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Just had an e-mail from a mate who has booked some trips on a new carp mecca water: We are pleased to announce that Britain's first indoor Carp arena will open in the autumn and we are taking bookings now.The venue is known as Mary’s Pool and the fish were stocked last week and are being fed with high protein boilies and pellets. The facilities will include a fully licenced cafe that offers deliveries and every swim has a cabin with an en-suite toilet and shower, kettle, microwave, air fryer, fridge, toaster and small oven with hobs. Other benefits include rear of swim parking with free EV charging points The 5 acre lake is inside a converted warehouse that has been insulated with thick layers of high efficiency rigid foam and is near Farkham Hall. The high-tech venue circulates the water using a bank of 150 metre ground source heat pumps incorporating oxygen saturation technology and will be kept at an optimum 24 Celsius, which will promote rapid growth of the fish. There will be 100,000 LED lights in the roof that are programmed to give 12 hours of day and night and are graduated to simulate dawn and dusk. There are also 200 wall mounted heated industrial wall fans that are strategically positioned to create an on-shore breeze and the strength of the fans are on a cyclic 360 degree power system so that it will encourage the fish to permanently move and so all swims should contain fish on a regular basis. The roof contains over 2,000 ten metre solar panels and the venue will be carbon neutral. “I’m incredibly excited about this new venture” enthused the owner, Rupert Chudley-Smith. “Thirty specially chosen fish with high growth potential are already in their new environment. They are all triploid fish as the eggs were subjected to heat and pressure shock on fertilisation and as such, they will not have the annual stress of spawning and associated weight loss. There are 10 forties and the rest are high 30’s and have a potential growth rate over 8lb a year and we are looking at UK 80’s within 5 years.” I know it won’t be cheap but after spending £400 on a winter ticket only using it 3 times and blanking every trip due to the weather, I’m sorely tempted.

I'm starting to like my non essential car bag idea tbh, i could leave my net, unhooking mat, scales, camera,rods & reels pretty much everything I don't need to not catch fish, might as well just park up and sleep in my bivvy, game changer 😂

Nah, you're doing it all wrong fella. The correct way is to clear it all out in spring, then slowly add it all back in, plus more, over the course of the year 😅 Yeah it's tricky to justify hauling stainless around nowadays with such decent ali, carbon and titanium stuff available. The obvious answer is your mrs buys you some new stuff 😅

Today ,I went down a new little club type of water...I was after anything other than carp ,...I had a tuberculed bream ,which fought like a carp,honest... And around 10 carp,which I didn't want ,was after Perch if I'm honest ,prawns n pin ,I call it .. Was fun on the float ,5lb maxima and a 14 barbless hook,...makes a change from sitting behind 'beepers '

Mate ,the 'golf ' word must never ,ever be mentioned on a forum devoted to piscatorial leanings I learnt the hard way ,I became an outcast ,as I once played pitch and putt,...( know that grating feeling only to well )..😏

It’s the mats that do my swede in… blooming cumbersome unwieldy things. didn’t worry about it in the 80’s and early 90’s lol my latest try is a Aqua atom self inflating one… Probably got 20 mats of different t types and sizes in the shed

I'm using Berkley Big Game Flourocarbon 30lb for my leader, seems banging tbh and cheaper than the tiny carp spools, easily as good as the Fox Illusion if not better. I bet it would work in lower BS for hooklinks, worth a try anyway. 👍

That's what I do every year 😂😂😂 One day I will justify a power barrow 😱

Good effort😉

I'm afraid to weigh it but I emptied my lead bag at the beginning of the year and it equated to two Chinese containers full of leads, I was carrying all of them all year round 😬🤣

I've been following a visual patrol route from the shallows to a mega patch of dead and decaying pads . It's pretty shallow ,but you can see the stems and rhizome entrails moving around ..so I plonked here for 24hrs . 11 takes ,and 8 landed ..including this one ,which was stocked nearly 5 yrs ago ,when it was much ,much smaller..soon those pads will be impossible to fish until next year.

Very quiet on the fish front but the weather is lovely, really does feel like spring, all the birds are chirping. Good to be out 👌

I must admit I do like my Solar P1 pod and sticks, with the buzzer bar adaptors so I don't have to use the full pod. The buzzers stay on the bars unless I go single sticks, so the pod carry bag is handy. I did have an aluminium pod years ago, a decent Dragon item (!), but discovered stainless locking screws would wear out aluminium threads, so went to stainless. I have a horrible feeling that I would break carbon.

