salokcinnodrog

@welder puts it very nicely. While PTFE may be very 'slippery', your swivel is landing on silt, clay, gravel, or sand or whatever else is on the lakebed, any of those are enough to 'jam' the swivel and stop it rotating. Add to that, your rig is in a direct line from the mainline, be that straight out on a pendant or inline set-up, or at 90% on a helicopter set-up. The swivel is basically a simple way to attach your rig to the mainline. It doesn't really need to swivel at all, unless on a helicopter or Chod set-up when it may need to spin during the fight.

Cork ball quality has changed, and gotten worse over the years. Over harvesting of the bark, less than 9-12 years, and drought in the Mediterranean has meant that top rated cork is no longer used for cork balls, so lesser grades are being used. The basic answer is that where a 10mm cork ball would pop-up a 16mm bait, now they struggle with a 14mm and 12mm is the real limit. I've mentioned it in the long distant past about making cork ball pop-ups, and the best results I got were sieve the base mix, remove any lumps before adding your liquid and mixing. To your base mix, if you can add 10-20% of sodium caseinate, it is a buoyant ingredient and will assist with making your pop-ups pop-up. The smoother you can get the skin the harder it is for water to get in and affect buoyancy, and even make the boilie mix come away from the cork ball. Not fun reeling in just a cork ball, and I've done that a few times long ago, hence my pedancy for getting it exact. The next thing is testing every pop-up against your hooks. Dry them after boiling, test and then dry again. It is quite possibly why I prefer tying cork ball baits on over piercing them. It reduces water getting in to the bait. As water gets into cork it expands slightly meaning the skin gets pushed off. Pedancy, or pedantry, both correct, and definitely disapproved...

After not going carp fishing since August due to having personal issues to deal with regarding my dad I managed to get a couple of trips on the bank this month. Last week was Wednesday to Friday. I got to the lake, and fancied an area towards the shallower east end of the lake. I did have an angler on the opposite bank slightly to my left, so I made sure I wouldn't interfere with his fishing, and got myself set up. Sorting out my dinner I realised I had left my cutlery set at home, no major issue as I had a fork in the spares pocket of my food ruckbag. It did mean that I had to gauge 2 teaspoons of sugar in my coffee though. The more important issue was the bucket of birdfood to get the ducks and swans to clear some weed if the carp didn't eat it, and worse Sky's food bowl. I was in the sleeping bag for 8pm, but awake listening for fish. A few crashed between Dave and I between 8 and 10pm when I eventually fell asleep while the frost was forming. Sky refused to come in the bivvy, and slept outdoors. Thursday was a walk around looking, but nothing made me want to move. That night was most definitely warmer, but nothing crashed, so Friday saw a slow pack up with a blank. I wasn't intending to fish again for a week, but Sunday I got back to the empty lake, complete with garlic soaked birdfood particles. I hadn't forgotten anything this week, set myself up in the same swim, although checked the wind forecast to the 3nights and had the back of the bivvy facing North West. Two quiet days, despite searching and walking around the lake with Sky on Monday and Tuesday. The only action I saw was the swans, tufties and coots mooching around the particles, although they never picked up a hookbait Tuesday night, just after dinner Sky decided to come in the bivvy, so I knew that the rain and wind forecast was coming that night. Around 8 I crashed out for a couple of hours, but at 10 got woken up to the short bivvy pegs being pulled out of the soft ground by the wind getting up to 50mph. Sky was sitting on the umbrella skirt/groundsheet join, so it didn't blow away, but it was close! I got out my long pegs and bank sticks, and went out to swap pegs and push them in at least 50cm. Managed to get sorted, but stayed awake until 1am, when I realised that my 20year old Aqua rod holdall had been blown away, and is likely to have sunk. This morning was a bit of a pig to pack away, my mix of banksticks, tent pegs were difficult to pull out, and obviously trying to juggle loose rods, landing nets, slings and throwing stick into the car. The sad part is that the historical black poplar has finally given in to old age and nature. Expectations or hopes were a fish, reality was a near disaster.

I nearly always use a tournament or plain pear lead on the marker rod. I've always got some handy for a bit of clearance, a couple of 3's and 4oz.

Fishing cost is always personal. Personally I find £24 for 24hours too expensive and I baulk at even £10 for a day session. I know one local water is £35 for 24hours! I could not justify a minimum of £2000 for a years fishing at day ticket prices. However I can justify a £500 syndicate season ticket or even £300 for a club season ticket. Fishing is my 'get away from the world', my relief from pain, from being trapped inside the flat. It is cheaper to be fishing for 3 or 4 days than the cost of electricity and gas in my flat.

This is hopefully the Feargal Sharkey explanation of how it doesn't cost a penny:

That may be true, but that does NOT excuse their other idiocies. David Paulden, sorry, Zack Polanski as he changed his name to, is dangerous. Remove the UK from NATO? NATO and the UN are at least holding the American Idiot back a little bit. Subsidise net zero energy even more? When as yet both solar and wind power are not technically viable. Convert farmland for food into solar farms? Fine, OK, then add in the pylons across the country to the towns. Wind farms in the North Sea? Brilliant, you still have to cable the electricity to the land, and more pylons across the country. Populism does not make for common sense.

And the Green Party are otherwise extremely dangerous. Their 'progressive' policies are followed by people who have little or no common sense. Take into that what you will! There is no political party that actually has the common sense to run this nation; political parties are run to suit one group of people, and it is not the actual population.

Just over 73metres? It might help if you are only reaching 60...

It's fishing, and I am sure carp waters are affected by sewage. Some will have stream or river fed inlets, with possibly sewage treatment above them. In fact, just as I was writing this I thought of 7 venues and lakes in my local area that are nearby to sewage outlets on my local river. Our MP's continually voting against stopping sewage firms allowing outflow into our waterways is disgusting, as is the continued private ownership. Feargal Sharkey has explained on television how easily water companies could be nationalised again, without the water companies being 'compensated', their billion Pound demands.

PTFE would make sense. I noticed the oily compound when I put it on on the bank, might be why I stopped as I wasn't sure on what it was. I'm the same, never sure if it made a difference on my casting. It seemed smoother, not as 'noisy', but I can or could cast a distance anyway.

I am of the load line slowly onto the spool wet, and it is tidy, doesn't tangle or cause me grief. Wet line casts more smoothly than dry line, and it is probably on recasts, soaked. I normally have a couple of casts to get it right, so by the time I cast properly the line is wet. I have used Kryston Greased Lightning and yes it does seem to make it cast even better, as well as appear to improve abrasion resistance.The old dropper bottles, I would put a line across the spool back to front, turn the spool 45⁰, same again, and again until I had done a full 360⁰. I have not used it for a few years though. One thing I did find was it seemed to make the line more buoyant.

Sadly I have had to do a bit of an edit, so this thread doesn't read as well as I had to take out a few debatable posts. We can get back to specialised hookbaits, what makes them work? Is it the flavour combination, the attractor package, or additional ingredients, even the ph of the lake or in that area? We keep going round in circles, and its possible that glycerine is an attractor, or maybe the flavour itself, be it spicy or the base of a product. Vanillin, iso-eugenol, glycerine, black pepper oil, garlic oil, bromelain or n-butyric acid all have their place, maybe even lemon juice or citric acid or flavours containing terpenes

On other crimes he has, but has avoided trial or imprisonment and then pardoned himself