salokcinnodrog

It actually produced my last 2 fish out of the syndicate. The lead and rig all in the bag fished with bottom baits. No need to slow it down. I knew I was on a weed free area, rich in natural food. I had retrieved leads and rigs and pulled in bloodworm just stuck to them.

Yet at the same time, if there is a continuing supply of food (not necessarily natural), with a decent supply of useable energy source, I.e carbohydrates as in bird food baits then they may continue to move around.

I think digestion slows down in the winter rather than bungs them up, although in More from the Bivvy, one of the Rainbow chapters does mention fish full of boilies and how they were rolling to clear their systems, so I could be wrong. This is where bird food boilies with a better digestion rate could be the 'goto'.

In Tim Paisley's To Catch a Carp he mentions baiting up on Birch Grove with Micromass pellets, available at the time from Nash. The carp were ripping the bottom up long after the pellets had been eaten or dissolved. The smaller coarse pellets break down a lot faster than the larger more heavily oiled Salmon and Halibut pellets. Smaller food items can produce preoccupation to the state that the fish ignore everything else; hemp, pellets and some small seeds especially seem to produce that effect. I've seen carp picking up the hemp, ignoring tares that were in the same mix. Years ago, late 1980's/ early 1990's I tried baiting up with shelfies, Richworth Streamselect or the original Crafty Catcher. Only 2 flavours produced continued feeding, Salmon Supreme and King Prawn. Any other flavours, including Tutti Frutti, the fish would only pick a few up before leaving the area. From that I came to the conclusion (my own personal experience) that baiting heavily with attractor bait shelf life's was not worth the effort. Fish them with a stringer of freebies, but not bait up with them. Yet bait up with a good decent food bait, fishmeal, meat meal (chicken, liver, beef) and the carp would continue to feed on them. The difference between the two was interesting to watch. The attractor bait was like a sweet or dessert, nice but you couldn't live on it, whereas the food bait you could survive long term. Even birdfood boilies did not produce long term feeding, they had a short term 'catching life', before they needed changing. Compare that to the fish or meat, which could catch for years. Milk proteins only worked long term with the addition of The Addits, bromelain and Bengers. If they were not added the bait could not necessarily be digested very quickly, or the proteins were not useable. Of course, then came mixing bird foods with milk and fishmeal...

I've seen 18 and 22mm Halibut pellets take over a month to break down. The smaller ones do soften and break down faster, especially when they have been drilled. Don't know if you remember it, I put some pics up on here, some halibut pellets soured the bottom for months, nothing would come over them, not even the roach or perch, and they killed the bottom weed

Or place my rigs by hand😉 Walking my lines out I found keeps out line twist, which I did get from distance sticks. Not sure of the physics of that but distance sticks definitely increased it.

That's what spare bankstick's are for😅😉

Very good hook that. Very strong and one of my choices on Earith. Gardner Muggas, again good hook, probably one of my most used patterns. You want a hook very sharp out of the packet, have a look for VMC 7025. They hold their point, and I bet very few people could get ANY sharper than them

Right, back online. Sorry, I have removed the argument, insults and the continual taking to a tangent. Sadly it does now read slightly skew whiff, but is on track

Bait floss and rig rings for me. Hard to say on best tackle, possibly the big RH cradle, better than flat mats imo, or quite possibly the Solar P1 Pod. The versatility is darn good from low tips, to 5ft high for distance and to get over weed with just an additional set of stainless banksticks. Stainless banksticks, never destroyed some are original Solar's from 1994/5 time, possibly even earlier

I just ignored it, couldn't be bothered to read it. If I want to research something I do my own work and put it into my own words then reference it. Gave up on trying to explain something that I have used my own experiences on numbers of waters, he ain't listening and now just coming up with twaddle. Sweetcorn is high in lysine, a feeding trigger amino acid, it is a decent bait and food, albeit the shell comes out as it went in, but the kernel can be digested.

I just ignored it, couldn't be bothered to read it. If I want to research something I do my own work and put it into my own words then reference it. Gave up on trying to explain something that I have used my own experiences on numbers of waters, he ain't listening and now just coming up with twaddle. Sweetcorn is high in lysine, a feeding trigger amino acid, it is a decent bait and food, albeit the shell comes out as it went in, but the kernel can be digested.

