salokcinnodrog

I have minimised my gear time and time again to cover going along my local river and for a large reservoir where on neither was using a barrow an option, although I seem to have gained loads the past few years as I can barrow or even drive to some swims. In most cases, two rods banded together around your landing net and pole make life easier, although if you need an umbrella, look at the Stalker type slings. For days only I resort to a flask of coffee and sandwiches, although in summer I change that to a bottle or two of water and some squash. I also don't bother with a chair, using my unhooking mat to sit on. Two rig bins full, along with a stalking bag goes inside my rucksack, inside that is bait, a large single layer tackle box containing end tackle, run rings, beads, a few swivels, baiting needles and braid blades. My PVA bag also contains forceps, side cutters and leads, these all then go in my rucksack. If I'm doing nights a light bivvy, I still have a Nash Outlaw Hurricane bivvy and my bedchair and sleeping bag. The whole lot can be carried, in one trip!

I had this on my lake, coots diving over my bait and giving occasional pick-ups of my hookbait. What you need is a rig which will reset itself, a very hard pop-up and your line either dead tight to a big lead, or running along the bottom. Go to a D-rig or similar, with the weight as close as you can get it to the hook, since I have crayfish to deal with I use an olivette. The plastic tubing or shrink tube at one end goes over the eye of the hook and the olivette. The other end the very small piece of silicone holds to the hooklink and the olivette.

Like most other anglers I don't choose the weather I fish in, and have to fish in what it happens to be. Find the fish and fish to them wherever they may be. Higher pressure in winter may give some sun, but dependant on which direction it has come from it may be a cold one. In winter fish may hole up in tight groups, in a particular area year after year. It may be next to weeds beds, rushes, natural food, snags or gravel bars or plateau. This area may not be out in the middle of the lake, it may actually be right next to the bank. Bait wise, I fish with the same food source boilie I have been fishing and baiting with all year, but on one rod (I can fish 3 on the Lagoons) there is always a hi-attract or boosted bait. My food bait produces most fish, but the hi-attract may produce a bonus, and is regularly recast to different areas to try to find other fish.

Nanofil is like a cross between a braid and a mono is the best way to describe it I suppose, as it is a uni-filament, like one piece of material formed into a chain if that makes sense. Now I am not sure on diameters as what we sell in the UK may well have American inches as opposed to European metric, but I do know it is thinner than mono in the same breaking strain. I haven't used it myself as I use other braids for my pike fishing, although I do know some of the roach anglers use some of the lowest diameters on Alton Reservoir when hitting feeders a long way to get into roach. Bite detection apparently improved, and casting distances are improved, but, and that is a but, a thinner line should cast further than a thicker line anyway

No Mate, Chantry. I tend to sneak down to the last few hours of daylight to avoid many of the local numpties.

I would much rather be pretty sure I will wake up alive rather than take the risk of killing myself due to carbon monoxide. You wouldn't even know you were dying, you'd never wake up. I think the fatal level It's not cheap gas, it is carbon monoxide produced by a lack of oxygen when a fuel burns, so it could be because you have cut off the air supply to your bivvy by shutting the door.

I recall one each side of the swim at Merrington, although if I remember rightly you were in the frozen north side of the lake on that occasion. Did you actually see the sun on that weekend?

That is roughly what I worked out. I recently heard of a pike unhooking mat or cradle designed on those dimensions, so it may not actually be a carp unhooking mat

It really does amuse me those who often cast to the horizon without considering the margins. I honestly can't count the number of fish I have caught on a bait lowered in, rather than cast, including two personal bests, and a couple of 30+ fish.

My local park lake is actually the opposite. The buzzer anglers nearly always cast across the lake from one side to the other to the edge of the rushes, pushing the fish into a back channel. I tend to fish Sweetcorn over Vitalin with the lift float and the centre pin. Great fun nabbing fish when the clutch screams and breaks the reverie

Centre pin, lift float with Sweetcorn as bait? Occasionally Stick float, trotting with a centre pin, maggots on the hook? Yep

You have the various Fox Supa Brolly and Supa Brolly Systems, a 50 and 60 inch version which you can get an overwrap I think. There is also the TFG Power Brolly System and TFG Oval Brolly which both take an overwrap (the same overwrap fits both). I have a mate who uses the TFG Power brolly, and have fished with him a few times, so have seen it in use and can vouch for it.

