salokcinnodrog

It was down to the size of the eye of the hook in relation to the hooklink material which was best. Terry Hearn was using a thick hooklink material which would not go through a size 5/6 ESP hook, so he started using the Whipping knot.

Some tackle companies have most definitely encouraged bad practice, and it is that much! Nash lakes rules, must drop the lead, Korda advocating drop the lead on their lead clip. Magazines are as bad, an article advocating doing it, and the sheep, the 'lack thinking' follow it. It carries on, leadcore rigs that are essentially death traps, leaders that can't eject rig or lead in event of a break-off. I got into a big argument with a magazine over it, and that magazine editor did not want me to publish his reply. It lead to being slagged off in print in the magazine; apparently despite me sending experiment results, I did not get out and fish and was an armchair keyboard warrior, I got a heavy slagging off via Jim Shelley, and was blocked from his FB page (no great loss). Facebook media pics encourages people into fishing, much more now than dad's taking their children, two parent families are a minority... Respect for other anglers is a minority. Jump next door and spod it in, no quietly put baits in so as to cause little disturbance to fish or others around you. Drunken social carp angling is a big current fashion, compared to years ago the social match followed by drink in pub... Yes, there are decent youngsters around, but not many. Yes years ago, my mates and I would fish. If we messed around it was only our fishing we messed up, you didn't annoy anyone else, cos we didn't like the ticking off!

Baits work in conjunction with each other. A boilie with a low nutritional value may catch loads of fish, if the background feed is high nutrition, say a bed of pellets, or is providing other nutrition or attraction like particles, or even if the fish are in inquisitive mood. Equally if you are fishing just boilies, then an high nutritional balanced food bait may be best.

Part of the problem in fishing today is the media, or part tackle manufacturers advocating dangerous practices, unsafe fishing and too many modern anglers being sheep, following the setup recommended. Not enough anglers think for themselves. Rules are put in place for 'numpties', to cover the idiot factor, to keep owners or even other anglers happy, (often in the case of match vs carp anglers). If an owner thinks barbless hooks are better for fish then that is what they think, follow the rules. In most cases I think rules are in place for a very good reason. No leaders, no leadcore, no plastics, or minimum 15lb line, there is some reasoning behind them all. What winds me up is anglers who don't think rules apply to them. If you have a genuine gripe with a rule, as long as you can put your point across to the owner or bailiff why then he may consider it and go with your reasoning, ir give you a vaild 'no'.

Sorry helicopter rigs on weedy lakes are not the safest. The first point is that a bead, or ring swivel sliding up and down your mainline increases the risk or the line abrading and giving way, breaking. Leaders are a BIG no no anywhere near snags or weed. Playing a fish on a bomb on the end of the line set up gives a funny playing angle, and after personal experience I have seen hooks open out. Not all patterns are suitable. Weed collects on both the bead, the lead and the hook, and actually if you get a break off (especially with a leader), the fish could be trailing rig, leader and lead, as a bead can be jammed up by weed. You are far better to go back to inline leads in the event of a break off, only the hook collects the weed.

Rules are put in place to keep landowners, lake owners, clubs and fish safe and happy, so as such there are no silly rules. You may not agree with them, but they should be followed, although there is one on a well known tackle manufacturers lake that I find is a form of pollution, and is also a practice that must be stopped: 'all leads must be dropped on the take'. As such I will never fish that manufacturers lakes, I find the rule abhorrent, a disgusting practice. No plastics, brilliant rule.

Certain flavours? There are particular essential oils that offer a valuable nutritional profile, one of which is black pepper oil. Other flavours can have high attraction properties; flavours containing N-butyric acid, Iso-eugenol, natural attractors in their own right, and often the base compound of particular flavours, but not every part of a flavour is attractive. If you have ever used any flavour, the chances are you have used a bait with a preservative in, the base solvent itself, could be propylene glycol, or anti-freeze, it might be glycerol. It could be a potassium salt, or it could be standard sugar. Even the base solvent could, in the case of glycerol, be the attraction, but to mix that with eugenol, vanillin and n-butyric you have banana flavour. Change the ratios of those three compounds and you could be using guava! Baits work in combination as well. If you fish boilie over pellet, or boilie over particle, then it is not necessarily the boilie that is the attraction, it could be the background feed creating some pre-occupation, the boilie hookbait just happens to be picked up. Years ago I read somewhere that carp have limited utilisation of carbohydrates, and the best energy source is fats, working at a higher ratio of conversion to energy than carbs or protein. A number of years ago, I blanked for three days on a food source bait, on a 'runs' water, the high attract pop-ups produced. On day three the food baits started working, no more carp were caught on hi-attract baits, only the food source.

