Golden Paws

https://www.baitworks.co.uk/ I've been on the Creamino for the last few years and I don't know if it's co-incidence but I've had my best 2 seasons since.

1. For the ultimate in being a tart, take a bivvy, brolly and gazebo. Don’t laugh, I saw it last weekend on a commercial where you can park your car behind the swim. 2. Have a splash mat under your reels, the ultimate in tartyness. 3. Carry 20 different types of pop-up but only use 1. 4. Take a 2 man bivvy but you only do over-nighters. 5. Take a powered fridge despite the fact you only keep your sandwiches and lager in it. 6. Own a 5-season sleeping bag despite the fact you hang your rods up in October. 7. Have a power bank that could keep a family home going for a couple of days in a power cut but you only charge your phone and torch. 8. Your rod-pod has so much stainless that you have to wear sunglasses to look at it. 9. You have a power barrow with so much grunt it could stop an average scrum but you only fish a 2 acre lake with manicured lawns. 10. Your phone is permanently on FaceBook so you can keep in contact with both of your friends. 11. A pair of 10x25 binoculars is more than ample and fits in your pocket when folded down. So why do you take a set of field glasses that can spot a mouse a mile away? 12. You wear bivvy slippers to keep your groundsheet clean. 13. A head torch is a necessity after dark but you need to keep it down to keep your night-sight when you turn it off. Your 8000 Lumen monstrosity resembles the Blackpool illuminations. 14. You bring your camper van to a commercial that allows rear of swim parking and stay in it all day and night watching TV or reading a book and only come outside once a day. Don’t laugh, I have seen it. 15. You own 2 sets of rods/reels/buzzers because you fish different waters and don’t want to handicap yourself. 16. Despite having a double burner and family sized returnable gas bottle and associated cookware, your meals are delivered to your swim from the local greasy spoon and pizza shop. 17. You have a bait boat with GPS and Sonar despite your lake being as pancake flat as the day the bulldozer created it. It also has a 4kg payload despite the fact you only use PVA bags. 18. Everyone loves a bivvy table. A small one just big enough for your tackle box, scales, phone and receiver is ample. A true tackle tart pushes it to the max and I saw 2 blokes in adjoining swims with a decorating table that you use for hanging wallpaper. 19. You have a top of the range DSLR with an impressive pixel count but the deal clincher was the 40 frames per second burst shooting rate it offered. Despite the fact you will never use it. You only shoot in Auto and use the photo’s unaltered on your FaceBook page. 20. You take 3 nets with you, “just in case.” The water you are fishing is rock hard and 2 fish a season is considered good going.

Just got back from a 52 hour blank. Very few fish came out and the lake looked pretty uninspiring being incredibly low. A dead fish drifted into the next swim to me and this is on the back of 2 of the biggest fish in the lake turning belly up recently. Hopefully it's just natural although I did wonder how low the oxygen levels were. One bloke did catch one in the next swim about 50 yards away to me and he asked me to take a photo during the day. During the night I heard 4 very loud bleeps and assumed he was doing alright despite my rods being static. It was bad enough blanking without it being rammed down your throat how well he was doing! I was having my breakfast the next morning and I heard the really loud alarm again but he didn't come out of his bivvy what seemed strange. It began to dawn on on me something wasn't right and I concentrated a bit harder and when there was another loud alarm, I realised it was coming from my pocket! It wasn't a run but the low battery warning! Luckily I had a spare and wasn't disturbed again.

That's certainly made me think! I have tried hinged stiff rigs and even Ronnies for a while but didn't really set the world on fire with them. I always test my rigs in an old ice cream tub before I cast them out to check that they behave as "natural" as possible. Your analysis on the average size of fish using blatant pop-up's is really interesting. I remember reading a Dave Lane article where he forgot his rig putty and so cast his pop-up's out anyway and had a red letter session!

That's a whole new can of worms! Treat them like idiots and they will make a fool of you. Other times you can chuck out a Fag dogbut and they'll take it! Some lakes has a resident mug and yet other fish can go years without a visit to the bank. A lot can depend on the size of the lake and the stock. Sparsely populated lakes are by definition the hardest and the fish can choose what to eat and what to avoid. Heavily populated commercials are easier and chances are most of the natural food has been harvested and the fish are reliant on anglers baits and the fish are more likely to be tolerant to tackle and bank-side disturbance. Most of us don't but gin clear to us and what a fish sees are 2 totally different things. They can find there way around and feed (and avoid being caught!) on the darkest of nights. Obviously they have a highly developed sense of smell and this plays a huge part but I am convinced they must have a good degree of night sight. Most big cats can effectively hunt at night when we are stumbling around and natural selection almost certainly means that fish do have have a fully functional degree of vision.

