Jone5y

You mean to tell me that Olivia doesn't actually want me to go over to her place and check out her plumbing?

Here's a picture including all the items above in their respective pouch and my other tackle pouch which has all my tackle for river fishing (chub, barbel, and perch). The bottle of scotch is for scale purposes obviously.

To scale back you really need to decide what you actually need for the vast majority of your fishing. You also need to be content with the fact they you will never cover every possibility. I really do not enjoy carrying loads of unnecessary things in anything I do - whether that be fishing tackle or tools for a job. If I can buy something that has multiple uses then I will prioritise that. When I stopped carp fishing exclusively, my items of end tackle all fit into a 9" by 6" zipped bag which I have attached a picture of. The little box has a few beads, swivels etc in, the bit of pipe lagging as a few pre-tied rig bits pinned on, and the cut down pva tube has the hook section of hinge stiff rig/chod rigs in - which can be used for either rig obviously. I have three packets of hooks only. I think most people would shudder at the idea of taking so few items of terminal tackle with them. Personally, I always found it very relaxing to have a very simple approach to work from. Granted I may add items as a situation dictates but I never found myself feeling the need to try something for no reason whatsoever. I would advise seriously considering concocting a very basic approach to carp fishing (i.e. deciding on three rigs that cover most situations you can envision) and decide EXACTLY what you need to do that.

My advice for anybody fishing big public lakes (or big lakes in general) is to buy a bike that you do not mind being stolen. Leave it at the lake.

Dress your dog up as a ferret, there's no rule against ferrets. Sadly, the rule of no guns rules me out.

A basic way to reduce NHS annual spending - print all letters in greyscale and save money on ink.

Apostrophe by Frank Zappa. What do I win? A small tip for testing your baits in water. Try to use river/lake/rain water instead of tap water, I've seen some big differences when comparing (e.g. they break down slower in tap water).

Get some second hand Daiwa Emblem ST - the old "gold" ones. They're cheap, reliable, and no one will bother nicking them. The line clips are pretty bad though. I reckon you can get a set of three off of ebay for about £200 tops. You can throw them in bushes, in the water, in mud, off a cliff, in font of an artic lorry on the M40 (don't do that), and you'll never care one bit.

I've been reading about bivvys lately and one which seems to get good reviews is the Tacklebox Long Top. Personally, I've never used one but it might be worth a look - it seems very lightweight stripped out. One plus I can think of is that the Tacklebox's customer service is top class.

I can see Ian throwing a few shapes to this on the bank after a few too many (or too few) bottles of Rioja.

Yes I understand how acoustic devices work as I've spent an awful lot of time analysing data collected using moored ADCPs. The two-way travel time is clearly displayed on the Y-axis in the form of distance below the reference (the surface). I was just trying to figure out if you could ever determine whether a detected object was stationary or moving, which we seem to agree that you cannot. Furthermore, I understand that the colorscale denotes the strength of the signal, but how is that determined in these deeper devices? Usually it's fairly common to use the correlation between the pulse of the signal and the return, whereby the bed can be estimated by a band of very high correlation which is indicative of a "hard return".

If I'm reading that plot correctly then the x-axis represents the spatial domain rather than the temporal domain. As such I don't think you can infer that an object is stationary or not. Also, does anybody know what is actually displayed on the plot? Correlation as a function of height above the bed?

I had to take a detour past a lake on a nature reserve yesterday because a section of the lake I was intending to look at was closed for nesting birds. I decided I would sit in the bird hide which overlooks the lake and watch for a bit. My rustiness for carp angling was very noticeable because I kept mistaking pond skaters for carp basking like an idiot. However, eventually I saw what I thought might be a fish so I decided to shin about 20 feet up a tree to have a look - initially I tried to climb on the roof of the bird hide but the plastic roofing wasn't very strong and my foot nearly went through it. Sure enough, there was a carp skirting the reeds and heading straight to the bird hide. Then another joined and I was faced with the prospect of a couple of carp swimming around a lake which is very much no fishing and has no signs of activity other than an active log sheet in the bird hide. Not one to be deterred, I decided to hack my way through the undergrowth around the end of the lake furthest from the bird hide. However, I wasn't doing this because I solely wanted to find more fish. I wanted to find the positions of the lake which the bird hide cannot see. I was also looking for places to bury/stash gear so that I don't have to take much with me when I finally decide to poach the lake. There's nothing those crusty old farts with binoculars can do about it. My advice to you would be to adopt the same mindset as me. Channel that childhood mischief you almost certainly once had and fish it regardless of what some chump with a clipboard says. Treat it like a military operation. Gaffa tap some knackered old rods and reels high in large trees, and dig out holes to stash gear in and then put a false lid on it. Tie bricks to some old stainless and submerge it in the margins/reed beds. I would recommend that you phone the council or whoever own it and ask when the work parties or volunteer days are so that you can avoid fishing during this period. Learn to speak broken English in a foreign language so that you can pretend you couldn't read the "NO FISHING" sign properly. Do anything other than not fishing the lake. You clearly want to else you wouldn't have made this thread. Time to grow a pair and do it. What's the worst that can happen?

