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Ratticus pesticus sniffing me out at queens mere dam in swinton couple years back. Place is full of them as well as the drunk and drug abusing types 🫪🙄

Not sure if I am allowed to post this on a chilled site like this is but: Have looked on 'another place' and seems like so called magic hookbaits are going thru the roof price wise 😂 Think I might have an idea to do the same with mini tubs of particle hookbaits, can't be bothered but suspect it will eventually happen? The hookbait 'wars' seem to have reached stupid levels, one bloke even challenging others to a 'carp match' for lots of money..... Years ago remember a thing about 'Carp anglers' vs 'Match anglers'..... Match fisherman won on Carp caught weight.....

That is the problem of buying in bulk. I used to work in the chemical industry for most of my working life and we used to use 25kg plastic tubs of Potassium Permanganate in one process which were very sturdy and seals well. Needless to say, every time I used one it was washed out and brought home - I was doing my bit for the environment! I'm also fortunate that I have quite a large garage and they are labelled and stacked up around the edge and I can still get the car in. Interesting to get an insight from someone who has seen what goes on from the other side of the fence. Unfortunately my local shop didn't want to meet me half way as they prefer to sell the £5+ 1kg bags of pellets.

A few interesting points in here. Having worked in a couple of tackle shops and animal feed stores I know how much bait costs both ways. In terms of base mixes and boilies, the tackle shops buy from the manufacturer, at cost. It's basically divide buying price by 2, then multiply by 3 and add VAT, so £6.99 tackle shop buying price worked out at £11.99 when I was there. That's not that big a profit when you consider storage, freezer, carriage, wages and handling. It is very difficult to compete when anglers are able to buy direct from the manufacturer at cost! I used to field test, proper field testing rather than buying at discount, and I bought non test bait at discount, but got test baits for free, if that makes sense. The test baits I gave feedback on, and gave ideas for baits I came up with. There were a couple of my own flavour blends and pop-ups added to the bait makers range, which I never had to pay for. Come to that I know that a fish in I provided a lot of bait for for anglers going which was given to me by the bait company. I couldn't afford to pile bait in as a field tester, yet I saw some with magazine media presence really go for it. A bulk bag of pellets from a wholesaler is around £60, around £3 per kilo, so if a tackle shop sells them you are looking at around £5 a kilo, which is why so many sell 1kg bags. I'm not sure on the price of buckets, I think I paid £10 for a bucket last year (my sea fishing bucket) from a shop, yet years ago I used to get 10kg buckets of base mix for around £72.99, the bucket was free. @Golden Paws I don't like having loads of bait about, but I do have an advantage, Gladwells at Copdock Mill is 5minutes away, and I can buy ready prepped hemp, and 3kg buckets of pellets, or bulk sacks. Gladwells incidentally own Crafty Catcher so I can get bulk bags of Skrettings pellets or Crafty Catcher pellet buckets. I know Gladwells sell their boilie and bait range at the same price as tackleshops. I do buy 1 or 2 kilo bags of birdfood from the supermarket and prepare at home.

I buy 20kg sacks of pigeon conditioner from pets at home for around £20 and as it swells to 2 or 3 times it dry size, it's as cheap as chips. It was a little "bitty" and so I've also bought 25kg of maple peas from bait superstore for £30 to bulk it out a bit. I'm getting through a pressure cooker's worth on an average day session, topped up with some pellets which I also buy in 20kg sacks as it keeps the price down rather than buying a 1kg bag for over a fiver. It really annoys me when you see sponsored anglers chucking in 10kg or more of boilies which would equate to about £120, if they had to pay for it of course. When I looked at buying some boilies a good few years ago, the brand I was using showed all it's sponsored anglers on their website - and there were plenty of them! It's bad enough buying it for yourself, when you know that you are subsidising other peoples angling, it does grate a bit. I changed to Baitworks as I liked the look of their products and as they sell direct to the public, they cut out the middle man (tackle shops I'm afraid), who want their 50% of the selling price. My local tackle shop used to sell pellets in 3kg buckets which made them a bit cheaper. They stopped doing it as they said the flimsy buckets they were using were too expensive. I offered to bring back my old buckets to be topped up but they didn't seem interested. I also enquired about buying a sack of pellets from them but that also wasn't met with much enthusiasm. I then had no qualms about going on-line and then buying in bulk.

I’ve just made some tigers. I add heaps of dark brown sugar at the soaking stage. Boil it in the same solution. Really kick starts the “gooing” stage. Two nights in a relatively cool garage and there is a heavy goo already. poor example as tigers don’t take much on but I tried one and they are super sweet compared to a standard one cooked without sugar. I don’t add anything to particle apart from sugar, salt or garlic. Occasionally chilli. No artificial stuff, think it defeats the point. as Yonny said you dont boil out salt or sugar. When you cook pasta you add salt to the boiling water before adding to pasta, to enhance its flavour. You then boil it and you get the taste. The salt remains. Sugar in the same.

Hitting boiling point does not mean boiling out. You can boil all the water away. The salt/sugar will remain.

You can already buy silly priced pots of particle hookbaits. They are out there.

Wasn't the original carp/specimen angler Richard Walker versus Match angler Billy Sails? Then there was a John Wilson one against an England international match angler, Di ck Clegg(?) Both were on 3 head to head matches and I think that both were one by the specialist angler 2-1. I don't think that I was born for the first, and can't remember the Clegg vs Wilson waters, other than John Wilson knew the Royalty stretch of river and drew on a big shoal of bream. I think that they used the same waters as the original, so it's likely that the Witham was included. I have seen John Wilson tie a size 16 spade end behind his back, and it was tidier than me with a spade end hook tyer. I think that we have mentioned the silly price of super duper tubs of pop-ups, and I agree £25 is silly money. I get disgruntled at paying £9 for a tub!

I had this caterpillar crawling along the floor of my bivvy, and so I didn't kill it I picked it up and took the photo. It is an Emperor moth caterpillar and while not rare rare are not particularly widespread.

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Think the duck wanted out of the rain 🤣

Start planning your retirement in France now Elmo. No worries about Golliwog souvenirs here. Everything is very laid back including the fishing

So some of you know I love quiet waters, by quiet I mean I'm on my own. I have found many untouched hidden gems in my life, he a a sample of unfished[before me] waters.

Here are a couple I found in Poland, unfished.

This is with iPhone

Just random pics

Took all of these whilst having a family day out at Fen Drayton last year, such a beautiful place,

Love these, people putting some great shots on

Butetown rumney

Brereton Country Park