salokcinnodrog

A lot of venues (mostly lakes) ban pike fishing between March and October with live or dead baiting, but you can lure fish. The reasoning behind this is that pike can suffer from low oxygen levels after a prolonged fight, and the stress can cause them to belly up and die. Rivers the pike tend to be returned into higher oxygenated water, due to the flow. Personally I save my piking from September onwards, unless I grab a lure session, which is not often. I do occasionally hook pike accidentally in the summer, usually when after perch where I may have been using a small livie for perch, or occasionally one snaffles a boilie or slug or a fish I'm retrieving. On returning I am as careful as I can possibly be, holding onto the fish until it has recovered properly and swims away of its own accord.

Easiest, and best! Only reason I use tubing is to protect the line, if I can get away without out tubing I will.

Ooh err Mrs.I hate leadcore and don't use the stuff except as a lead link. My helicopter rigs are a kind of naked set-up albeit with a bit of tubing and beads, and I prefer not to use bomb on end of line as I think you get funny bites, less indication and more hook pulls. Strangely enough I do prefer a high pop-up over smelly black weed laden rotten silt. Black sulphurous stuff I think the fish won't dig in to feed, but occasionally they may live or patrol around it, so this is where I use a bait that is high above the lakebed. The pop-up is fished as an attractor, provoke a take, and well above the smell. I reckon a specimen bream is anything above 9lb, but a double is the benchmark. Nazeing can do anyone's head in! Large water, can be noisy, sailing clubs, crayfish, a few fish and a number of pikies, foreigners who love their alcohol (on lagoons it is not often the anglers who leave empty cans and vodka bottles in the swim) and even dog walkers can be a pain in the butt.

Dacron does slip after getting wet, but I share your concern, hence my edit. Most braided material stop knots do in fact slip, whether it is the casting or getting wet.

Or try a lead link, basically a paternoster set-up where the lead is going to sink into the silt, but the hooklink with a light balanced bait is going to sit up. You can fish this with your choice of hooklink, mono, fluoro, braid, coated or uncoated, whichever you prefer. I would recommend a bottom bait that almost floats, I.e drilled out and foamed up in the hole, or even a wafter that only just sinks. The same lead set up works very well in weed You may want to play around with the hooklink and lead link length to get it right for your water. Also, it may be that the carp feed in the silt, not on it, you may need to find a way to get the hookbait at the level they feed at... Oh, and a quick edit, you may find a simple run ring works as well, and you wouldn't need to use the stop knot shown as per Del Ritchies original pic.

Go the other way round with a stiff hook end section. Nice D rig for the hook, then by connecting to braid an overhand knot on the stiff material, which you can position exactly, then uni/Grinner knot the braid through it. Like you, I do tend to have low pop-ups on the occasions I use them and do prefer stripped braid end as my putty point

Sometimes I fish with the shrink tube line aligned, and sometimes with the tube kicked over at an angle. I boil the kettle, and as it boils pull the shrink tubing into the angle I want over the steam, hook bend in one hand and hooklink material in the other. It may be I have asbestos hands, so I would recommend holding the hook bend with forceps as you do it, cos that is in the hot bit! For a line aligner there is no major worry about the angle, don't pull too tight and the angle is natural, but for that 'kicker' you will need to pull some tension into the hooklink, to get that kicked angle. To hold the angle on both better, I would also recommend dropping into some cold water after you have done it as well. You can put shrink tubing into hot water, but it doesn't shrink down as well as steam or boiling water, come to that nor does it work as well with a hot hair dryer.

Why not just strip the end section of coated braid and make a natural hinge out of the braid with the uncoated section above the hook? Add putty to the 'strip end'. I can't see any reason why what you are thinking wouldn't work, I have used the same sort of thing myself, a braided soft section, with a stiff end :ooh: but went back to the stripped section as it didn't seem to offer any advantage over the stripped end

I should actually put an add in on this as I know that Tiger Line gets very good reviews, but I can't afford to spend close on £70 on a spool of 1000metres, and so not used it The closest I actually got to a fluoro mainline was P-Line Floroclear, which is a fluoro coated mono from memory. I first (didn't) see it in a tub of water at 5Lakes, one of the early Carpin'on shows, so bought a couple of spools, and liked it as mainline and hooklink. Problem is that I think it is no longer easily available in the UK, so ended up importing it from USA E-bay sellers. Since then they seem to have twigged what it is worth, and upped the prices saying that $32.98 converts to £23 ish so you could probably get a couple of 600 yard spools of 15lb from Amazon

The fluoro's I've used are Gardner (mainline) and Sufix. Had a large stock of each as they keep better than mono's. Strangely enough for combi rigs I have switched back to Amnesia as I don't think laying on the lakebed a fluoro does make that much difference anyway, being on the lakebed, mixed in the bottom detritus; and as for fluorocarbon being invisible as a mainline, it shows up pretty well, as most get covered in plankton and particles rendering the index of being in water irrelevant in most cases, plus the lack of casting ability with it...

Ssshhh!

I found the Grinner knot didn't work well with fluorocarbons, blood knot is best for me, and Dave Chilton of Kryston has said this self same thing, as per the above link

That is my thinking as I have seen stiffer hook links, mono, coated braid and fluoro all sticking up from the swivel, which as they are stiff may well put the fish off feeding. Don't get me wrong as sticks, stiff twigs, or even lake weed all stick up, but they have a natural feel, which man made materials often don't. It's this sticking up which sees me going back to uncoated braids from the Kryston stable, be it Merlin, Supersilk, or Silkworm, which I do love, along with SuperNova. As for plain D rigs, yes, I do like them for pop-ups and bottom baits, and for my snowman baits.

