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Beginning and end of my quick overnighter, god I love September/October carping!

A couple from France, double take madness 🇫🇷

I met Chilly at the big one show last February, what a thoroughly decent man. Made time to have a good chat with my son and I. made my day getting 10min of his time

Afternoon all, so I managed to get a free pass to get out and dunk some boilies in a pond last night, so I chose to head to my local tricky park lake. now I haven’t been there since the start of the season, and due to extremely low water levels, the club made the decision to shut the water for fish welfare, so last night was my first trip back in a while. on getting down to the lake, I found it was fairly busy, but everyone was on the opposite bank. I headed around to a small, neglected swim that is often ignored, which coincidentally is my favourite swim on the whole lake! there were a few signs of feeding fish, so I got the marker out and located the area of smooth harder silt that does the bites and soon had the rods clipped up to the range. tackle consisted of 3 x 12ft fox horizon X4S TT carp rods with fox EOS 12000 reels spooled with 12lb esp synchro main line. Rigs were leadcore helicopter rigs with 10” fox cortex soft slip D rigs with size 6 ESP barbless Clawhammer hooks. Bait was my usual premier superaminos/shellfish sense appeal offering made in the shed. 3 rods were dispatched to the spot adorned with 7 bait stringers, and with that i broke out the spod rod! I’m not quite sure what possessed me, but I ended up putting out a whole bucket of hemp, boilies and mixed pellet with lashings of salt which is a lot of bait for a quick overnighter, but my gut said it was the way forward, so in it all went! rods out, about 100 spods (so it seemed) done, it was time to chuck up the bivvy and get the kettle on. as the sun sunk beneath the trees, the swim came alive, with bubbling and swirling all over the spot. I was getting liners like nobody’s business and it was getting pretty obvious that something was going to happen… …well it did, bream after bream! I was hammering through the rigs as slabs of 3-5lb came gliding in, it was simply a case of hitting repeat and getting the stringers out there. as an aside, some anglers try to avoid the bream, but I welcome the activity, all that feeding soon draws the carp. at 11pm, the left hand rod pulled tight then dropped slack, as I was crouched next to it trying to decide if it was a liner or bream, the middle rod picked up and tore off! after a spirited fight, I soon slipped the net under a pretty linear that just scraped 20lb I don’t know what happened, but I look deranged in the pics! I sorted the left hand and middle rods and got them back out there, lucky 7 bait stringers attached and tried to get some sleep. I was awoken by a single bleep at 1am and opened one bleary eye to see the middle rod rip off again, this fish felt slightly better, taking me through every overhanging bush in the near margin, but the trusty horizons soon had it beat, and at 25lb made me a buzzing lil carper. pressing repeat again the middle rod was back out there, new hooklink attached. I finally got some shut eye at 2am for a whole 90mins when the middle rod decided to trundle off again, the strike met with a determined slow plodding weight that didn’t really give me too many dramas, just refused to come in. eventually, it succumbed to pressure and rolled into the outstretched net At 30lb it made the trip really! Big high shoulders, broad across the back, it was a pearler. (Cue stupid face again) it was so wide over the chest, I struggled to hold it properly. that rod replaced, I climbed into a damp, carp slime encrusted sleeping bag and got some kip. on dawn, the bream reappeared as the carp retreated back into their day areas, the sun started beating down so I decided to wrap it and head home, well happy!

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:

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

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.

Back on the rods at the syndi for a couple of nights, weather looks good for it, fingers crossed 🤞

Were things better? That's a very good question.... I am of an age when 'social media' really meant Carp Talk and Carp World... then that cheeky newcomer Rob Maylin with Big Carp, from memory not long after the magazine shelves in Smiths were rammed with Carp mags.In my opinion, it is now like so many other things, ramped up by so many social media outlets, does it affect me, no I might look at the odd YouTube thing that catches my eye. But to actively follow 'fisherman' just seems a bit wierd to me, let me be honest I did start to watch a 'Sir' Pete Springate one but turned it off after 10 mins, actually very boring... and he was old school. As for very early days, I still remember my first carp caught, cat food and groundbait paste from a small farm pond on the IOW. I didn't get seriously into carp fishing for many years after that, concentrated on club match and pleasure fishing in the surrey area, think my point is that I didn't suddenly go straight into the Carp thing.I do feel slightly sad that the joy of catching a dace, chub or even gudgeon seems to have been lost, assuming any rivers now actually are able to support them any more? Finally, to get back to your question... In my opinion, I think manners and respect for other anglers were very higher than they are now. Were they better, I think so but guess in reality things are so different now and most of us have to live with it.

