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Yesterday I caught my first carp on the lake (14lb). 😁 Thanks so much for all of the advice and hopefully the below will inspire others. So first of all I tried to take very little with me as I knew having a lot of gear would limit me on being mobile. I had two rods (1x chod rig + 1x standard hair rig), a bucket of bait (whole + chopped + crushed boilies, pellet and sweet corn), and my tackle bag. I checked the weather and decided to leave the brolly behind. I left my chair in the car which didn't do my back or comfort any favours but with only a bucket to sit on, it meant that I remained sufficiently alert and once again, not weighed down. I began with a walk round the lake which was cut very short. As soon as I arrived I came to a very weedy and very shallow section which must have had at least 15 carp sitting there. I couldn't help myself and rushed back to the car to get my rods. I baited and dropped the chod rig in the weed - I could see it was presented fine which takes away a stress that I would usually have but noticed any bait I put in around it quickly disappeared below the weed. Very quickly I learned just how easy it is to spook fish. They just wasn't coming near my rig so I decided to try and drop it somewhere a little closer to where they kept visiting. I was impatient; I should've waited until they moved further away but I didn't. Threw it in and they all swam away... I then found another quiet spot at the other end of the lake. The swim was not much of a swim (most people would ignore it) and was the last fishable swim on that side of the lake before you get to the heavy weed. There were 3-4 fish there very close to the margin on a polished gravel spot. I waited for them to move away and then baited and dropped my rig in. This time I used the hair rig as I knew the spot was clear. They kept coming over, taking some of the bait and moving off again, over and over again. It was great to see what was actually happening and how the fish behave. Once again, I learned how easy it was to spook them, but this time, not so badly that they wouldn't come back. I decided to get back from the edge and sit on my bucket. Suddenly around midday, a family of 8 came over and started feeding. There was huge amounts of fizzing and then finally I got one! 🙂 Unfortunately I think catching that fish probably ruined the swim. As it was all pretty close quarters all his mates heard it and swam off. I tried looking for other areas along the lake and baited 4 other clear spots but nothing really came of them. I kept going for walks to check on them but every time the bait was still there and no signs of fish (one time I did find some ducks having a go though...). With no reason to go elsewhere, I stayed put which remained quiet for the next few hours. I was a good spot because the way the weed was sitting on that part of the lake meant that they would have to pass the bait if they wanted to get across the swim to the other side of the lake. Around 17:00 I started getting the odd fish appear again and they would come feed on the spot but they never took the rig. By about 18:30 it was starting to get a little grey and dark so decided to pack up. I think if i stayed a couple of hours longer I may have just caught another one. Not sure if this actually counts as stalking as I ultimately pretty much stayed in the same place for the day. But I learned so much and am really glad that I didn't just setup wherever and throw out 2 rods on bite alarms and wait.

Brilliant - well done, effort = reward One thing comes across loud and clear, you enjoyed the active approach and learnt plenty - keep up the good work. 👍

Excellent result. The nice thing is your thinking solved your problems and you worked out what to do.

This defo counts as stalking imo mate. And a fine example of it too. Well done.

Very similar to me. Late winter/early spring I'll carry whites and match the hatch. Spring, summer, autumn and early winter I'll carry washed out yellow, yellow, washed out pink and match the hatch. Winter i carry match the hatch and orange. Yellow pop ups are my go to primarily though. I'd say 75% of all my pop up caught fish have been on yellows.

In spring I'll carry yellow, pink and white. After spawning I'll carry pink, white, and match-the-hatch. The most important thing is buoyancy imo. Lots of off-the-shelf pop ups are terrible for this.

Maybe a length of bamboo cane in the middle of the conduit before the expanding foam. Just an idea. I've not made one myself but have been thinking about it for a while.

Looks like a steamer to me .... I’ll get me coat....

Went for the p1 compact worldwide pod in the end, thanks for the help

I used to think colour did not matter until I had first hand experience. i wasn’t using pop ups as such but topped bottom baits, I’d been catching well with white toppers, then one weekend I could not get a bite yet I was on fish. Eventually I changed the toppers on one rod to Orange and caught two fish very quickly. So now I do vary the colours, to see if they prefer one to the other.

I use their cork ball pop ups which are obviously very buoyant. I have used their little 12 mm standard pop ups, they need a little help (foam) to keep them up for 24+. I've not used the standard pop ups in bigger sizes so cannot help there buddy. Sorry.

Have you ever used there pop ups yonny? Was just wondering what the buoyancy was like?

My names Elmo and I am a pop up aholic I have around 30 pots at a guess, various colours and flavours, I still don't know what works best, if its weedy I would probably stick with yellow, pink, or white though, if you can get them feeding confidently any will work 👍