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in fact I’m at zombie sheep lake right now! 😁😁

On the first night I ever fished it, never seen the place before, just took a punt on the ticket as it was cheap, £40 a year. it was a wild and windy night and I really wasn’t feeling it, the place was full of sheep, being located slap bang in the middle of a sheep farm. As it was getting dark, I saw a white mass floating in and coming to rest under the rod tips, sticking a torch on it, I saw it was a dead sheep! I retired to my carp cot in disgust, at dawn I was going home! Next morning I woke up and remembered the dead sheep, rolled over to face the lake and as I opened my eyes, there was a loud “baaaaa!” and there was a sheep staring at me through the bivvy door. I nearly jumped through the roof. The dead sheep had gone so I naturally assumed the sheep in the bivvy door must have been a zombie sheep come back from the dead… I didn’t return for 8 months then fell in love with the place, I call it that as it’s a small venue which is ignored by the majority, so I don’t reveal the real name of the place so it’s called zombie sheep lake!

Forget that only just seen the date 🤪

I can just imagine needing a wee , going into the woods , and a little voice says “ hey stop weeing on me ( or something similar ) “. I would permanently go into urinary retention . 😱

So my O/T is as good as over so it was time for the drive south for a session on the river. Went to a club stretch that did me well last year and it was good to be back bank side. It was a lovely day and the weather behaved itself and the only other people me and matey boy seen was a couple in a canoe. All fish came in a 5 hr feeding spell through the night and ended up with 5 barbel with 2 of them going 9+ and a PB chub at 5,7 as you can imagine I was over the moon. The wildlife and solitude really is good for the soul……… but not the horse fly bites have 😫😫🤣🤣 A couple of mat shots as was a bit unfair asking me auld mate to battle the vegetation for every fish. 😬 Its a 3 hr round journey for me so you can imagine I was glad to get home after a long day/night. Cup of tea,cheese and ham toastie,shower and I was whacked 💤💤💤 All in all a great session with a good mate and got a roast on the go listening to Floyd and celebrating the PB with a few Guiness, thanks for reading 😬😎😫

Goalposts and buzz bars will much more sturdy than a pod, a properly inserted bank stick won't move on the most extreme takes, pods will, I also think buzz bars just look smart, and as we all know, if your rods ain't level you might as well go home

i got one of those cooling mats filled with a gel, 6 quid from wilko's might need two for sky they work really well, they would be perfect on a summer's day put over the back of a chair, gets really cold the longer you press against it.

Problem is that if they wore colours that blended into the road then people in cars may hit them I knew a girl who went skiing in an all white outfit because she didn’t want to stand out …. I said there’s a reason they are bright coloured if you think about it lol horses for courses I say

I made sure every day during the hot weather she was able to be near shade and water so she could cool down. Sky has had moles out of the hole. She waits if a molehill starts moving as it digs out then shakes it. Young moles have been leaving the burrows or tunnels recently, even in daylight, I've seen barn owls in daylight picking them up for their young.

Sky wants ice. bit of a weird one the other day was sitting in the bivvy with fred and something fell against the back of the bivvy sounded like a few twigs falling out a the tree, fred shot out and round the back, heard something squeaking, went out and fred had hold of a mole i made him drop it and he did first ask, i had a look and seen it was a mole with a twisted front led, it could barely crawl let alone dig so i let fred deal with it, very fast and clean back of the neck and wrag. I was wondering if the mole had been picked up by a buzzard or something, wouldn't expect a mole to live in a flood area like that let alone out in the day. no mole hills near by?

I use a brolly all year round, in the colder months I will some times use the front and a groundsheet 👍 On the reservoir I was fishing last night some guy had what I believe was two trakker tempest bivvies with a middle skin so it made one massive bivvy. Next to it he had a green toilet tent set up... 200 yards down the bank you have multiple toilets, showers etc 🤷‍♂️😂

ironically it comes down to local planning permission as bivvy's are classed as a temporary shelter but the use of a tent means the site could potentially have to register as a campsite and it depends on what their stated description of the site is for. it came up a few years back in my course fishing days as wanted to do an overnighter with my daughter and only had the standard 2 man little green tent and asked the bailiff, he was good about it and explained why i couldn't use it and pointede out that it's a bit silly when you could book 5 nights on the site but stay in a bivvy but not 5 nights and stay in a tent.............

My local park lane deepens down rapidly to about 7 foot a rod length out. I drag a lead through the margins until I feel the rise and then tighten the rod to the lead until the tip is on the surface and I've found the transition. The loose feed is then fed about a foot further out. The far bank trees always get targeted by most other anglers and I've normally got one rod there and the other is in the margins. Don't let on but the margin rod often outfishes the other!

