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Nothing exciting, but the boy and I managed a few commons this morning to start this years captures. now have to find a tip eye for a fox warrior 2.75lb rod (any ideas?)

Just joined, more a browser than anything else, interested in bait, less in tackle or methods so will watch and listen. Hello everyone.

This mornings 5am to 10am session

Mate, spent so many days on there in the summer holidays and a few overnighters in the snow lol Loved it, seemed massive when I first looked across and bottomless lol Mostly fished in the edge, watching them come and go it was mega. You could hear Tom coming for his money from his house 'Mr TAYLOR' he'd bellow in my ear - happy memories, he was like a fishing dad to about 50 local kids over the years probably more, legend! My first 20 from there would have been an original leeney 😎

I decided to start making bait for myself recently, now I've got a lot of the bits I needed I thought I would start with some hookbaits. Not perfectly round but good enough 😂 1egg, liquid preserve, 5ml creamy scopex, Betaine, milk B and butterscotch sweetener. Pop ups are mainline polaris dyed yellow and wafters are AA Baits pink wafter mix + a bit of tropamino basemix as I run out of wafter mix whilst mixing. I think the wafters turned out better and actually came out fairly round, both do what are they meant too when attached to a rig so that's good, now air drying and will give them a splash of extra flavour once they are dried,then all I've got to do another time is match the hatch hookbaits and start rolling kilos and kilos of boilies. Don't think I'll buy polaris again though will get some AA Baits pop up mix next time. I've also been using Copilot to make up loads of recipes, I've got 20kg of tropamino basemix to use up first though. But I've started down the rabbit hole.

If its been touched by Donald I'm out.

Will say having used a couple of pop up mixes in the past, the best I found was BAF before they stopped selling it. AA would be my choice if I ever make any more though.

Just fork out £20 for a tub of magic beans mate..... all your worries will be over! 😂

Interesting session today, I had a premonition that I needed to be in a certain swim, and got up early, abandoned wife and children to their prospective fates and shot down the lake. No cars parked anywhere, so the swim was mine! only it wasn’t, as when I parked my car on the grass verge, I could see there were a couple of guys fishing it! I went to drive off and park up and discovered to my horror that I was now stuck comprehensively in the mud! My father rescued the day with a 5 metre length of astroturf, wedged under the front wheels soon had the jalopy free again. Still, try again! A quick glance around the lake and I saw a couple of very subtle shows, reeds knocking etc. then one fish put its head out at around 100yrds in the far margin. An orange northern special pop up soon landed on its head followed by a krill bottom bait against the knocking reeds in my near margin. (Not a usual go to winter bait, but my son has done well this winter on them here, so worth a shout.) 2hrs later and a recast (with a small pva mesh bag of tutti fruitti crumb) and the orange NS pop up was properly ripping off! at a single ounce over the 20lb barrier, the first 20 of 2026 has hit the net.

Totally. I bet if we saw it now it'd look tiny 😅

Now that takes me back..... I fished there probably 30 years ago as a spotty teenager. I remember turning up with all my kit on my back and there's these proper carp anglers with barrows everywhere. I loved it. I recall on my first session I hair rigged a cube of luncheon meat and hoyed it as far as I could (which wasn't far with the absolutely rubbish rods I had back then) and had one within 2 minutes. I got some right dirty looks from the proper anglers 😅

Had a little go at a 6 egg mix turned out alright I think, made 1.5kg, didn't use my boilie roller made some 15mm on a table and some pillows from the spare paste. Used my electric caulking gun today that made light work of the dough. That's a bite.

Leney descendants* I'm talking about the real thing.... as in touch by the hands of Donald himself.

Welcome. Its a bit quiet lately, but there's a few good gents that have helped me out over the years. @elmoputney is all about bait atm

having another go

I’d need to have a look mate, but they’re not the original ones with the x-wrap, shame, I loved those rods! My local tackle shop thinks he may have one in their rod rebuilding stuff, so im going to drop the tip in so they can have a gander

100% Original Donald leneys from Surrey trout farm are still alive and fished for ... I have seen pictures ..from the very person who has the original stocking records ,...Golden Scale Club ,they are definitely still around ....

Mill Farm Gilmorton and Beedles lake near me received Leeneys in the early 1970s - doubt any are still alive now though

Good luck with that 😂

Which version of the Warrior? If they're the originals with the Japanese X-Wrap shrink handles, I think I have a couple hidden away. I'd like to keep one but, assuming I can find them, I might have a spare tip section.

All part of the adventure mate! Satisfaction will be crazy when you start catching on it!

