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In 2024 I visited the worlds largest cork producer in Portugal with work. It was amazing.... saw all the processes from harvesting of the bark down in Lisbon (they even let me have a go!) all the way through to production of wine stoppers and everything else they make up in Porto. Was one of the best work weeks I've had. Those trees take 12 years to get to the first harvest then once every nine years after that. It takes nearly 50 years to get to the quality required for natural wine stoppers. Some of the trees were 150+ years old. It makes sense, having seen all this, that the price of decent cork balls has gone up so much. They have something like 4 million acres of trees and in the middle of one of these huge plantations they had a reservoir providing the water. I was standing there watching the water (as you do as an angler) and a big common whalloped out. I pointed it out to my host, their technical director, and it turned out he was a carp angler too. He had this reservoir full of massive carp in the middle of nowhere that only he could fish. Incredible.

The first image is a wind up, unfortunately the second isn't! I would just like to thank the pair of clowns on Big Hayes last year for the inspiration!

What's the day???

I’ve recently started taking a pair of flood lights with me. They are absolutely brilliant as they provide a nice even light that makes tying rigs or cooking a meal dead easy and no more faffing about with head torches. I’ve got a 3kW portable power station with LiFePO4 batteries that will provide enough juice to run them for at least two full winter nights. The picture below is me on the right and my mate is in the next swim. He’s a bit of a wimp and only went for some cheap lower powered lights. The photo was taken by another mate who was fishing the far bank but I think he’s a bit jealous as he said it was like fishing at an airport! It will make landing fish after dark pretty easy but I haven’t actually needed it yet, the fish on my lake seem to have shut up shop since I’ve been trying it out.

Just check it before your next trip, shelf life particles usually stay OK for a while.

Now very. You will need to freeze it otherwise it will turn into a stinking mouldy mess.

rods out on the park lake for the first night of the new season, shed load of bream, but no carp

This first picture is where I had my bivvy to take the picture of the swans. I mentioned bird flu in the original post, it looks like it has hit again. The lake is down to 7 swans, 3 of which look like yearling cygnets from one of the dominant pairs. The lack of numbers has meant that the dominant males are not so aggressive and not such a pain in the rectum. And a couple of pictures from the last two sessions, taken in the same swim on the other side of the lake. Just to the left of the picture on the far side is the copse that Sky and I were using for shade.

noddy!😜

Absolutely disgraceful in my opinion. Use just enough light and only when you need it. that being said, the use of this sort of lighting in an angling environment could be detrimental to bats and as such could be a prosecutable offence. something tells me the post is satire though.

Hate to say it but I'd be somewhat upset if someone set up floodlights in the swim next to me.

So onto another session at the syndicate lake from Sunday through to Wednesday. I arrived around 3pm Sunday afternoon amidst a mix of South Westerly winds, rain shower and yuck. Syndicate rules permit putting the shelter up and putting tackle inside before taking the car down to the car park, so that is what I did. Car down to car park, and give Sky a walk back to the swim, followed by getting 3 rods clipped up and baited. Left hand rod 40metres, a 12mm purple Monster Crab pop-up and a small bag of micro pellets, middle rod, a 'greedy pig' snowman of 2x 12mm bottom baits topped with a couple of tiny Spiced Garlic pop-ups and a stringer at 50metres, and the right hand rod was a Monster Crab pop-up core. I know it's early, but I've been putting a bucket of particles in on one rod on arrival, to prebait and to try to wean a particular fish that I have never seen eat bait. This fish is a big uncaught common, that I reckon makes a 42lb common look small, added to the mix this time was a couple of pints of red maggots. Spombing out 40metres was not fun, the Spomb was on target with hardly any effort, but retrieving it was fun, and trying to catch the Spomb in the wind... Sunday night I spent much of the night awake listening to the wind shake the bivvy. No joy, and even the coots, tufties and swans left me alone. Monday the wind switched more westerly, with a touch of north. After a walk around with Sky, fish searching and putting the sheep's electric fence back up there was no reason to move. Sorted the rods out, sticking to the same formula. A really quiet afternoon, but around 10pm the tufties moved in, and with the laser pen the little gits would spook and then come back. At 1am, I got a few bleeps and watched the indicator move up and down, so picked up the rod, and landed a tufty. Expectations, and reality...

What.????? Did you mean, pay us back Boris?

Just my opinion? Use a standard size 8 swivel. Ok, so PTFE has the lowest coefficient of friction known to man but we're asked to believe that this helps with rig alignment when this relatively small device is lying amongst whatever detritus is in the area of the landed rig. The PTFE thing is more a marketing ploy than a mechanical advantage. Once again, just my opinion. Ian.

It isn't.

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😉

a mid double common to christen the new rods

Boring???? We are headed into WW3 with a convicted rapist president (Trying to cover up the Epstein Files) a weak controlled government and a country that has recently commited a genocide, we are headed towards fascism and the rich get richer and the poor will own nothing and be happy, it is this kind of attitude that allows them to get away with it, Really, ''convicted rapist president' Just carry on you lot, actually thought this forum was above this stuff tbh

Oh so you didn't get banned.