Probably only on a clear gravel, clay or sandy lakebed. I see no point in using fluorocarbon on silty waters, the silt may well hide your normal hooklink, and why risk a 'scaring' loop of hooklink as it beds in near the hooklink swivel

As my current water is not particularly carp friendly, I've been exploring its pike potential with a few trips this year. Over 4 trips a mate and I have had some good fish, pike from 2 to 21lbs, normally a couple each trip, although we did manage a blank between us each day. The mate in question is the friend who managed to catch the twenty I lost last year, really into his fishing now, and enjoying it. Our first pike trip produced 3 to me, and Colin saved a blank with the small jack last knockings. My fish were two around 6lb, and a scrappy 16 with a missing pec. The next trip, Colin managed another couple of jacks, and again I had 3, topped with a 17. The 17 was a bit of a nightmare, not the fish, but the idiot dog walker who as I was unhooking it, got so close to the rod tip, moved it away from his face, and pulled the treble under my nail, more problems unhooking me than the pike. Unfortunately we both blanked next trip, but hey ho. A week later we were back at the venue, after a couple of casts I cast a whole joey mackeral, and within minutes, a finicky take with just a few bleeps and a nodding rod tip, no line pulled out the clip I hit into this beauty at 21lb The smile is very real, only my second ever pike over 20, worthy of a new PB at 21. Chuffed

Okey cokey, I've got nothing against helicopter rig bans especially in weedy or snaggy waters, where a naked misused (unreleasable) chod could result in a trailing line and weed etc, a leader knot could add to the problem as it only takes a tiny bit of weed to jam up over a knot preventing the rig, beads etc being able to come off the line. To me, far better than a lead clip, is a lead link, paternoster, with the lead possibly on a weaker link, which can break free if required. On casting the lead pulls everything behind it. Have a lookie here: http://www.carp.com/topic/1487-thick-weed-tactics/page-2

Ok, from someone who used to use leadcore, but no longer does so... I used ready spliced leaders from some tackle manufacturers, and they were awful, with the splice giving way, or even the leader unravelling at the end. So I resorted to always tying my own, either needle knot, or even leader knot over the leadcore but unlike a shock leader, no uni knot on the leader, and never had one give way, although a fast take over gravel did see the mainline give way well above it as my stop (marker) knot on the mainline later proved.

Just go Gardner rig scissors. Mine are many years old, still working, despite them being used for cutting pike trace wire as well as braid and mono. http://gardnertackle.co.uk/product/rig-scissors/ For some reason, I seem to recall writing a review on them, and that being displayed on Gardner's web page many moons ago. The pair I reviewed are the same pair I have now, but I have a spare pair, still in the pack for when they do eventually die from abuse.

Just checked, it was also on a Fox DVD, with the actual video footage only cos I saw it myself, and obviously Carpology were going to use the pics...

Gas all the way through for me. I'm currently using Primus cartridges, a mix of Butane, Iso-Butane and Propane. I can still recommend CADAC, Coleman cartridges which are both a mix of propane and butane, but since my local Millets has become Blacks, they are not selling the Coleman500 cartridges in winter, and I'll be darned if I'm waltzing into my local tackle shop for a gas cartridge, knowing I'll walk out £30 worse off. Trakker Armolife: http://trakkerproducts.co.uk/product.php?id=82&scid=18&sid=2 Webtex warrior compact: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/321507812729?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=108&chn=ps&device=t&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0-L&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108&ff19=0

The slack vs tight lines experiment was on a Fox DVD I think, Rob Hughes actually diving to test movement distance before any indication at the buzzer, on a section not advertising tackle, although obviously some of the DVD will be based on selling.

But does the lead actually hook the fish?

Put it this way: An angler who was fishing at Nazeing was attached to what I'm pretty sure was Digit, a fish that went between 35-38lb, and would easily have been a new PB. He was playing the fish when it cut through the margin weeds, and before I could lean out any further to net it, it was gone. On inspection, the tail rubber covering his quick link was gone, so either his tail rubber slid down and the loop came off the link, or his loop knot snapped. It is not the only occasion I have heard anglers bemoaning losing fish down to various quick links either. The simple loop, or the curled doubled quick links have all failed. If a knot goes, it is totally MY fault, if an item of tackle fails...

And I seem to recall an article where the author tried that at Wraysbury, went out in the boat in the morning to discover his rigs had been stuffed, moved metres with no indication at the rod sync buzzer end. Strange, may even have been Leon Bartropp... I've never trusted slack lines with semi-fixed leads, too much scope for movement, and having watched and observed, seen underwater tests, know it doesn't work at any range where the fish can move towards you, either straight or in an arc. If you must use slack lines, then go running...

Piffle! Try to take out the idiot factor from a fishery owners point of view, and sorry, there are so many bad drivers fishing lakes that leadcore is banned on many lakes because of them; fishing up tight to snags, or fishing in weed leading to tethered up fish that it's use needs to be monitored or even banned on many waters. I can think of numerous fish that have died after being tethered and fish I have untethered, fish that have line scars on their flanks ( personally witnessed, and with additional information on this forum by Levigsp). The media often show leadcore rigs, with inline or pendant set-ups on, and these in any form should NOT be used, as the leadcore will trail any rig, the media 'plug' these set-ups as safe. Even heli rigs can twist and kink and trap beads and rigs on leadcore, again personally witnessed and tested. To try to reduce the possibilities of any snagged and tethered fish you must prevent the use of it. It is exactly the same as drunk drivers, even though it is illegal to be over the limit, people still do it, and these people should be taken off the road. By taking leadcore off the road, you vastly reduce the risks.