Golden Paws

Yes, I've been using the Gardener GT-HD for the last few months and pretty impressed with it. Pretty supple, casts fairly well and sinks OK. For £20 for 1000 metres, you can easily spool 3 reels and afford to change it the following year.

Any mono or copolymer line will degrade in sunlight and so 2 or 3 years is pushing it. I always store my lines in an air tight biscuit tin to keep them safe. A year on one line is probably pushing it for safety. If you did want a line for that long then braid is your only option.

For everything you need to know about zig fishing, watch this.

Yes Kev, I'm being to doubt my reasoning for doing it, hence why I've started this thread. We do get 'done' far more than we realise, the underwater films sometime make me wonder how we ever catch them at all! I try to tip all the odds in my favour, good bait, sharp hook, resetting rigs (noramally combi's), fluorocarbon leader and slackish line but still get a lot of 'twitches and pulls' that I'm sure are fish mouthing and rejecting the bait. Most of my fishing in the warmer months is based around spodding fairly large quantities of hemp/mixed seeds/sweetcorn and fishing either a boilie or fake corn over the top. I can see that creating that competitive feeding zone in a small area can lead to that rather than using a throwing stick to put 100 boilies over the area of a tennis court to encourage 'browsing and moving' feeding to hopefully convert more pick up's into runs. Most of my fishing is on a local club lake that is day fishing only that is fairly prolific and it is noticable that I can almost 'buy' a bite by regularly spodding to freshen up the area, I've even caught when spodding over the top and that includes sloppy casts that create a huge splash. I've also fished larger waters like B1 on Linear where Spodding/Spombing seems to be the norm, the classic 'OX29 fishing' as it's more commonly known. My mine quandry is that I want to be sure that I have some bait in the swim to attract and hold the fish but also to be confident that the carp can feed in realitive peace and not spook. So, let's say I'm fishing B1 and have had a quiet night. I've not had a bite all night and it's now an hour past dawn. Would you spod now or leave it and how much longer?

When fishing overnighters, I never sleep very well and am usually rousing before first light, even around the shortest day. To capitalise on that, I used to recheck my rigs and put on fresh bait and spod over the top so that the fish should find the new bait. I also reckoned that if I didn't have a bite during the night, it was probably because I had been 'done' and the fish had already eaten the loose feed! Been doing that for a few years and thought it was my 'little edge', although I can't seem to recall any spectacular hits to back that up. Recently someone commented in an article that 'those who bait up at dawn ought to have their dangly bits removed!' That made me think a bit. So, what is the concensus, am I ruining it for myself (and others fishing the lake) or is it worth doing? Obviously if I did start catching first thing, I would probably add more bait after each fish to hold them.

I tend to agree with Harpz_31, I recheck my rigs and baits every few hours. I normally fish combi rigs so tangling isn't the problem but the amount of times I've reeled in to find a large 'blob' of weed on the hook totally ruining the presentaion and hooking potential always plays on my mind and my local lake is pretty weed free. I used to tie on my cork ball pop ups with dental floss but the amount of times I reeled in a bare hook was getting beyond a joke so gone back to shop bought pop ups and either use a bait screw or pull the floss through and also double secure it with a bait stop. Probably a bit paranoid but rather be safe then sorry.