Food ingredients used in human food can often be of lower standard than that of food used in animal husbandry and carp baits. Just because it is human standard does not mean it is healthy at all. Most shelf life boilies now avoid the use of potassium sorbate, yet it is a human grade food preservative! As for Macdonalds, that is acceptable good for humans, yet I would not feed it to my dog, although every now and again I do eat Maccyd's.

First thing is that some fishmeal baits are absolutely brilliant, on most waters, although at certain times and on runs waters other baits may prove their woth. Long term fishmeal baits include Nutrabaits Big Fish Mix, Trigga, and more, but it is getting the best out of them that not everyone understands. On 'overstocked' waters, high attract non fishmeal baits can be better for the angler doing quick trips, yet as a long term bait fishmeal baits can produce more. In summer, higher carbohydrate, birdfood baits with a quick leakage can produce more, the first nutritional requirement is energy, carbohydrates and fats. Protein for growth is not the first need! The fishmeals will produce, but not as first choice. There are alternatives, meat meals, chicken, liver, beef which will work long term. My choice for a long term bait is most definitely a fishmeal.

Ici to B Pit, to Suffolk Water Park, to River Gipping by a committee member, from one side of the weir to the other and then onto Snake. Wandering mirror, it had human movement, none of the moves were by itself!

Gipping in Suffolk. We had a few out from various stretches, although the 28 pictured was the biggest, then sadly it got poached, not by Eastern Europeans, but by local fishery owners wanting instant fish. Dippy the 40lb + Mirror went from the Gipping to Snake Pit 25miles away. The Stour on the border also has some very good fish in it.

Hampton Court area used to produce good fish😉 Carp have been caught as far downstream as the London Docks. River carp? I suppose I should go find some more...

A 1 egg mix makes around 80 baits, so I actually have 160 in total, half of each. Of each mix I have done a few in 20mm compared to the other 15mm😉 If the crays are active I will use most of them.

Just made a years supply of pop-ups with the secret ingredients😉 Two 1 egg mixes, 1 blue and 1 red, cork dust base mix, RH Megaspice, Versele Laga Garlic Oil, and glycerol to preserve them once dried out

Lake escapee I do believe though!

2.75😉 Daiwa, Korum or Shimano

50+! One helleur of a fish...😖😅😉

To be honest, I do try to avoid Fox and Nash as much as I possibly can. Nash because I do not like his ethics, too much tackle returned faulty or broken when I was working in tackle shop, and Fox not always the best with the same issues of faulty gear. There are also far better cheaper items out there by other manufacturers in most cases.

Nash luggage robust? All of the stuff I have had has fallen to pieces, on occasions under warranty. The customer service and after sales was appalling. It took a letter to CarpWorld publicising it to get my rucksack replaced after 3months. Rucksacks you are far better getting a military Bergen! Mine is battered, bruised and still going, on its second life. I also dislike the ethics of Nash and some of his quietly forgotten past history including Catchum, (his way into the bait industry via Rod Hutchinson), I dislike a tackle manufacturer advocating dropping leads on his fishery (!) and his carefully chosen published biography which I think is a little short of honesty. I think The only good item of Nash tackle I have had was a Nash Outlaw Hurricane bivvy, that is in fact still in good enough condition to use, which I picked oop on t'bay for £10 by looking for spelling mitsakes😮😉😆🐟 Fox on the other hand customer service was always spot on.

Selling a 'job lot' of tackle like that is to me annoying and worrying in a number of ways. Is it hot, stolen or not quite right? Has someone stuck the lot on a credit card, realised they couldn't afford it, and stuck it up for sale? Is it our fashion victim realising that fishing is not for them and selling the lot Someone who just thinks they need the new must have? Lots of questions under that little list!