I've never used a fluoro pop-up, I prefer match the hatch muddy brown baits similar to my freebies. I know a lot people use a snowman or a bit of pop up corn above the boilie for a fleck of colour but it just looks so blatant to me. We get "done" far more than you would believe. For many years I fished a shallow river for barbel that went crystal clear at certain times of year and it was a revelation. The amount of times I would have barbel come onto a baited area and then I would see my grains of corn get blown out with force and all the fish would scatter. Another time I had a run baited with hemp and corn and a fish was coming up the swim in a straight line hoovering up the freebies. It come to my double corn (on a 3 foot hooklink to avoid spooking), veered around it and carried on up the run taking everything else! I was using the double corn so it was obvious to me where the hookbait was, unfortunately it was also obvious for the barbel! My thinking is that if I can create an area that seems "safe" and there is nothing that the fish can associate with danger, the greater the chance of catching them.

Mega fish and nice write up. I've always thought that fishing is a bit of a game of chance but when all the stars align and you have the skills and knowledge to capitalise on them, those long gruelling blanks start to feel like a distant memory.

After Elmo's plea for more content, I decided to start this one. Below is a video I found on You Tube. It's a fair effort and uses tech to the max, bait boats, drones and underwater camera's. Despite all that, I couldn't believe how blatant the rig was, especially the pop up. The line was bow tight and stood out like a sore thumb and even the lead stood out more than I thought it would. I've seen quite a few of these types of video's and I can't believe that the carp continue to feed anywhere near the area. I'm a bit paranoid about trying to make everything as unobtrusive as possible. I use Korda Safezone leaders (fluorocarbon) and always backlead to keep everything pinned to the deck although I know it compromises bite detection. All my rigs are combi's with a fluorocarbon boom with an inch or so of supple braid to give the hookbait some movement. I don't use pop-ups but but do often use a slip-D combi rig with a wafter that has been bored with some cork to create what I call a wafter+, it is enough to lift the bait off the bottom but the hook still touches the bottom. What edges do you use to minimise suspicion?

A 29lb 5oz mirror on Friday evening. I had 3 rods about a rod length from an island but saw 3 shows really close and so lengthened the cast to a really shallow spot. Did a 54 hour stint and that was it and didn't hear of any other fish coming out. Strange as Saturday conditions were perfect as the temperature rose a bit and a pretty strong Southerly wind picked up and chopped up the water.

All fishing video's are advertorials! It's a trade off. You get to watch a fishing expert tackle a water and catch some biggies and he shows you how he did it and the tackle and bait used. The said tackle and bait are exclusively from his employer or sponsor. As long as it's not in your face and false claims made that you'll only catch using the same gear, I'm happy to go along with it. All professional anglers are influencers. God I hate that word but it's true. I remember when I was kid (going to show my age now), when the only fishing program on TV was a very occasional 5 minute segment on Out of Town by Jack Hargreaves.There weren't VCR's or Catch Up and so if you missed it, you'd have to wait months for your next fix. There are reams of stuff on You Tube and it's easy to become an instant carper if you digest enough. I learn't a hell of a lot from watching some of the DVD's when I switched from barbel to carp. I still watch a lot now and although some can get a bit samey, I still pick up some tips and incorporate them in my fishing. For the last six months I've been using Terry's flipper rig using bottom baits on at least one rod after being pretty exclusive on wafters and have caught pretty well on it.

Well I really enjoyed it. Perhaps a few time many "know what I mean?" and "mate" but I can forgive Tel for that. The videography and production are top notch and Tel can certainly tell a story.

The weather forecasters predicted a heatwave this weekend and they weren't wrong! I booked a 48hr session on a pay lake back in November and was in 2 minds whether or not to go. Got there on Friday afternoon and they were all sunbathing, some with their backs out of the water. Chucked out 3 zigs in desperation but wasn't surprised they didn't take them. An hour before dusk I would them in and replaced them with bottom baits and boated them out with the first loose feed. An hour after dark they started spawning and spent virtually all night doing it and I got practically no sleep. I did manage 2 overnight and then another 2 at first light up to 24-5. The day was another grueller but luckily I was sheltered right back amongst the trees and avoided the worst of the sun. I had another 3 during the second night and luckily no more spawning. It died about 2 hours after dawn and I packed up at 10a.m. despite booking on 'til 6p.m. It you would have offered me 7 fish in those conditions I would have had your hand off! I did lie on my camp bed for 10 minutes after dinner and woke up 2 hours later!

https://esp-carpgear.com/product/balance-beads/ I've pretty much given up rig putty. I've lost too much and it doesn't seem to keep it's shape. I've been using ESP tungsten balance beads for quite a few years and can't see myself ever going back. The photo is a Flipper rig (the bottom bit of shrink tube pushes to the bend of the hook) and my bait has been nibbled away by roach or bream but the bead is on a Combi rig and pushes into the knot and pretty much stays there. Its dead easy to reuse it as well, just push it onto a small baiting needle.

A 31lb 12oz mirror from the weekend. Also managed a 25-4 and 18-10. After a windy start on Friday, it got really hot but managed a bite on all 3 rods by boating out about 20 Creamino boiles and a bit of pellet every 3 hours tight to an Island.