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Went to a little pond with my youngest boy yesterday and he caught his first ever carp. Lovely little 7lb common. He's got the carp bug now😉

My daughter bought me this at xmas, at first i did not notice quite what was printed but this is the perfect one for me seeing what my user name on here is and my err.....catch rate

Similar to yonny, I had a £75 club ticket last season, fished there for 3 nights and a £275 ticket (June-june) and I’ve only done 3 nights so far! Expensive trips. Spent most of my year fishing a club water for free as I’m on the committee! But none of those club lakes really do it for me tbh. hopefully fit in a couple more nights on the ticket before June but then I don’t know whether I’ll renew. See how it goes. Pretty expensive trips!

Swings and roundabouts innit. Most decent syndi's now are 600 plus. Many have now exceeded a grand. Last year I fished ~5 nights on my syndi - for 650 quid. Add your bait, fuel, food etc... and we're talking maybe 200 a night. Makes a 30 quid day ticket seem cheap! I'm dropping the ticket this year. Just can't justify the cost for the time I get.

Fishing cost is always personal. Personally I find £24 for 24hours too expensive and I baulk at even £10 for a day session. I know one local water is £35 for 24hours! I could not justify a minimum of £2000 for a years fishing at day ticket prices. However I can justify a £500 syndicate season ticket or even £300 for a club season ticket. Fishing is my 'get away from the world', my relief from pain, from being trapped inside the flat. It is cheaper to be fishing for 3 or 4 days than the cost of electricity and gas in my flat.

Nope, they will still get people there. Supply and demand and the demand is still damn high everywhere you look. More and more members only lakes are becoming invite only due to silly enquiries for the waiting lists. The rest are raising prices to ensure a lower membership costs costs. it makes the day tickets more money off the back of it.

It is, if I get the big one 😉

I may have got rumbled for my extra sections of bushwhacker, luckily the first one got through customs without being scanned.

Of course not. But tbf she knows that whatever I tell her it costs, she has to double it then add some 🤣

Made me chuckle. That's what the mrs calls it when I show up with a bunch of those little packets 😅

4 pints of wrigglers, 20k of 10 & 15mm boilies, some matching glug and stick mix. About £50's worth of plastic and bits of metal. New catapult elastic. New alarm batteries BIG SOCIAL next week, so I'm probably talking the kitchen sink as well!

I've made some hard hookers today and some sinking wafters, or light bottom baits as I prefer to call them. I then made a glycerin based bait spray, that is too viscous to spray 😂 But I've given my hookbaits a coating, and they now smell amazing. And will hopefully harden more and become crayfish resistant.

A real good 10mm cork ball will be ok but it's tricky to get really good cork balls nowadays. It's a lot safer bet using 12 mm cork balls for a 14 mm pop up.👍

Today I lashed out and bought a Nash Bushwhacker.

Likewise, syndicate ticket £650, been for 5 x 48hrs. Probably 1 more before season end of April. Estate ticket £190 EA season closure, but went for 4 x 48hrs. I'm not renewing the syndicate, the estate is a no brainer. With end tackle, bait and grub it's still not a cheap hobby

Thanks for that info Yonny ,very helpful .I've had my integrated UV bulb light going for nearly a year ,so that's what I'll change first .. I got three marginal plants in suspension cages in the pool ,but they need cutting in half and replanting in new aqua soil as they gone a bit mad ,then I'll have a look at that chemical you saying about .. I bought a Solar ,flashing ,noise making anti rat ,cat deterent,box it seems to work ,Seagulls hate it .. It's only a small water feature ,but I absolutely love it ..especially when the fish swim past a viewing porthole ,...plus lol,they like tiny amounts of ressi specials ,crumbled as a treat occasionally...those fish literally know I'm about ,especially as I feed em same time same spot ,which is interesting especially if crossed over into angling mindset ,they become trained !!!!

There are a couple of things you can try. The UV is the primary protection so make sure you replace the bulb at least once a year (about now is perfect as the first 6 months it's most effective.... less important in winter but critical in summer). You could also go for a bigger UV filter.... the bigger the better basically. You can try to block out some sunlight..... it's the reason I installed that parasol thingy. Less sun = less phosphates = less blanket weed. There are several treatments available. The one below works in low temps so good for early spring: AQUA SOURCE BLANKET WEED RESOLVE 1kg WATER TREATMENT BLANKETWEED POND FISH KOI | eBay UK Lastly, you could add a plant to consume the nutrients that the blanket weed needs to grow. Prevention is always better than correction so I'd focus on the UV filter first👍

We have a 147 litre Blagdon affinity feature pond ,currently housing Ravioli and Nelson ,two ancient huge goldfish ...I have a uv light and a good filter system which i clean out weekly ,water is clear ,fish are well happy ,no more than two fish due to pond ,feature size.. My question is ,what can I buy or do to reduce this filamentous ,stringy weedy stuff ,I can pull it out in clumps ,but it comes back ...any ideas .....yonny or anyone ?