Korum opportunist mat bag, 2 rod quiver with landing net and brolly, chair... Job done... My back and osteoporosis has called time on overnighters now so I have to travel light... Does tickle me the amount of gear we lug about...

Standard operating procedure innit......

Doh, sadly it wouldn't surprise me if this was real 😂

Left margin went off at midnight last night, it didn't feel right as i could feel the line grating which ended up cutting me off. Not feeling it today, might try golf instead 🤣

gone back on chod rigs i went for 15lb mouth trap

Stocking up for spring. 20kg of squido boilies. A bulk spool of Fluoroshield in 0.4, another chod it tool and a castable thermometer. Also trying out some new Fjuka Sensate wrapped boilies and thick liquid. Oh, and some rock salt. Started baiting yesterday, so the campaign has begun...

What I used to do is ,if I don't use it on a couple of trips ,it don't come along anymore ..it sounds ruthless ,but I'm an older angler now ( 😭 )..so less is more One thing I won't get rid of is my original lockey stainless ,my wife bought it for me ,so I appreciate it even today ,when there is much light options ..to be honest ,much of my inspiration comes from the Bushcraft/wild camping crowd,they seem to have it down with minimalist ideas

Having just got back from a blank night on the park lake, the boy and I were unloading the car when a neighbour came up and asked me if I was interested in rehoming some “old” reels and bits that she was about to chuck in the bin. I said I’d have a look, after all, I could clean them up and find a home for them (or bin them myself!) so she soon returned with 3 diawa windcasts z5000 reels, spare spools still in their boxes! One has a bent handle, but they are otherwise pristine! she also gave me half a dozen fox single sticks and a pair of what appear to be fox micron M shaped (they’re copies) alarms! She wouldn’t accept a penny for them either. the alarms will be checked that they work and I’ll gift them on to a youngster in need of a first set, the single sticks have been snaffled by the boy and the reels already have a home on my spare carp rods… just need to repair the 3rd. anyone know much about the windcasts? They seem lovely reels from what I can see.

Lucky boy, love good days like that, one of my neighbours recently moved and gave my daughter a pair of old 11ft daiwa sensor Z carp rods, they will be perfect to get her started. I've bought her a new reel for her birthday, hopefully she can get out and catch a few with me this year on them.

I'm trying to work out how I lose leads. I've had a few snaffled by pike, and last week the swans caused a break-off by dragging the line through the rushes. I did get the rig back but lost the lead. I'm just looking at my modelling table, and noticed that I have 10 3oz leads that are in a state of mid paint and coat in protective varnish. I can't remember buying them unless I stuck them on a sea fishing leads order which is a distinct possibility. I've got a tub full of 4 or 4.5oz Stonze, I don't like using them, they cast like a bag of spanners and can only be lowered in or go straight in a PVA bag, but that weight is too heavy.

I once seen a guy with so much weight in his lead bag ,it was heavier than my main ESP bag,rucksack ..so I thought about it and carry 6 leads ,3 on and 3 spare ,but with spares in me car...

I minimalised my kit for years, rucksack, unhooking mat strapped to rucksack, rod holdall with lightweight bivvy dome or umbrella in, bedchair and then bait bucket. I could carry it in one trip or barrow to the swim, and it worked nicely. I did plenty of weekend or two night sessions like that. Sky totally changed my fishing, I then had to add extra water and dog food, and the barrow was struggling, so now it's 2 trips if I barrow, although I'm lucky on the syndicate that I can unload behind the swim most of the time, and then put the car in the car park. I've had to move swim mid session, and although only 100metres, it took 3 hours!

I use propolis occasionally. Bit like Kev though, just let them heal themselves unless it’s really bad. I also have some korda stuff (very old though) in the side pocket of the mat. as said. Best course of action if you want to/have to use something is any of the anti septic stuff followed by propolis on the body. But tbh there’s every realistic chance that the fishes goes and rubs the propolis off once released anyway! Or thrashes on the mat or sling and knocks it off beforehand. if a fish is obvs suffering from some infection from a wound it’s best to give it a salt bath and quarantine it, any treatment an angler puts on won’t be of much use!