I used to fish Hellesdon Mill in Norfolk. Almost every trip I got my licence checked! I reckon I have probably been checked about half my age over the years, so around 24 times😮😆

I use the same bait all the way through, often a fishmeal. I start the season on a bait and go with it all the way through. Since 2000 it has been a fishmeal bait. The only thing I do is reduce how much I feed. This is on my season ticket water that I do fish all season. I think the theory comes from anglers going onto new waters or day only lakes where a birdfood boilie may be more 'instantly' attractive compared to the fishmeal. Birdfood boilies usually have a higher leakage and flavours leak out quicker providing more instant attraction. Even birdfood boilies can be a long term bait, I used Enervite and Enervite Gold successfully long term, as well as my own home made baits. On day ticket or runs waters I may use a birdfood bait, but even then I have found a good fishmeal will work. A few years ago I fished a water near me for a 5 day trip between Christmas and New Year, for the first two days the attractor pop-ups produced fish, then the carp switched onto the long term fishmeal bait I had been baiting with since the start of the session.

A day ticket water local to me got to the stage of one of the bailiffs being a local dealer, and some anglers who weren't involved being robbed for their tackle. Police were regularly at the lake sorting issues out! I know a lot of anglers on my season ticket lakes like a little puff, and again now the Lea Valley rangers are stamping down on it, along with Eastern Europeans using the venue as a picnic and swimming site, leaving their litter behind. My local park lake, it used to be a place where I could let my kids fish by themselves, then the 'puffers' started turning up and kids had tackle stolen. Now on both the Lea Valley and the park I would not fish without my dog. I would not let my children go on their own. Greekski mentioned bailiffs. In East Anglia, it was one full time bailiff covering Suffolk and Norfolk, then he retired. I have not yet seen his replacement. I say Norfolk, you consider the Western edge of Norfolk is fenland, butting onto Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, then you have the Suffolk and Norfolk Broads many of which are boat access only. I used to get two reminders for my licence, now it is just one, and I saved the cost of two licences with the three rod job. Clubs are also in decline; waters being lost to day tickets or syndicates, lack of membership numbers. That puts children off, not all can afford day ticket money every week. I used to buy my son his club ticket once a year, not a problem, yet paying £10 every week for what was £50 a season... The waters themselves, my local club had specimen roach, tench, bream and perch. Now those fish are few and far between. Another issue is travel to waters. I used to walk or cycle to my waters, 7mile cycle ride at times, a walk of a couple of miles. You can't do that with carp gear, and due to my ex and my estrangement, or even work I could not take my children every weekend. Saying all that, Alton Water has started fishing well again, for roach and other fish, including the occasional carp.

I am so glad that it is not just me who uses that term 'fugly'.

I laugh at these people who say they haven't had their licence checked in years, for 5 years on the trot I was checked at least once a year on various waters. In Suffolk on the Park Lake when I still had Post Office receipt, then in Dobbs Weir and around a month later at Nazeing. Is fishing in decline? I think to some extent carp fishing is, thank goodness, maybe partly due to the older genuine anglers getting fed up of the current bull of the carp record, which I think before long will not exist due to the legal imports, what weight a fish is stocked at, grown on, basically the Big Rig scenario or even a dubious import like Oak Lodge and the catfish record. It was silly for a record to go from 50lb to 108lb, someone was bound to take notice! Is that licence sales or licence money? One carp angler buys a 3 rod licence now, instead of two 2 rod licences, which counters both the decline in licence sales and money. I think other 'disciplines' are on the increase, I for example now do more fishing for other species than I used to. From 1992 to 2010, I pretty much fished only for carp. Yet now I am back chasing roach, pike and other species. However as a whole there are fewer younger anglers coming into fishing. The joys of X-box, PS4 etc, take them away from an outdoor life, as does the fewer male parents (in most cases) taking their sons (and daughters) fishing. In addition to that, there is still a 'push' towards carp fishing, yet a youngster blanks and the kit does a trip into the cupboard never to cone out again. If they were catching fish, like roach and perch then they would want to continue going. Don't forget children under 12 don't have to pay for a rod licence at all. I also bet bet a few 3 rod set-ups include the 'sons rod'...