very long range. This set up allows me to get the distance and still deal with the weed. I would happily use the Hydro Tuff in 20 lb as a leader too.

Confidence is a funny thing really, and I have found that the more you learn the more things appear that can eat into your confidence... If I could give an example of what I mean... when I first started carp fishing in the mid 90s, I used to fish a local water and go down with a couple of mismatched fibreglass carp rods and a couple of scrappy mismatched reels, precariously balanced on a couple of bent and wobbly wire rod rests with hair grips pushed into painted corks for bobbins. Hooklinks were whatever the reel line was, terminal tackle was a few random bombs, swivels, beads from my sea tackle box and hooks being drennan super specialist hooks. All arranged in a running rig. Bait was flour, water and vanilla food flavouring mixed together and baked in the oven! I would bury a hook in this baked "thing" and toss it out into the pond. In my happy "ignorance" I sat in supreme confidence and caught my share of carp. roll on the times and I still go to this pond of my youth, with my youngest son carp fishing, so do I set him up with baked dough on hairless hooks and mono running rigs? No! He uses tubing, lead clips, coated braid and boilies... Why not the dough balls? Because I wouldn't be confident in catching, yet logically there's no reason why it wouldn't work. I used to use a primitive zig arrangement using bread crust - popped up 2-3ft from the bottom and caught lots of carp, yet now my confidence in zigs is zero. Why is this? Simple, my fishing hasn't used zigs for years and as such, I am not experienced in their use. When I've chucked a zig out on a slow day, it's not produced - damaging my confidence in it, yet in reality it was the angling situation or the angler at fault, not the method. yet my confidence comes from my experience, I've fished some difficult waters over the years, lakes, rivers, canals, ponds, inland seas (all UK waters) and can now happily sit on a difficult water waiting for weeks for a bite, knowing it is part and parcel of this type of water. I have developed a bait over very many years, using the same base mix since 1996 with the same flavouring, additives, etc. I make my own baits, and now I have so much confidence in my bait, it's not a consideration for me. It works, it's never let me down, it catches and has lasted the test of time. What more do I want? Rigs are the same, I use the same basic rigs, tweaking them to suit the situation, I don't look at the mags, don't get hooked up on the latest wonder rigs, I just use what has worked for me, so it's another thing I don't need to worry about. I have rigs to go to if need be, but why complicate things needlessly? For me, it's cutting down the variables. If I know my baits and rigs are going to work, then I don't need to worry about them. I can therefore put those considerations to one side knowing they will work, so I can concentrate on location and the task in hand of looking and locating carp. Once that is cracked, I can plan the way to fish the swim, knowing my baits and rigs will do the business. If I'm trotting up a string of blanks, then I can cast my mind back over years of success using the baits and rigs, so I know that they work, rather than having the latest bait or wonder rig on the end that I've only used for 5mins, which will eat away at me, is it the bait? Is it the rig? Is it just that I'm fishing a water that only does a few bites a month to a syndicate of a dozen carpers and I need to keep the effort up to get a result? Confidence for me is making my own baits, using rigs that I know works and working on the most important aspect in my mind... Find the fish in the first place!

Confidence has been a funny one for me this year, spent a long time feeling out my depth,feeling like I need to catch up with the years I missed, spent a while messing about with baits and rigs and all sorts of presentations, before ultimately deciding what I used to do 20 years ago is still as effective really Things that have helped me with confidence this year Hand sharpening my hooks Going back to running rigs for better bite indication Finally finding a bait the carp seem to like fairly instantly Distance sticks I believe I am now fishing more accurately than ever before Not being afraid to fish in weed,silt or pretty much any substrate now I now believe I have a great simple rig and a nice balanced snowman presentation,which I know should always be fishing for me and behaves in a suitable manor I am going for an overnight session on vermuyden Thursday night, probably going to be setting up on darkness but I shall be more organised and ready this week,my rods are already prepped and my rod bag is packed already,will sort out all my other items this week so i am super organised and only taking what i need, the good times are coming I just want to catch a few more now to prove it wasn't a fluke

For me I am confident in my bait and my approach (multi rigs or chods). Really the only part of the puzzle left for me is location, and that's where it's all down to me. I sometimes make the wrong decisions but as long as I act on it by moving or keeping a note of it for next time I am happy. I think the biggest downfall in an angler is stubbornness, I've fallen foul of it a couple of times, determined to get a bite from an area or a swim when I know i'm p*ssing in the wind and should be elsewhere. I am confident that I know what I'm doing though and I know how to find the fish. Sometimes you just cant though and you have to make you're best judgement on previous knowledge and the conditions, if that is the case and I blank then I dont worry too much about it.

Now mainline is something else I probably should be considering as I've been using the reels I use for bass fishing

If I'm fishing a bottom bait or a pop up I'll use a coated braid, stripped accordingly. A wafter will see me using fluro nine times out of ten. They really don't come any easier than this...

Try tying them with the line you have left over from spooling up your reels then just go and buy a semi stiff coated braid as you can strip this off and have a completely bare braid hooklink then or just strip little bits off no need for any more to start of with unless you want chods or stiffies then buy a stiff fluro

Anything will work as long as the levels are right.