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I've never got on with moudable putty. Either if falls off or I can't get it to sit straight. I thread on the largest size droppers as in Elmo's post above and never have any problem. I like a "heavy" weight close to the hook as I'm sure it aids hooking.

Not Ronnie he invented the thing, reggie has always been a bit jealous of his success in the rig making fraternity maybe he worked alone to sabotage me.

I will just use these again, I don't want to change the whole rig tbh. The large ones will hold down most pop ups I use tbh

Put it on top of the kettle to soften.

Crayfish love putty, they chew tungsten putty and tubing for fun. Like you I try to avoid putty anywhere crayfish are present, so for balancing pop-ups I went back to olivettes, either small inline threaded and fixed on boom sections or 'lock and slide' olivettes with a piece of silicon or shrink tubing fixing them. In terms of putty, I still use Kryston Heavy Metal, once tried never beaten. I bought a tub around 2008 for Brackens on Nazeing, I finally had to buy a new tub this year. Dave Chilton did say that the make-up was lost by Tasker (?), so he had to go and get it redone for them. It is as good as it was, so it's still my goto. I do use a bit of putty moulded around a swivel or knot join on combi-rig pop-ups when no crayfish are about, and you can get away with it on silty areas as they don't usually feed on there.

This was yesterday afternoon. By morning it looked just like the posts above. Glad to get home for once.

Why does it always rain on me? And always when I need a wee ☔😂😂

Right I blanked but sadly I spent most of the night with a rig with no bait on and one probably 7 inches of the deck, one of my rigs the d rig kicker had snapped/been cut on the d rig, and one had no putty, I recast them this morning and in the wind one went right but got an ish drop so I left it while I sorted the other two rods. Had a couple of bleeps and I wanted it right so brought it in and guess what no putty again, (weed free too) So my question crayfish or does dark matter rig putty just fall off? one thing is certain I am going back to tungsten weights on my booms, don't know why I stopped really, putty is so unreliable in comparison.

For the last couple of seasons, I've put a small PVA mesh bag of powder on my hook before every cast. (Currently a mixture of CreAmino Bag and Stick Mix as I'm using the boilies and Sonubaits Krill Groundbait and also their Explosive Fishmeal Groundbait Mix.) Most of my fishing is done by dropping from a bait boat or on my local water, fishing in the margins. I make up about 30 bags at home and store them in an old ice cream tub to speed things up on the bank and to stop wet hands making holes in it. I was watching a video on YouTube the other day and there was a bag that was absolutely fizzing. To replicate it, I added a bit of baking powder to my mix and dropped a bag of with and without in a tub of water to see the difference. The baking powder bag definitely gave off a stream of bubbles but the most interesting part was just how long it took for the bags to breakdown, both at least 5 minutes. I made the bags up fresh so there was no oil rendering the PVA impervious to the water. A piece of the mesh only shrivelled up within seconds. I've always side hooked the bags and was confident I would be fishing within 30 seconds, not I'm not so sure. I always laughed at people who double bagged "because they were fishing in 10 foot of water", they could be delaying their next bite by half an hour! I prided myself that I could tie the 2 knots so close together, I could only just get the scissors through .(I know, tight!) Since watching the bags, I've include a "fuse" of about an inch and hook this on as I'm convinced it will be fishing properly within seconds. (Long enough to hit the bottom.) In the photo, the Baking Powder bag is on the right which is why it is a bit lighter.

The method is such an underused tactic for bigger carp the match men use it and I struggle to see why more of us don’t. always had a couple and a mould in the bag with me

Took Elmo's advice and added some 2mm pellets to my mix and compared it against the powder only and it wasn't conclusive and they still take an age to break apart. I added some 6 and 8mm pellets and that didn't really improve matters. That said, the Baking Powder was doing a really good job and the water in my tub was very murky that was making it difficult to see the bottom. Several years ago I used to barbel fish a brilliant swim. There was a gravel hump about 15 foot from the bank and you could wade it with wellies. Just below the hump, the river shelved off steeply to form a hole. I used to stand on the hump and fish with the rod pointing directly downstream. If things were quiet, I would stub my toe into the gravel so it kicked off a stream of silt. The amount of times I had a bite shortly after couldn't have been a co-incidence and I caught many doubles to over 12lb. Sometimes it's just doing something different to the crowds that brings results.

Definately not Ronnie and Reggie . 😁

Depending on what you are using for the mix you could buy a carp tart bagless wonder for sticks. great little device that means you don’t need pva. i usually grind down 3 or 4 boilies whack it in the wonder and thread it on the hook length. the harder you compress it the longer it takes to break down

That's a point Elmo. I use 2 teaspoons of powder and really whack the plunger on the stick down hard a couple of times so that the powder comes out of the tube as a solid lump, which makes tying it off easier. I used powders only as I wanted there to be plenty of smell and attraction in the area but no food, except my boilie. I will add some small pellets to see if that helps.

I was having a play in the shallows this weekend as one of my rigs came in with pva blob still attached,(mesh stick) the actual mesh broke down pretty quickly but the knots stayed intact for a long while. I wonder if it is because you are using powders, because it is packed it might not be that soluble thus delaying the breakdown. Maybe try just some pellets or boilies or something that leaves gaps and see if that makes a difference against your bags.

I used to test and time my PVA bags, string and mesh so I had an idea of breakdown time of various brands in the water winter and summer. The bags I use now are either Rod Hutchinson or Alacarp, run by Dave Goring on my syndicate. I just hand him a £10 note and he fills my hand with packs of PVA bags. Both brands break down within a couple of minutes. I know one thing, 15years ago, Nash PVA bags used to be awful, with a breakdown time of over an hour in the side pocket of a pair of combat trousers that have gone through a 60⁰ wash The outer plastic bag was unsealed, and the bags themselves were still complete despite the bag being full of water. Knots do take longer to break down than the rest of the PVA

You could try a stop knot to give the putty something to bite into did you warm it up enough ?

Interesting post, have to say last week i wound in to cast to a showing fish, nicked on a mesh bag of pellets and boilies but "old clumsy" here dunked it before lining up the cast, whipped it out double quick expecting my wife to be showered in salmon pellets but it made it on target, no fish though

Had to do another post due to file size. The bag on the left is the side hooked version and the "fuse" on the right. Obviously the fuse wouldn't be any good for long casting.

I know you felt this morning with wind and rain and the mud. I was packed up and home in an hour 30 mins from breakfast to in the car that's a record for me.

I've spoke to someone who knows it inside out and he doesn't think it is the krays, but could be small catfish and eels. Could've been anything I guess, I was putting putty on the krimps so should have held OK. Back to the tungsten sinkers I think. I've not had one of those go missing yet 😂

Im with you on the Kryston heavy putty and i would of bought mine about 2010, still got a bit left

That's been much of my fishing since last October. I hate being ill, so I'd go fishing rather than being sat in the flat. The fresh air seems to brighten you up. I do know though, when you have sepsis any session is hard work and I end up sleeping all day when I get home.

I might not have caught anything yet, but I have created a new fenland drain.

Rods out on my first session of my new campaign water. it appeared on my club book, no one knows what’s really in here. No one really fishes it and it was stocked 20yrs ago with 50 or so carp. I saw a 26lb on the bank and that was me sold! Just down for a few hours today to get the eye on the water and the first session ticked off.

Test it on gravel, not Rocky bottoms...