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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:

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

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 🎣

A couple from France, double take madness 🇫🇷

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’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.

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 👌

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.

Maples are the particle I would go back to if I had the time to have a turnover…or the need for mass particle baiting. @OldBoy not at all. I love a good particle chat. I don’t tend to use them much anymore as I do very short session and mainly fish over boilie only or pellet for ease. I don’t get time to pre-bait nowadays!

Not at all. It's a decent topic.

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 won 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!

Respect! Here's another one for you: I was sat watching the water from my bivvy, and Sky and me saw a van move slowly along the bank to what I call 'second car park'. A few minutes later my Messenger bleeps, with the message asking if thats me on the far bank followed by: "Thanks pal ill been down in abit mite fish to the right of you if aviable". JR is dyslexic so I wasn't worried about his spelling, but 'asking' if its ok to set up in the swim to the right. Not that he needed to ask, the nearest swim either side is around 100metres away, but just a little courtesy. That is the attitude of majority of the anglers on the syndicate.

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 👍👍

Dal henwood can fix it cheap enough dalectronics on Facebook he does get busy though and there are a few others who could repair if needed.

Ha ha they work ! Well two of them do the red one does not seem to work 😔.... See what the seller says . Thanks for the help lads it's been greatly appreciated 👍 👍 👍 👍

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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

Just got back from a 2 day trip. Apparently a bait company hired the place for a few days and my swim was littered with beer bottle tops, Fag butts and other assorted rubbish. The crisp packet and brunch bar were mine to go into the old quality street tub I use as my rubbish bin.