Leaderboard

Hi all I'm riks and I'm 40 years old and have been fishing on and off since I was a teen. I love my carp and course fishing , love feeder fishing ! I joined up a couple weeks ago as I was looking for information regarding my old school fox DXR alarms and wether fox mk2 illuminated swingers would work with them. Well the help I got was awesome. I took a chance on purchasing the swingers without knowing if they would work and members of the site advised that they should/would and safe to say saved me from an expensive dose of anxiety 😂 . I'm originally from walton on Thames so I've always been a river thames fisherman but now I live in greater Manchester I am mainly stuck to lakes . And also looking for fishing buddies as I don't really know anyone up here I'm sad to say. Unfortunately I can only get out every other weekend so not as often as I would like with family and work etc. just want to say thanks to those who helped me with my post and tight lines to you all 🎣

Just back from my return visit to Brothers Lake, France. Weather at the start was hot and the fishing was slow, but as the week progressed and temps cooled off the fishing got better and better and I finished off with 15 fish to 49lb inc 7 x 30s and another mid 40. Tactics were scatterings of boilie only - put out with the stick to a marker float every afternoon and a small top-up at dusk. The fish were feeding heavily on naturals, fizzing up most of the day everyday, just past where we were fishing or anywhere without lines between us in the middle. Being a small lake they did exactly this last trip despite us being on the opposite bank this time. I chose to go with my newish wafter rig, a slip-d, multi - tied using the Korda hook-clip, size 6 wide gapes, Esp Tungsten Loaded and Gardner XL tungsten aligners, Korda tungsten large anti tangle sleeve - with a total rig length of around 5 inches. With a golf ball sized funnel-web bag of mixed pellet, boilie crumb and 10ml Odyssey XXX. Feeding 15ml XXX and using 15ml wafters as hookbaits. By the end of the week I just wanted a 50 to complete what had been a great session and at 1am on the final night I got my wish, well not quite but 49 will more than do. Some of the fish:

A couple from France, double take madness 🇫🇷

You know what I've never thought of going for the perch 😕 nice one 😜 👍

Good luck fella, I'd be having a go for Perch on lures with all those fry you mention it must have some big ones. 👍

It's teaming with fry , it has its fair share of bream as those beggars keep waking me up during the night but I figured that spombing chilli hemp was the cause of that. I use 16mm krill boilies with a corn pop up on top with a hair rig which has been good most of the time on other waters but the carp there are hard to catch and that's why I like it other than the views . Definitely gonna go up a size in boilie next time , managed to get hold of a session pack of nash citruz cultured 20mm pop ups as I had great results with the pink citruz boilies back in the day, will try a different spomb mix too 👌

No idea sorry, but looks a lovely setting, I guess nuisance species might be an issue with all the roach etc. I guess hard hookbaits and/or bigger baits will help.

Thanks buddy 😁

Welcome to the forum fella 👍

Welcome. Walton on Thames. I know it well. I'm based over near Leatherhead. Which waters did you fish/clubs were you a member of? Were you a Thames exclusive fisherman? We're usually a friendly bunch and don't usually bite..... usually. 😜

Looks lovely. This thread's been a bit quiet this year....

Fished late afternoon for 4hrs, had so many dogfish stoped counting after 10 no over species could get a look in 🙄

This was Shingle Street last Wednesday. A high tide at 23.09 so I arrived at 5pm so I could set up in daylight, and see the low water mark. I normally aim to fish until 3hours after high. As you can see it is a high, deep, shingle beach, no real need for long casting, although I do put a big bait as far as I can 'just in case', and that was the one that produced the thornback ray on prawn and squid on a size 5/0. The short range rod, at probably 50metres produced a few dogfish, a tiny smoothhound and the conger eel all on ragworm and squid. No bites until around 10.30, the first doggy, the thornback came just after high, and the last fish around 1.30.

This year has been tough sea fishing. No major blowy weather, calm seas and clear water. Night time is the best time to be fishing. Lug worm and rag worm are easy to hook, put them on a hollow straight baiting needle then thread them onto the hook. Best then tipped with a bit of squid or fish. As with coarse fishing, don't overcast the fish, at night more bass and sole are caught within 30metres than at longer range. And don't think bigger is better, a size 1 or 2 hook is as big as you need for sole.

A belated welcome to Carp.com.