Those dynamite jar/tins are a complete rip-off though so I'd recommend buying your peanuts from an online bait distributor. For example; 500ml of Dynamite Frenzied Peanuts (a significant portion being liquid rather than actual peanuts) - £5 5kg of prepared peanuts from AA Baits (other distributors are available) - £12

You can put anything in it you want and if you put it in the right place when they want to feed then it'll catch. Carp are dumb. Don't include anything in a bait if the only justification you can come up with is the smell of it. Experiment a bit. Anything. Mud with chopped up worms out the garden with a bit of rapeseed oil out the cupboard? Why not? Tinned tuna and some breadcrumbs? There's some good baits based on tuna and Robin Red - which is a very popular basemix ingredient - was full of breadcrumb. Chuck some paprika in it for the authentic Robin Red experience. Why not try putting in some scrambled egg? Everyone loves a scrambled egg! I've caught fish on a chunk of the white of a hardboiled egg when I was a teenager because I forgot my bait and had to use my lunch instead! They quite like floating bread with a bit of mustard on it as well!

Are Nash going to bring out an air rifle (complete with Scope) and a 12 bore shotgun (20/28/410 for those that want to travel light) as well?

I think if people actually saw what I took then they would laugh that I'm even trying to shed weight. Like you did, I always band my rods, net, and a couple of storm poles together rather than use a holdall. My bivvy only weighs 3.5 kg for Christ's sake and can be strapped under the lid of my rucksack. However, I think considering things such as using a tarp or sleeping on the floor actually begs the question as to whether these luxury items such as a bedchair and bivvy are needed. Plenty of people in the outdoor community spend much longer periods of time without them in much more extreme conditions.

Bonjour, I've decided that I want to start carp fishing again. Since I stopped carp fishing some years ago I lived in North Wales and partook in a little bit of hiking/scrambling in Snowdonia. During this time I got quite interested with the outdoor community and their rampant desire to shed as much weight as possible - like rabid dogs chomping at a sirloin steak through a chicken wire fence. As such, I've been thinking about whether I can incorporate some of their ethos into fishing. I've decided to join a metaphorical carp fishing weight watchers club and literally decided to cut down on the weight of my kit. I want to be able to walk considerable distances with all my gear without making noises like a 20 year old transit van. Given that I will be night fishing, the greatest weight saving I can think of is my shelter and sleeping arrangement. Whilst perusing through several online tackle shops, I spotted the holy grail for the former - namely the Wychwood Tactical Compact Super Mega Carpy Camo Tarp or something like that. Although I would never pay that much for a tarp, I think the idea is good. Concerning the latter, I am thinking about buying a inflatable mattress and using it alongside a cheap foam groundsheet that I stole from the local scout group when I was about 13. In theory this sounds great as I've never minded laying on the floor and I regularly used to just sleep in the grass when I fished previously. Although, that was usually after a few too many to drink. My question is whether anybody has ever either used a tarp and/or "roughed it" on the ground whilst carp fishing for any significant period of time either in one session or over multiple session? What were the pros and cons of it? and if you decided to change back to the "traditional" method of bivvy/bedchair, what made you do this? Merci

Then you'd do well to invest in a good set of the original square-drive SS3000s. They've increased in value tremendously since I last went carp fishing and I can only see them going upwards, especially when you see some of the prices being fetched for other rare Daiwa reels. They have the magic formula for an investment - nostalgia and reliability.

I've had a set of SS3000s. Although they look fantastic and they're robust (the square-drive originals), they also squeal like a pig when you turn the handle and wobble all over the place. The line-clips are terrible as well so you'll want to pay to get upgraded replacements. Don't forget to replace the completely pointless spool rubbers as well! You could probably get a second-hand set of tournament-S 5000Ts for much cheaper and they're basically the same reel (I've had them as well) minus the looks. I would recommend the Daiwa "baboon" Emblems but I've just looked at the price of them and they're ridiculously expensive. Unfortunately, I think they're the best looking reels ever made so they'll have to go up in value before I think about selling up.

Yeah that's the one. It was always a lake that the owner and his mates would fish from my understanding. I seem to remember one of the "bailiffs" on Jigsaw whose name I cannot remember telling me that no-one really bothered fishing it as the biggest carp had recently died. I used to walk around it occasionally but never really saw much of interest.

Sort of, I live just outside Leamington Spa. I used to spend quite a lot of time over in Northamptonshire walking around the sailing lakes trying to find "unfished" lakes to poach.

You could always just get a basic recipe, buy a small amount of the ingredients, and have a go to see if you enjoy it. Just do it whenever you have a bit of time. I started out with; 20% Semolina 20% Soya Flour 30% Fishmeal (LT94) 20% Bird food (CLO) 10% Milk Powder (Lamlac or Vitomealo) which would be mega-cheap (probably <£3 a kilo) and would catch carp if it's put in the right place all year round. Then if you enjoy it, you can progress by substituting ingredients (there's way too much "bulk" in that mix) and increasing the quality of the mix. For example, dropping the standard fishmeal to 20% and substituting in 10% of pre-digested fishmeal would instantly make it a better quality mix.

I fished that Jigsaw lake for a season or two ages ago. It was a really nice atmosphere and everybody I met down there was very pleasant. The top lake was always of interest to me but I believe it was, and may still be, invite only by the owner.