I met chilly at the carp society event at sandown Park race course must have been 2018 , I randomly bought one of his books ( light my fire) from the tackle exchange in Walton the year before and loved it, what a great book. So while I was there got him to sign all of his books that I had bought prior to the event 👍 absolute top fella and proper down to earth.

1. For the ultimate in being a tart, take a bivvy, brolly and gazebo. Don’t laugh, I saw it last weekend on a commercial where you can park your car behind the swim. 2. Have a splash mat under your reels, the ultimate in tartyness. 3. Carry 20 different types of pop-up but only use 1. 4. Take a 2 man bivvy but you only do over-nighters. 5. Take a powered fridge despite the fact you only keep your sandwiches and lager in it. 6. Own a 5-season sleeping bag despite the fact you hang your rods up in October. 7. Have a power bank that could keep a family home going for a couple of days in a power cut but you only charge your phone and torch. 8. Your rod-pod has so much stainless that you have to wear sunglasses to look at it. 9. You have a power barrow with so much grunt it could stop an average scrum but you only fish a 2 acre lake with manicured lawns. 10. Your phone is permanently on FaceBook so you can keep in contact with both of your friends. 11. A pair of 10x25 binoculars is more than ample and fits in your pocket when folded down. So why do you take a set of field glasses that can spot a mouse a mile away? 12. You wear bivvy slippers to keep your groundsheet clean. 13. A head torch is a necessity after dark but you need to keep it down to keep your night-sight when you turn it off. Your 8000 Lumen monstrosity resembles the Blackpool illuminations. 14. You bring your camper van to a commercial that allows rear of swim parking and stay in it all day and night watching TV or reading a book and only come outside once a day. Don’t laugh, I have seen it. 15. You own 2 sets of rods/reels/buzzers because you fish different waters and don’t want to handicap yourself. 16. Despite having a double burner and family sized returnable gas bottle and associated cookware, your meals are delivered to your swim from the local greasy spoon and pizza shop. 17. You have a bait boat with GPS and Sonar despite your lake being as pancake flat as the day the bulldozer created it. It also has a 4kg payload despite the fact you only use PVA bags. 18. Everyone loves a bivvy table. A small one just big enough for your tackle box, scales, phone and receiver is ample. A true tackle tart pushes it to the max and I saw 2 blokes in adjoining swims with a decorating table that you use for hanging wallpaper. 19. You have a top of the range DSLR with an impressive pixel count but the deal clincher was the 40 frames per second burst shooting rate it offered. Despite the fact you will never use it. You only shoot in Auto and use the photo’s unaltered on your FaceBook page. 20. You take 3 nets with you, “just in case.” The water you are fishing is rock hard and 2 fish a season is considered good going.

Uncooked prawns (greyish) at this time of year, deadly for perch - and carp

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.

A belated welcome to Carp.com.

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

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.

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.

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

Cheers for that mate 👍 I took the head apart and found a wire had parted from the led so I've soldered it and it's working again 👍👍

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Thanks , Nick

Probably not earth shattering news for most of us but it's worth spending 5 minutes on.

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 Thread is a Guide to the Knotless Knot and Basic Rigs Here is the Knotless Knot as used for many basic Rigs, also a set up that can be used to create a pop-up rig. It is as simple as attaching a hook with a knotless knot, and in many or even most cases, simple is best. There are sometimes when a rig needs to be slightly upgraded and by adding a Line Aligner then you can create a more aggresive hooking angle These simple rigs can be adapted for Braids, Nylon, fluorocarbons and Coated Braids, and used for bottom baits or pop-up rigs.

A coated braid, in this case Kryston Snakebite, line aligned with a short section around 10mm stripped back on a size6 Solar 101 hook, sliding ring on the hookshank, with a 4lb mono hair and a meshed mishape boilie. The rig ring means I can alter the hair length, in this case I found this gap was exactly right on the harder chalk lakebed.

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

nice one Nick

The next rig is a line aligned stiff rig with a hair made from soft braid. I have used Gardner Trick link in 20lb as the hooklink material. Being a stiff rig it really does prevent tangles, and can be used for long distance casting with no worries. To get it as straight as I have I have steamed the hooklink as I shrunk the tubing. I find this rig will lay itself flat and straight, and on the pick-up you want the fish to hook itself.