Good morning all, so the last 3wks have flown by in a sleepy haze of sleepless nights, nappies, bottles and sterilising bottles, however yesterday wifey told me it was time to get the rods out! Trying to overcome my surprise, after all I hadn’t planned an overnight trip for many months into the future, why the free pass? My wife wanted a practice run of looking after the children alone for when I return to work next week, so I was banished to the lake! well you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth do you?? luckily, if you saw my “playing with bait” thread, you’ll see that I had a bag of bait tucked away in the freezer, so the gear was dragged from the shed, food and bait loaded and I was off to the Kent boarder to fish a lake I’ve christened “zombie sheep lake” I needed to pop into the tackle shop to pick up a few bits and while browsing the shelves, my eye wandered over the racks of bivvies all in a row… now my JRC STI 1 man bivvy has finally died a death after far too many years to count, indeed it had been coughing up blood for at least 10yrs and now I’m in my 40s, the thought of doing winter sessions under my trusty oval brolly and storm sides really didn’t appeal! 13yrs of Army service, sleeping under a poncho in a ditch had meant that I was pretty used to kipping in less than favourable conditions, but any fool can be uncomfortable can’t they? so I ended up going in for a few packs of hooks and pva bags and left with a JRC Defender bivvy… oops after a 20min detour to the bailiffs house to pick up a part of my carp porter barrow that I left behind on my last (blank) trip 6wks ago, I got to the lake about 1pm, happy to see that I had it all to myself. I barrowed my gear round to the point swim, as I can see and cast to a large portion of the lake, where there was a nice gentle breeze drifting in, and set up the gear. I rigged up a pair of Fox Horizon X4S TT 12ft rods with my Fox EOS 12000 Reels spooled with 12lb synchro XT mainline, to a length of Korda leadcore fished helicopter style, hook links being 10” fox cortex soft coated braid, fished to a size 6 ESP Clawhammer hook fished slip D style and a 1” length of shink tube, line-aligner style. Bait was my fishy boilie offering. breaking out the marker rod, I found a nice silty hump with 7.5ft of water over it, with the surrounding lakebed 9ft deep. It was plenty big enough for the 2 rods that I would be using, although what was obvious was the lack of water, it was at least 2ft down from its usual summer levels. As a result, the lake hadn’t been fishing well, but who cares! I’m out on the bank in the sun and a carp just came out up to the wrist of its tail only feet from my marker float bobbing about. i catapulted about 100-150 baits over the hump and cast both rods to their respective spots. One on a 7 bait stringer and one in a pva bag. Now obviously, a soft coated hooklinks 10 inches long aren’t ideal for for pva bag use, and I really couldn’t be bothered to faff about trying up soft coated braided links, so snipped off the corner of the large pva bag and threaded the hook link through the hole so the hook link dangled out the bottom. After filling it with 1 & 2mm pellets and crusher boilie, I sealed it all up, then nicked the hook into the bag opposite the lead. It looked a bit noddy, but it was worth a try! with the rods out, it was time to get the base camp set up! You can see how low the water it as that gravel shelf is usually under water! now it was time to break out the new bivvy!! I lovingly unpacked it from its bag, laid it all out, fanned out the poles and started clipping it all together, only to find that one of the poles was snapped! Nightmare! Despite all my bodging attempts, this bivvy was knacked, so in an absolute huff, I wrapped the bivvy back up, reeled in the rods and trudged back to the car to chuck the bivvy in and grab the oval brolly, no decadent abode for me tonight! returning to the swim, I redid the rods (again!) and threw up the oval, still muttering to myself about the injustice of it all, a quick brew soon sorted me out though. the night soon drew in and the carp were getting more active and I retired to the carp cot around midnight confident on some action to christen the X4S rods that haven’t had a decent carp on as yet! at 1am, the left hand pva bag rod gave a flurry of bleeps, with the dinky esp bobbin tight to the Neville, so I struck and found myself into a plodding weight. After a pretty unspectacular fight, a carp was now nestled in the folds of my landing net. at 23lb, I was buzzing! The dodgy tied pva bag had done the job! with that working, another found it’s way back out there, and I got back to sleep. At 4am, the same rod absolutely flew, the Neville was screaming as I made my way to the rods, one shoe on one off. This one started beating me up from the get go, and after a spirited battle, a 21lb common hit the net, along with 20 tiny perch. with the pva bag working, I pressed repeat and got it back out there. As the sun was rising, I made another brew and watched the water as the sun came up (proper carpy that) once dawn had arrived, I climbed into the bag to get some kip, although it wasn’t to be, as the pva bag rod dropped slack. Winding down i soon felt the weight and soon had the carp boring down the margins, where it promptly beached itself! I couldn’t get it in the net, so gently guided it into deeper water where it rolled into the net first time. At 26lb, it was an immaculate common! (Check out the realtree MC Hammer pants!) I redid the rod and had a celebratory cuppa, when 4 day anglers arrived, that was my sign to wrap up and head home, slightly earlier than planned, but I had my share, it was time to let the day guys enjoy this delightful little pool. swinging into the tackle shop on the way home, I exchanged the defective bivvy for another one, which is sound, so alls well that ends well.

Very nice!

I tried sea fishing at snettisham Bay Norfolk this year and yeah il stick to my course fishing 🤣 was not a fan of those lug worms and threading them over the hooks. Was there all day as the tide came in and not a sausage . Probably doing it wrong but I've had a go ha ha

Watching the sun drop behind the trees anticipating the coming witching hour 👌