AndyCh

If allowed use barbless hooks over silkweed.

I've always done loads of short after dark winter sessions, sometimes as short as two hours. I don't do midweek overnighters anymore though. I've caught lots of fish in the first two to three hours of darkness in the colder months. This year I've been fishing very little, but I'm still doing my best to get to the lake at least once a week after dark to put a bit of feed in.

Purely from an information point of view, having their curtains intact doesn't mean that they're uncaught. I've caught fish that I know for a fact have been caught plenty of times before that still have an intact curtain. Lovely fish all the same and definitely not trying to detract from their capture.

Personally I hate 50mm ringsets. Bare in mind that it then follows that the rings going up the blank are also larger than with a 40mm ringset. This can have quite an effect on the action of a blank, particularly lighter ones.

Rather than just trying to work out how it has affected your catch rate have a think about if it has affected your enjoyment of being there. I have fished with four rods many, many times, but enjoy it just as much if only using one. To me fishing isn't a competition, it's all about enjoyment.

I feed shelflife baits almost exclusively as feed into my lake at times. Sometimes I can put 5kg on a spot and it'll go within hours. Other times it'll just sit there for three or four days, fish nearby, but just not 'in the mood' to eat it. Next day it'll all be gone. They must still be putting out the 'right' signals, even after days in the water. I only use Gary's bait so have absolutely no idea how the fish might react to other shelfies.

Spot on.

I only wondered how he was in a position to slag them off I he didn't know what was in them or how they're preserved? I've known Gary for quite some time now, have spoken to him about bait at length and trust him implicitly that he won't sell me anything that is either poor as a bait or in any way harmful to my fish.

Wasn't he anti shelfies? I'm very happy to be using them. I have zero knowledge about shelflife baits in general but I'm confident that the ones I use are ok.

Do you know exactly what goes into them?

I saw my first one on a water near the Chelmer in 2003. By 2010 on another water, not so far away, I was seeing them on a daily basis. IMHO any unfenced lake in Essex is doomed. Actually make that anywhere!

I've heard the same for many years but was told that they were only found in the private upper reaches in any sort of meaningful numbers. And of course they'd also be easy targets for the otters.

I use the Nash Instant Action Tangerine Dream quite a bit, in fact it's the only bait that has stopped me buying Richworth Tuttis for my cold water angling. Yes these baits are pretty hard out of the bag, but that's because they are dried for 48 hours after cooling. They soon soften up once in water, if they didn't I doubt they'd be such a good bait. At times I've had access to quite large quantities of Nash shelflife baits very cheaply (misshapes) (friend of Bayesy) and have fed my lake with them when there has been little bait going in by anglers and the fish have thrived on it, so it can't be that bad. All my other bait has been shelflife for the last five years and my catch rate certainly hasn't suffered. I really should empty and get rid of the two bait freezers in the garage.

Oh I'm sure it has but there are still decent fish in there and no too difficult to find.

A long time ago mate, but they're still in there. Hurry before our cute fury friends have them all though.