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

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 👍👍

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.

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.

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.

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 👍 👍 👍 👍

Another lovely animal! Funny story about a hedgehog from years ago at Taverham Mills. It was dark and I had to go for a pony so walked back to the lodge toilet, not bothering to switch my head torch on. As I came back to my swim I heard a crashing and clattering in the bushes. It was so loud I thought someone had fallen over and hurt themselves, rolling in the undergrowth, so I put my head torch on. It was a hedgehog with its head stuck in a sweetcorn tin. I'm especially wary of hedgehogs fishing now, not sure whether Sky is trying to play or eat them, but I have had to remove one from her mouth that had rolled into a ball.

Makes the hedgehog I had to shoo out one night look pretty tame!

Will do 😁

Awesome. I see them a lot, but v rare to get so close!

Tbf I'd assume the same mate. Keep us updated. I'd be amazed if they're not compatible.

Firstly, it's great to hear of the sport growing in popularity in China. I last visited China (Shanghai) on business in late 2019. It was a really vibrant place back then. I'm not sure I would be comfortable going back there ATM, but who knows what the future holds. Personally, I've never come across TICA. I suspect they're more aimed at the US market, but please correct me if you think I'm wrong on that. Whilst bait boats are great tools, they aren't cheap. In fact, compared to a set of big pit reels, a decent bait boat with GPS is very expensive and it's big and heavy. Whilst I'm sure you can be much more accurate with a bait boat, when you have to add that to a barrow and potentially lug it up to a mile to get to your swim, potentially sacrificing something else, the bait boat will probably be one off the first things to be removed from the barrow. Even though I could probably afford it now, I've got other things to worry about. The IP disputes is probably only a matter of time. Once a big manufacturer gets a significant new product copied and put onto the market very early on in production, then the issue will be taken seriously and something will get done. Right now, from what I can see, it's lots of small things such as line strippers, swivels, rig bits etc. being picked up and sold cheaply in bulk by small discount sellers here in the UK. As for design, that comes from necessity. Once there are anglers with specific new problems to solve, then people will start designing solutions for those problems and those problems may be specific to the location. It'll be interesting to see what comes in the future when new problems come up. That's an interesting blowback rig. Personally, I prefer a shorter shank, but it's whatever works. Is that what you caught the fish on? Is that a grass carp? Most of our fishing over here and on this forum is for King/Common Carp (Cyprinus Carpio), but doesn't mean we won't discuss other species. Tight lines!

Well the holes in mine look about that diameter so maybe it could work . The swingers arrive tomorrow so will test them then 😬 👍

At this present time I don't 😕 I had micron m's and I had swingers with those many years ago so just stupidly assumed swingers would work on these. I found a set of three for a good price and bought them but if they don't work I can send them back at least if no good . Just a [censored] as I love me night fishing 🤣

Are you talking about Europe rather than the UK? I'd say a minority use boats in the UK, although they are growing in popularity al the time. And I'd certainly say that (UK) anglers consider big pit reels a priority.

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.