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Well I actually went back Tues to Thursday armed with particles including tigers, same swim, not a touch. Could see fish in the swim opposite, two anglers went in and both failed, watching them I figured I was pretty close and went long after them but same result. Was kicking myself for not getting maggots instead of the particle choice as they are clearly on naturals in the areas still containing surface weed or where that had recently cleared. Found 3 fish on the back of the wind on the 2nd afternoon and said to myself I'll move down here if no action for the 2nd night, with one being a good sized common, but the following day no fish in that area so a move turned into a go home early. Social at Bluebell this week but then back to the syndi end of Oct armed with maggots, worms and/or casters. Always disappointing to blank but have to remind myself it's 2 fish per acre at best so never easy.

That is the reason I nearly always make mine fresh just before casting. I do use a mix of pellets for bagging and meshing; halibut, CSL, bloodworm, koi/coarse and GLM in various sizes. Note, the Crafty Catcher bloodworm and GLM seem to be oversprayed. I managed to leave some Nash bags in my trouser pocket once, I was quite surprised that they were still undissolved after an hours 40⁰ wash. The plastic bag they were in had allowed water in, but the bags themselves were still almost intact.

I don't think it matters, but it also winds me up. I don't use bags a lot but when I do I protect the hook between a couple of little bits of corn starch packing peanuts (what most people call PVA nuggets). The corn starch is released more easily than PVA, and tends to keep the hook/barb free of debris. It also protects the hook point from penetrating the bait(s) in the bag.

I must have met you there! That's when I fished it. PigPen was probably my favourite swim, but I caught from most swims. I missed Sam's, Rocky and Digit, but had some of the other 30's. A lot of big fish from such a small water.

I am not a fan of Korda hooks! I found the standard Kranks were blunt compared to a Gardner Mugga. At Brackens Pool I had been using Muggas and an identical shaped Gamakatsu pattern with no problems, landing plenty of fish to over 30lb. One day I ran out of ready tied rigs so pinched one from a mate, identical to mine, but tied with a Krank. I kept on getting bleeps, but no proper runs. I reeled in and put on a freshly tied rig with a Mugga, recast to the same spot and had a proper run within minutes. When I got home I compared the hookpoints, sharpness. I balanced the hookoint on the ball of my thumb, with a 3oz lead I was able to lift the hooklink and lead off the desk. I tried the same with both the Gardner Mugga and the Gamakatsu's and could not even lift the weight of the lead. I did put pics on the site here! It may have been a bad batch, but it was not just one hook in the pack, every one was not as sharp. I have never bought another Korda hook since. Pretty much the only hook brands I trust now are Drennan/ESP, Gardner and my last few Solar 101's and Gamakatsu GP204's which went through a stage of not being available or in case of Gamakatsu no longer made.

Korda basics Krank Can't go wrong with those, perfect hookhold every time imo. Ive only ever had bends, or bluntness on the Kamakura versions. Standard ones, with a bit of honing have never let me down. I'm not a fan of the screws tbh, I'm afraid that could cause unnecessary tears in the fishes mouth & just wouldn't want to risk it. I prefer to use floss on a micro swivel, which has a lot more free movement than the screw set up.

Thanks for the info, I had a size 4 standard gauge Korda Krank open up on me on Sunday, gutted because it felt like a good fish. I was using 15mm pop ups. I've got some size 2 wide gapes at home and some 14mm pop ups, these are more buoyant than the 15's I was using. If 2's are ok i'll order some Korda basics Krank X's today as I prefer this patten.

Hi, I'm using small PVA mesh bags of boilie only, (2 x 15mm and 6 x 12mm baits ) with a match the hatch pop up on a Ronnie rig, barbless hook with a supple hook link on a lead clip. When using barbed hooks, does it matter if you have PVA residue on your hook where the barb is? I've tested the rig several times in a pan of water and most times there's a large visible amount of residue stuck on the underside of the barb that rarely completely melts. If I use barbless hooks the residue always slides off past the hook point. I'd rather use barbed if possible. Thanks

My funnel webs are pretty round like golf balls and I piece through the sides so I'm not going anywhere near the 2 knots, works well

Tnank Thanks for the heads up, i'll give that a try.

I use both PVA bags and meshes of boilies and 'bits', and I hate blobs of PVA on the hook. When I use bags, I push the hookpoint out of the bag in the corner so it doesn't catch on the contents. With mesh I often don't knot the end and use the hookpoint to close it and have noticed I don't get a blob of PVA as it was the knot that took longer to dissolve.

Bought a camping gas refill cylinder yesterday for cooking my particles - I'm banned from doing it in the kitchen because of the smell and an accident many years ago where the pressure valve on my pressure cooker came adrift and I managed to "paint" the ceiling! I haven't bought one for a few years but thought I paid about £35 last time, this time it was over £45. I put it down to the "Trump tax!" The price of diesel is going to have a massive impact on all prices and they are only going one way.

Still £337.50 over at Trent Baits.

No worries mate, I was referring to the syndi on the naturals 👍 Bluebell is just bags of crumb and pellet with halibut pellet wafter hookbaits.

Maggots not allowed at Bluebell mate so keep them hidden if you do 😉

I try not to worry too much about mosquito bites. All too often they're the only bites I get. Ian.

During Lockdown in 2020 I started getting back into my model building again. The majority of the aircraft are in 1:48, with a few 1:72 on separate shelf, and the ships are 1:600. Got a few more to do

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.

I've reeled in my rigs in the morning and the funnel web bag was fully intact, complete waste of a nights fishing lol Then it was winter and the bags had absorbed oil from halibut pellets doh 🤦‍♂️

My bait company has put the price of my fishmeal and GLM bait up from £337.50 per 50k to £412.50, only that bait has gone up in price. Was a bit shocked to say the least 👀 Anyone else seen companies doing this?