Sorry mate, stop trying to pick holes; I have seen it and done it on Earith. That amount. No other bait produced, the fish wanted the bait, and would not take other baits other angler's fished. They may have eaten other angler's baits, but were not preoccupied enough to take the hookbait. They may well have eaten natural food, but if you wanted to catch then the only bait that produced was a version of Trigga. Sorry, simples! Seeds do not produce the addiction of tigers and peanuts. They produce pre-occupation at the time, they may well avoid larger baits while eating them. I have seen carp feed on hemp alone, leaving tares that were fished with them, but sometimes they will pick up other foods. As for a fishery, I hate to tell you, I used to run them for a living, so understand the biology and ecology. I understand 'survival over health'. Carp try to survive, in an overstocked water they have NO CHOICE but to eat everything, anglers bait. Survival is their first choice. You really are ignoring that type of water, and even confirming exactly what I said. If you have an overstocked water, reduce the biomass of fish, take it down to an acceptable level. If the water can naturally support 800lb of fish then taking it down to 600lb will provide room for them to grow. Commercial waters can't take it down to 'understocked', they need anglers fishing and catching.

The carbon cloths of the rods produced in China are not as good as those produced in UK, Japan and USA. Due to various sanctions the Chinese state is not allowed to trade in higher quality carbon

You are ignoring the type of water, and parts of the whole of nutrition. I know that Tim Paisley DID fish against other baits at Waveney on his trips there, his bait had to compete against local angler's, some of whom were researching baits (at Lowestoft Fish Research) and holidaymakers. I know that Premier Baits in the 1990's were out fishing other baits on the Darenth complex. Savay, Kevin Maddocks, Rod Hutchinson and Andy Little, good baits out fishing other angler's. On Earith the bait that Bruce and I had outfished other baits to other angler's, AND hi-vi's and hi-attract that we fished at times to try to provoke a take in colder weather. Other anglers to get takes had to go buy a bag of Trigga, I kid you not. Bruce and my bait was Trigga with a twist... This thing about nutrition and tiger nuts (and peanuts); the nuts themselves are addictive to carp, they will eat them to the exclusion of other baits, until death. They contain very little useable nutrition, only that that can be digested off the surface. In nutrition, the FIRST requirement is energy, whether that is provided by protein, fat or carbohydrates. YOU need the energy to digest the rest of your food, as do carp. Most waters are overstocked, the fish NEED to eat bait to survive, and that is any bait that goes in. There are very few waters now rich enough in natural food to support the fish stocks present in them. Baits also work in conjunction with other baits. Particles provide energy, vegetable fats and carbohydrates, higher protein boilies provide protein. You have this thing for fishmeal; a very good ingredient, it is high in protein, useable animal protein, providing almost every required amino acid. It is an attractor in its own right, it is why fishmeal boilies work so well. Vegetable, nut (legume) meal even maize meal do not provide as good as useable protein, they are missing a few required amino acids. There is one non meat protein that contains every essential amino acid, and that is yeast. As for Cell, a bird food and coconut base with a yeast background. Ring a bell here? The amount of protein does not need to be massively high, the days of 45/50% are long gone. As an example, humans need no more than 75grammes of protein a day. As anglers a kilo of food source boilies need not provide anymore protein than 300grams, and it is likely that kilo will be shared by more than 1 fish! Protein is required for tissue repair and growth. If carp don't get enough protein then they cannot grow to their maximum. There are many waters full of carp no bigger than double figures, simply because: a) there are too many fish, b) they aren't getting enough food to grow. Provide a better bait or thin the numbers they will start to grow, unless they have become permanently stunted.