Probably Okuma They make reels for a number of tackle brands

How and what the fish are feeding over can change hair length requirements, and you may not even know what they are feeding on. You may be fishing over a previous anglers bait, be it particles, or groundbait, spod mix or boilies, or even fish troughing on bloodworm. Say your long hair rig is giving you bleeps which you can't hit, so your answer is to shorten it, and the result is a mid 20. It is quite possible that you are fishing over particles or groundbait, which is being sucked back, and in this case the hook is not following because the hair is too long for how the fish are feeding, maybe the hookbait is able to be blown out or even the hook is too heavy for the bait to be sucked in. By shortening it over particles or broken down pellets, or even mushy boilies where fish are feeding confidently, the carp are not so wary of every bait. As CM says, fish feed differently almost every day. On some days they truffle and trough over any bait, ripping the bottom up, not inspecting anything, on others they inspect absolutely everything. What type of lake and lakebed can also have some effect; you imagine that your bait is perfectly presented over a firm lakebed, sand, clay or gravel, and on such lakebed a longer hair is more easily utilised, if it's properly presented, whereas on a silty or weedy lakebed the carp aren't inspecting everything, and a shorter hair is or may be more effective. Now it gets really confusing, almost everyone straightens the hair out, as they do with most of the hooklink as well, either by dragging back, or by using a piece of dissolving foam to keep the hair tangle free from the hook. In fact you may want the bait tight to the hook on the cast and touchdown to the lakebed, but able to extend afterwards, so you want the hair PVA'd or the nugget holding it to the back of the hook, and the bait close to the shank. If it is already extended, then on 'suck', the bait can't be drawn to the carps mouth, and as it twitches, you get a bleep or two as a short bit of line is pulled through the lead clip. By the hair and bait being tight, not extended and able to be sucked in, you create some confidence.

The hair length needs to be considered relevant to the size of the fish. A 20lb carp has approximately 4inches to the back of the throat I guess, a 10lb fish probably half that. Rod Hutchinson actually measured it for the invention of the extending hair rig he invented with a 28lb fish.

Drennan FD and the Red Range reels outperform many far higher priced reels of various manufacturers, including, dare I say it, Shimano To get an equivalent performance you would be spending around £80 on Shimano! As long as the reel is big enough then it will do a darn good job

Years ago I used to use Leadcore with running leads, but eventually a breakage forced me to rethink the set-up. I had a fast take on a lake with some severe gravel bars, and I got a breakage above the Leadcore on the mainline. The fish would be trailing the rig, the lead if that got caught up on the Leadcore, and the Leadcore itself. It along with comments from people on here got me to rethink and experiment what I was doing. As a result I discovered that as far as I was concerned there was or is no safe way to fish Leadcore. If you fish a running lead, with a large run ring, then on a shock leader the run ring, and lead can be ejected. However, the only safe way to fish if there are any weeds or snags is leader free, so the lead can definitely be ejected.

What gets me is I have fished a water with Cats, and never hooked one. My mate was in the next swim, on the same bait, and rigs, and landed his first ever Cat, albeit only double figures. I seem to get plagued by crayfish. This week I went back to a standard line aligned and knotless knotted rig, and had a series of bleeps last night. My boilie stop had been removed and the top Seafood Takeaway boilie had been pinched. The bottom Chilli Club boilie had been left. I recast with a fresh top bait, and had another series of bleeps. This morning I retrieved and the top bait had been whittled down from 14mm to about 8mm. The Chilli Club had again been untouched! I had baited this rod up with 2pints of maggots and crushed boilies in PVA bags. The other rod on Seafood Takeaway and stringer rather than crushed baits was untouched. That does pose an interesting benefit maybe, in that the Crays are not a fan of the Chilli baits, which could be good news for a real hookbait. The annoyance is that the carp weren't interested either though.

I use a running lead with run ring for almost all of my fishing; fished with a slack line as a proper running lead, or the same set-up can be fished with a tight line for a semi-fixed lead. A few years ago on Brackens I fished with a running lead, compared to most other anglers who were using lead clips and semi-fixed. I honestly think my results were a lot more fish than they were catching. Even on The Lagoons when no undertow allows I switch back to a running lead at ranges from short to 100metres.