That's a lot of money mate ... Shame it's got so very pricey ,used to called a working man's hobby ,I guess it's gone 'football' expensive ,a place I still fish used to be £1 a night ....lol I still reckon some will stop fishing as its too expensive, mind you I have a huge blue pond behind my cottage ,which is free...makes me think 🤔

thought about that but when he is in his wheelchair or mobility scooter the chest rig would work better as his mobility is none existent nowadays. did think about the hand set up but then the shakes would get to him. a chair rig attachment may be a good option though, cheers

I daren't work it out 😂

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.

Finished off my hookbaits with a dusting of basemix, another coat of my bait spray that doesn't spray and 3 more coats of basemix dusting. Will see how they look once they've fully dried. But quite happy with the results

nope! Ive never felt the need to loose so much of my fishing time, travelling abroad. This social coming up is 3 nights, I haven't counted everything, but it's well over £500 + 2 days off work🫣

Great points ,can't disagree with any points of view... I guess, I'm one of the few that thinks it's putting a few off going ,what with the Catch App ,which I personally detest ,if it rises any more ,on a couple of places I love ,money wise ,then I'll have to vote with my feet . I got other hobbies but angling is huge to me .. But we all have to remember ,prices are rising in all daily aspects of our lives ,hobbies are fair game vs eating or living expenses.. 'Fish on '...!!

The OP is included all costs bait, fuel, food etc. £100 a night ounds about right, for somewhere decent. That's if you're not taking time off work. I was asked to do an Italy trip (fishing) that worked out about £2.5- 3k for 5 nights (with time off added)

24 hours is £35 on virtually all the waters I fish. Have you gone to a profession football match or played a round of golf recently? Me neither but you know what I mean. Unfortunately fishing is being treated as a business and it is a case of supply and demand. https://my.rkleisure.com/membership-options Do you fancy a black card? I used to fish some waters on the Cotswold Water Park many years ago on a club card that cost peanuts in today's terms but they got swallowed up by a multinational concern and the remaining waters on the old ticket now have a waiting list to get on and even allowing for inflation, aren't anyway as near as cheap. Unfortunately you can't do much about travelling and with the Iran war in progress, fuel prices are only going one way. Fishing can be as cheap or expensive as your expectations. When you read books of articles by top anglers, the amount of pre-baiting some do raise eyebrows as some are literally filling the place in to tip the odds in their favour.

I agree with Yonny the rule of thumb with cork balls used to be use a cork ball 2mm smaller than your intended bait size

Look like a good start to your journey @elmoputney hopefully some of those will put some fish on the bank soon.

Permission granted 😂

I would leave them in the garage will be fine in these temps, not worth the risk. 😂

Ive got to try and get the maggots in the fridge without being detected.🤞 Ill say its some magic hookbaits (not specialised! )

And then I got another £25 off voucher so bought 5 extensions for £55, I'm now up to 6 wraps capability. Can't wait for next week now.

They are common carp, 2 mirrors. They are remnants of a well managed clean, UV filtered, disease free Koi pond. The Koi have already been removed.

Well something learned today! Fair play @yonny I'd still be very careful for the above reasons.

Yeah that's a massive no-no! Very dangerous, could easily wipe out the fishery.

You can, mate. As long as it's not a commercial activity (i.e. fisheries) its perfectly legal to rehome carp and koi etc. Obviously can be risky due to biosecurity but perfectly ok legally. Edit: They're basically pets so same rules apply.

I have shown you the only party that wants to fix this issue. It's up to you whether you want to keep having sewage dumped in rivers now. I'm not getting into another debate about politics. We also can't afford not too.

There is only one political party that want to renationalise our water. To me it's simple people either want waste dumped in their rivers and to have our assets owned by billionaires or they don't. I think if we all stopped paying our rod licence the present government and most other parties would just ban fishing as a consequence sadly.

New wands 😁

We can’t afford to buy it back.. unless it’s a compulsory take back but that aint gonna happen either as too many rich people have their fingers in the trough.