I honestly do believe a better bait will out fish a rubbish bait, but as @kevtaylor pointed out the water itself will make a difference. Fish a rich water where bait may not need to be eaten and you want a decent bait. Fish an overstocked water (and to be honest, most are) any bait may catch. Humans can choose what they eat by thinking, they can choose to eat healthily or not. Carp don't have that choice, Survival, then health. They have to eat what is available, natural food, or pellets or boilies, or maybe particles, even more so in a high stocked environment. I have seen good baits 'dominate' a water, the right bait outproducing every other bait used to the extent of that bait being almost the only one that caught, and it was not particularly heavily baited, around 1kg a week, after an initial 20kg in 2 weeks. Yet Mainline baits have also dominated waters, the Essex Grange, the original Grange CSL, not a bad bait, Activ8, not bad. The Cell, not so good. There is a difference in quality between the bait companies. Some 'Joe Bloggs' garage specials can be produced for exactly the same as the Bait Baron bait, Nash, Mainline etc, but you forget Nash, Mainline are sold nationwide. The cost of that bait may well be £4.50 per kilo, Joe can sell it for that. Mainline or Nash might well sell it for that price as well, but the middleman, (wholesaler) puts his bit on it, so it then gets sold at £7.50 per kilo. Tackle shop buys it, final selling price is £10.99 per kilo. NOT every tackle shop buys direct from Mainline or Nash etc. In the interests of retail the RRP of all shops is £10.99. So Mainline might have different price bands depending on who they sell to, or selling to a shop directly at £4.50, the shop may be able to sell at a big discount. Is the bait market fair? Most definitely not! I can tell you for 100% fact that Crafty Catcher boilies are sold in the Gladwell's shop, right next to the Crafty Catcher factory, Gladwell's own Crafty Catcher, for exactly the same price retail as most tackle shops that sell them. I bet most bait companies with retail outlets adjacent as part of the company are the same. There is an element of price fixing! Baits can be discounted for various reasons: Get rid of, it is not a good seller. End of line Make way for the new stock, either new product or newer model. Discount to increase interest, loss leader Or even nearing end of life, even frozen goods have a life.

It was years ago, sadly I no longer have the email from Simon Chillcott about where they come from.

I have spoken to them a few times, about custom builds (my NG's) and the carbon cloths and pre-pregs they use, always found them very helpful.

The SP was quite a long lasting rod, and a few versions autoclaved and pre-autoclave. I had 2.75lb TC SP's with a black/dark grey reel seat, around 2005. This was a brown blank. From memory the number of the blank was printed on the butt and the tip section so I was always able to match the correct butt and tip. I don't think it is a model number, I actually think it is the number in the run. I'm not sure when the steel reel seat came into vogue, probably around 2011, but I could be wrong

Google could be your friend😉 Last I remember was that there was an application to the council for it to be properly run as a fishery and nobody was running it officially as a fishable water, this was 3 or 4 years ago.

Probably not to the question of lead size. The best lead size is usually around 1/2 ounce in a ratio to the test curve rating. So for a 3lb test curve rod, 3.5oz is about right. As for 18lb line at full blast, it should as long as you have a smooth action, and don't overload the rod with a lead going too heavy.

It is my 'goto' method on Bromeswell where the lake bank is a straight drop to the water and ledge. I tend to try to have the rod at 90 degrees to the float, usually fishing to the left of the rod tip, so the strike is natural to my right, although obviously some swims might mean you are the other way round striking left. I have tried different hooklink materials, braids or coated braids (same as my ledger rigs) and the honest answer is I found no difference to mono, although in relation to the post by @elmoputney I have found that the bait may need to be on a hair. This could be because the fish are used to inspecting baits. The only baits that do go on the hook are worms and bread. I have tried maggots on the hook, but found that with large numbers on the hook, one often seems to spin round and cover the point, making less chance of hooking the fish. I end up threading the darn things onto floss and tying them to a rig ring on the hair.

I'm not going to get into the barbed vs barbless debate, but on the barbless waters I have fished, the mouths are more damaged😉

I'm still using my pre Dave Chilton Kryston sale hooklink materials, Mantis and Snakebite. I've honestly not found anything better. I do not know if they have changed at all in the past few years though.

Just a day session I take sandwiches I have made or 'leftovers', extra pasta and sauce from last nights dinner at home, along with 2 flasks of cafetiere coffee. No milk so it still tastes good. I might take some choccie snacks, Jaffa cakes, or something similar