You’d be 2/3 way to my pop up combo then! I use banana, scopex and BP Oil. Think it’s a great combo. Also added fructose as a sweetener. I did think maybe adding fine ground black pepper powder to gives some flecks in the finished mix. Black pepper is great, I used to get mine from mother natures goodies but I don’t think it exists anymore. There’s a good place for EOs called oils4life which do 100% pures (also great bulk beard oils). I think the more you make, you’ll end up like me and move away from just the pop up mix, dye and flavours, you start to tinker with extra additives and things. Some nice toffee and vanilla powders out there which would compliment the scopex nicely.

LP.B location ,presentation and bait .. Bait is a tiny part of the equation, if you have no fish in front of you or your rigs are tangled ,hooks blunt etc your not going to do so well.. Since Xmas, in between ,storms and awful weather ,I've caught very well ,just using two fake corns and a little mesh bag ...just a thought 💭

Water temps shot up to 7.1C last week after the really cold weather disappeared. Yesterday I popped a handful of food in and the "stockies" i.e. smaller koi ate it all. The temps were so good I went fishing on Friday night. Blanked, obviously(😅), but on Saturday morning the sun came out and I saw carp with their backs out! Chucked zigs at them for an hour but was already late for home. Always next time.

There is a fb group called Leney Enthusiasts, according to that I've caught shed loads of them 😂

It wasn't a deliberate choice to add the fishmeal, more a happy accident tbh, I thought I would have enough for a 1 egg mix but it was still like angel delight when the bag run out. So to make something other than a mess I added a handful of basemix😂. I am going to do match the hatch ones, I want the option for once I've got them on the bait. I've got some cork dust for those wafters and will probably use the AA Baits fishmeal pop up mix for the pop ups as people have added 30% basemix to those successfully, I might try 50/50 and add cork dust if required. I don't want to make cork balls What essentially will probably happen is that I will make a load of hookbaits to add to the collection of hookbaits I will probably never use 😂

I believe there are a handful left according to Yates/Walsingham, but we will never know where they are!

I use a lot of AA products to be fair. Hydros or liquids mainly. Decent value on pellet too. I do rate them as a brand, been around for years and trusted by a lot of bait makers for ingredients. youd probably be better splitting some basemix with a pop up mix to get a better wafter tbh. you’ve still got the matching waters and pop ups to make too!!

Nah they are current models 🤪

I just went out to smell them, I mean move them about so they continue dry well. The scopex is strong in the garage. I think they should work well. I'm not selling them though, I barely have time to make my own.

Hi Elmo . I would offer to be a field tester for you , but that would mean I have to get off my bum and actually go fishing 😁 . Your pink boilies look very tempting . 😃

I always used the richworth pop up mix when I rolled bait. Not sure if its still available but it was good in my opinion.

Bait…. the most argued part of fishing apart from “what’s the best alarm” welcome in

Well the end of the year has gone well. The koi are doing great and still feeding most days due to the elevated temps. The nets/covers are now off since the leaves are gone. The water clarity is insane.... you can see every little detail on the deck in 2m. The temporary floating skimmer has worked a treat. I picked up a pond vacuum a month ago and gave the bottom a good clean at the weekend which means there's no detritus for any nasties to hide in ready for the spring. It's a real shame I can't post vids on here as I have some great footage of the koi milling about. So now I need to plan for spring which apparently is the most tricky and dangerous time of year. Parasites wake up before the koi so it's essential I do everything I can to keep their immune systems working as well as possible. If you lose your water parameters early on, you're chasing your tail all year, so I have to be bang on it to stay a step ahead of any issues with algae, weed, DO, and ammonia, nitrite, pH etc. Really enjoyed the last few months and looking forward to my first full year with the pond. Looking to feed heavily next year to get some good growth, while maintaining the water quality. I'll keep this thread updated from time to time for anyone that's interested.

It's a wierd thing, but as you can guess I am harping back to old times, yes I used to buy the Nutrabaits catalogues, but in the day was a Premier Baits man, now sadly gone in all but name. Just makes me smile when I read (on another forum, sorry), about so called wonder hookbaits, and the domination on certain topics this person now seems to have on it, so glad this forum is a lot more chilled and sensible. Anyway, now getting back into method feeder for fishing for carp on a Sussex lake, seems to be working, well when the lake is open again after spawning again. Remember the big method feeders on Horseshoe so many years ago and did very well on them, sometimes I wish things were a lot more simple for carp fishing, but unfortunatly the floodgates have been opened and I just chill on the bank when I can..... sorry to go a bit off post

No one trusts the water company around here ,having been poisoned by aluminium Sulphate many years ago ,and the water company hid the facts from customers in my area for 16 days ..the Sulphate also went into a local famous cheese making plant ...