Leaderboard

Airbomb hack Incoming 😳 Right fixed/enhanced the leader 🤔 Basically I had an old lead free leader lying around, I've looped the airbomb ring onto one end the other end(marker swivel may also work for this if you didn't have the ring) I have added cork balls as a buffer, hopefully this will aid retrieval then done a good old fashioned granny knot to make sure they shouldn't come off 😁 I had to replace the standard swivel as it wouldnt easily go over the loop and I had a marker swivel handy, this will either work better or worse than the original swivel but can always change this if needed, saved me £15 buying another one so if it performs OK, job well done 👍👍👍💷😂

I've used them all buddy. They all do a job but: - The spider is imo a tiny bit too heavy so not great for big distances. - The dot is a tiny bit too light so while it's great for heavy baits (boilies) it's awful for light stuff (pellet/maggot etc). - The fox can be a pig to retrieve unless you get a specific technique dialled. I keep going back to the good old spomb. You get good'n's and bad'n's but a good'n cannot be beaten imo.

The the Connecticut is simply an amazing River and quite simple to fish. There are many many places that are easy to find. You should make the effort as the rewards can be beyond expectation. A 30# mirror is "nice" but not when guys are targeting much bigger...

It's the mechanism imo. Some of them seem to open too easy on the loose setting and not at all on the tight setting. I think the spomb could do with a precision spring but that's obviously not cost effective. If you know what you're looking for you can pick a decent one off the shelf. The Dot can suffer too. After heavy use the arms on the lid/cap can bend very, very slightly which leads to it opening on the cast. The bend is so slight it's really tricky to spot (in fact I didn't realise what was going on with mine until someone pointed it out to me on here I think).

Spods do take longer to empty than Spombs, you have to let the spod 'drift' to be sure it has emptied, whereas the Spomb drops the load pretty much on impact. Also load a Spomb with a scoop so you can keep bits out of the nose, but a spod can be catch and dunk into bucket. Something else is, if you have a spod with tape over the holes, or no holes at all, you can add liquids in with your particles, whereas a Spomb that liquid drains. I do mix boilies into my particles and put them in together in the Spomb. The boilies sometimes even go in the day before I go fishing... I have found though, that boilies for some reason tend to stick in a spod, they jam themselves in against each other. I do use both the spod and the Spomb, although the Spomb does get the most use. I have not had a bad Spomb, but I do tend to make sure I get the locking mechanism sorted, either tightening or loosening by turning the pin around in the nose. @yonny, do you think the bad Spombs could be from bent or twisted stem to the swivel? or is it from locking mechanism? Oh, do make sure you add a Spomb float. I unpin it and have trimmed some pike deadbait poppers to fit in the tail inside rather than outside.

Nothing wrong with casting that many times would've been nice to have found something though 😂 I tend to start with the bare lead as I know it will be weedy, I would try and feel for a drop but like you say was tough in the cross wind as all the extra slack line was making it tough but then I would slide it back a bit to try and find something, then repeat and repeat, it I wasn't getting anywhere with that so I thought i would try the gripper, maybe 100 casts on a spot with that may have cleared it enough but I just gave it up as a bad job, I will be back on it though, I'm not a quitter 😁

In my opinion there is absolutely nothing wrong in casting 100 plus times to find/ get on a spot. I'd rather do that than think "that will do" when it won't do. As for casting in a cross wind I would rather set up facing the wind if possible, you get a much better feel of the lead down. And when you say bare lead was you feeling for a drop or seeing if you could slide the lead once it was on the bottom?

Well nothing for me, not surprised really, unfortunately I seemed to make a hash of it this weekend, I nearly decided to go into one of the three popular swims as it was free when I arrived, however I carried on walking round by the time I got back there was a bivvy in it lol, it was then I decided to try the far corner of the big part of the lake, I think this is where it started to go wrong, I must've done about 100 casts, I started with Bare lead then went onto a gripper as I wasn't finding much, the gripper was just getting locked up in Canadian pretty much everytime, and I wasn't getting a nice drop, I guess conditions didn't help it was howling into that corner,which made it tougher as my braid was getting blown sideways but I persevered, I would've stayed if I had found something that even resembled a spot, but that would've been pub chucking at its finest and I just didn't fancy it without some prior prep work or something to target, if I can find/make a clear spot then it could have potential as the wind was hacking in there and they would surely follow it sometimes, I did move to another swim I've not fished before though so I have pretty much fished all the snaggy half of the lake now other than the swim I couldn't get in yesterday, so it wasn't a complete waste of time more knowledge gained, Need to upgrade my spot finding ability now I think, will have a think about that this week or maybe invest in a weedrake again so I am better equipped 🤔 Cheers all its been emotionless this time 😁