I only use a 50” oval brolly, if it’s needed, I haven’t used my proper bivvy in years. I asked a few fisheries why they don’t allow tents etc, their reply was simple, it came down to insurance - they are not running a campsite their insurance apparently won’t allow tents. How true that it is and what the legal difference between a blue tent and a green bivvy is, I couldn’t say!

I can vans and cars ruining the vista and blocking the tracks annoy me and when people are with vehicle they also open and close them all the time and slam the doors to make sure they are shut and worse drive past your bivvy, When in Rome though, i don't see why I should be the only one pushing a barrow 😂

I do a lot of margin fishing, and dependant on substrate I will use either bottom baits (90%) of the time, or a really low lying pop up, usually on a spinner rig if it’s a bit choddy. My go to rig choice would be a bottom bait, with half a dozen boilies or broken baits around it, I want something that is discreet and only a mouthful for a carp. On my waters, everyone, (me included and I bet most carp anglers) take their old baits off the hair on the recast and chuck them in the edge, carp are aware of this and will ghost the margins looking for these. That’s what I’m trying to replicate, I’ll happily fish a single bottom bait in the margins, especially if I have seen carp visiting the same place. To my mind, a big pva bag with a blatant pop up would be too obvious, but every water is different!

Don't ever go with preconceived ideas, you'll ignore the best approach. In the margins, the carp are usually feeding on the bottom, a pop-up could be above them and ignored. One of the guys on on our syndicate has been quietly catching doubles when all else is quiet. Float fishing a couple of worms on a size 8 hook! His setup is basically for large tench. I used to fish a few busy day ticket waters, and on most margin fishing, a handful of hemp and pellets with a float fished hookbait over the top produced most fish.

Turning up with a preconceived idea of location/tactics is one of the biggest mistakes an angler can make imo. Clear your mind of expectation and fish where you see feeding activity. If you do find them in the margins then a pva bag is as good a tactic as any. Tiny qty's of bait, particularly pellets, are defo the one in the margins for me. I'd personally go for a bottom bait over a pop up though. You need that hook-bait/rig to be as inconspicuous as possible. Carp are naturally far more cautious in the margin in my experience and a pop up will often be ignored.

A fair bit of rubbish spoken in the last few posts imho. Let's face it, no-one wants to sit on the bank looking at red, yellow and blue tents. It's bad enough with all the khaki/olive and camo shelters lined up along the bank. It's supposed to be a fishery, not a campsite. These places are so busy now we can at least do our tiny little bit to blend in to the countryside by purchasing a green shelter. You can pick them up for the same price as standard tent if you look around. They're not imo. In fact I'd say you'll find plenty of anglers that snigger at this camo revolution that seems to be happening this past few years. I am more than happy with my olive brolly but, if we talk logically, if anything should be camouflaged it should be the biggest/most obtrusive thing...... which is the shelter. Each to their own at the end of the day but I can think of nothing worse than sitting staring at brightly coloured tents all day.

Check with the fishery. If the weather is dry enough, maybe no need for a tent for an overnight session, so nobody is any the worse off. As @newmarket puts it, I'm a lunatic, but sleeping under the stars is fine. In terms of the tents, olive green is more country coloured over the blue. Come to that though, ridge tents or dome style? That in itself is a fun one as if you have a low green dome tent you could 'get away with it'.

On a hot summers day... A husky water dog.

Ask the question at the fishery don’t get kicked of because you have the wrong thing

From bivvy, and at the bivvy...

I can understand that sentiment. I think I paid about £300 for my camera about 10 years ago so it's not expensive but I wouldn't want to fork out unnecessarily for another one. I keep my camera in a bag in my rucksack and inside a zip and seal sandwich bag that keeps any stray moisture out. I quite often take scenic and sunrise/sunsets shots on my camera that a mobile would struggle to do justice. It's also easier to be more create with the flash and cheaper camera's or mobile phones automatically try to flood the scene with light.

From an angling point of view, I would not take a very expensive camera into the hostile environment a lakeside represents and use it in close proximity to a wild animal intent on returning to that environment. Bigger cameras are heavier and need heavier tripods where as a ‘phone goes in the shirt pocket. However, if your intention is to enter the world of photography then that is a whole different ballgame and loads of fun. Enjoy. (But DO take a look at the time lapse option)

I agree. A trophy shot is a trophy shot but the bloopers really bring back the memories of a capture. Here's me getting a blistering take half way through a photo shoot 🤣🤣🤣

IMHO the only way to take trophy shots is using an intervalometer. Yes you get loads of unusable shots which you simply delete. You then get to choose the best from the rest. If you are are only using a phone try this app camera FV-5 Don't forget to keep the bloopers as well.