It's especially a very good presentation for a pop-up, but does work well with a bottom bait, Wafter and snowman

In theory yes, but in practice no, because every lake and how fish feed is different.Carp on some lakes may eat groundbait, yet on others due to other fish getting there first, they don't. Maybe Sweetcorn attracts tench, roach or bream before the carp, yet on waters with no or fewer silver fish the carp get there first On smooth clean lake beds smaller particles will lift up as fish or water currents move them around. In silty waters, the particles may sink in or sit on, so the response there is different. How far a boilie lifts up when a fish sucks will depend on each water, some waters the fish may use 'only just enough' suck to draw the bait to them, yet after being hooking they may actually use two sucks to test a food item (the reason for the invention of the extending hair). The first suck takes the extent of the hair, the second suck draws the (expected) free bait into the mouth. A bait that is on a hair shorter than the distance for the first suck, and if will ping back as if on elastic. You really need to fish and learn your water, and then as you move on remember that waters don't all fish the same because you have different stock levels, different lakebeds, different strains and shapes of carp.

Don't think they all are to be honest You consider that the D-rig was one anglers answer when the basic hair had been sussed on Savay, and an alternative from someone else was the Extending hair. Then the line aligner was a non mouth damaging alternative to Piggyback (long curved shank) and Bent hooks. The Withy was nothing like the 360 rig, and if you fished a pop-up on a long hair it will be nothing like how it is on a short hair... Actually how a pop-up and hook sits can change dependant on how or where the bait is attached, how the hook is counterbalanced, or even whether overweighted or critically balanced, or simply by a standard hair and the pop-up not buoyant enough to lift the hook at all. As Phil says, Crays can destroy a rig in minutes. You may not fish a water with them in now, but at some point...

I must admit I do like a stiffer hooklink material, so switch to Amnesia in clear. It ties a lovely D-rig

It is the longer the hair the more freedom of the bait to go into the mouth. A short hair won't allow the bait the freedom to be sucked in, so the hook doesn't even go into the mouth. If the hair is long enough the hook will follow it into the mouth, then with that hook following the carp 'realises' a foreign object is attached or the bait has something with it it shouldn't, so attempts to blow that foreign object out, giving the chance for the hook to pr ick into the lip. The hair needs to be long enough for the hook to be taken in in the first place. You have actually picked up on another point .If they are feeding on close together particles, pellets or groundbait, then you can get away with a shorter hair, whereas boilies that are further apart you will likely need the hair to be longer. You can actually watch fish in tanks or ponds, if you put a baited hook in there, after a few hookings, the carp will suck the bait from further away, so lengthen the hair and you can continue to hook them. Now imagine that in a big lake, big as in fishable size, and you can see how the hair needs to be changed to suit. Rod Hutchinson wrote about most of this in The Carp Strikes Back, so it's not new Carp don't suck in with the same force each time; each food reacts differently, size, density and the lakebed will change how much pressure to move it is required. Sweetcorn is a light bait, so will require less suck than an 18mm boilie. That 18mm boilie on a firm sand or clay lakebed will need less suck than an 18mm boilie sat in silt. Other particles, hemp or tares are pretty dense and 'heavy', or larger particles like chick peas, maple peas or maize are almost boilie size. Steve then picks up another point, carp feed differently. Some carp are suckers and blowers, others pick certain foods up, and some truffle, trough or dig the lakebed, especially when feeding on bloodworm or maggots in silt. (Deeper areas that have been cleaned down). A pop-up rig will need to be considered as to whether the carp is clamping down on it, or sucking the bait in from a distance.

There is a very simple way of looking at your rig: A) Keep it simple, a standard knotless knotted or knotless knotted and line aligned rig will catch most fish. A knotless knotted rig will not always work, sometimes you do need a line aligner, and a proper line aligner rather than a shrink tube kicker. B) Look at where you hook, or even lose your fish. If you are hooking in the cheek, the back of the mouth or throat of the fish your hair is too long. If you lose fish, from hookpulls, or the hook is in the extreme edge of the lip then the hair is too short. If you get a perfect bottom lip hook placement then the hair length is exactly right. Only change one thing at a time, the hair, the hook, or hooklink material, or length of the hooklink. The stiffness or suppleness of the hooklink material will make a difference as to how easily the hook and bait is taken, as will whether the hooklink is straightened out or not. Try fishing the same (braided or coated braid) hooklink straightened out or allowed to collapse flat and compare results. Different brands of hooks may be different sharpnesses, even if the pattern shapes are the same or similar. Personally, I have found that the sharpest hooks straight from the pack are Solar 101's, Gardner Muggas, Gamakatsu, ESP/Drennan and Kamasan. I will only ever use those brands.