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Bear in mind it'll likely mean less bites..... if you have the time to wait for the ones that matter that's great. If not - you could be screwing yourself over. I don't measure, I just do it by eye. I guess I'm talking about the bottom of the pop up to the deck/substrate.

If I get more of the good ones it will be a good decision though. I don't catch that many anyway lol.

I think I've already started using soft hinge rigs in my head now. Going to go longer and towards the sky with them, even with a hit and run leadclip they should fish on most substrates bar thick weed.

Another great example 👍

two little 2lb test 11ft shimano aero rods with little shimmy bait runners out this evening, left rod to the tree in the water opposite, right rod next to the platform right of shot. Had 3hrs out, landed 5. Nothing huge, but nice to be out again

That's certainly made me think! I have tried hinged stiff rigs and even Ronnies for a while but didn't really set the world on fire with them. I always test my rigs in an old ice cream tub before I cast them out to check that they behave as "natural" as possible. Your analysis on the average size of fish using blatant pop-up's is really interesting. I remember reading a Dave Lane article where he forgot his rig putty and so cast his pop-up's out anyway and had a red letter session!

Just reading through this thread and it got me thinking 🤔. I'd say about 95% of my UK big fish captures (35lb plus) were on pop ups and they were nearly always different colours to my free bait.That being said, I fished nothing but pop ups for a very long time so if I hooked a lump then it would have been on a pop up. It was only in the last 4 or 5 years of my carp fishing that I started using wafters a lot. I'm pretty sure that most of my French fish were on wafters though. A mate on dinton once asked me "how come you catch a lot of bigguns?". I put it down to the spots I was fishing if I'm honest and a large slice of luck but this thread has maybe changed my mind on that as I virtually always fished pop ups, he was a snowman or bottom bait angler. Interesting for sure.

Thanks for info 007,I'll carry on my search ,I don't want a broomstick, but hopefully I can find one that actually bends a bit

This is the one that comes straight to mind, it was proof beyond doubt - he showed them alright!

Little intimate water I found recently,Tranny and 2+1...