salokcinnodrog

To be honest, boilie wise I stick with one bait all the way through the year. Ages ago on here I wrote up a list of bait ingredients on Now I don't know what the current EU regulations are regarding importing bait ingredients or base mixes into Sweden, but I can say honestly that CCMoore, Sticky baits and others all produce good base mixes. German or even Danish bait companies might work out better. To start with I would be fishing sweetcorn, chickpeas or other particle baits, then as you find out and bait more introduce boilies

I've used Drennan Super Specialist and Specimen hooks for floater fishing for years. The Specimen's are fine for open water and fish up to double figures, although you can land bigger fish if you go carefully. The Super Specialists are better for weedy or snaggy waters and bigger fish. I'm not particularly good with zig rigs, but have on occasion fished them on a particular water, where I used size 10 Solar 101's which was simply what I had available.

I think it was Steve who was a member on here had the big Graviers fish at a World Record weight, only to be beaten the same week by a Rainbow fish.

In theory, commons might be 'warmer' than mirrors with their complete scaling and moving about more. @levigsp might be the person to ask about that! I know on my lake, only 1 common has been caught since the start of March, every other fish on the bank has been a mirror. If you get into the equinox, certain fish seem to come out at specific times of the year or moon phases.

To be honest the questions might interlink. I know a number of match type waters ban 'successful' baits, be it pellet, boilie because 'such and such' won loads of matches doing his thing with that bait. As also mentioned it does serve to keep carp anglers off the lakes, which may be the biggest advantage of the bait ban, but without outright banning carp anglers. Most boilies now are nutritionally good, not all, but most. You could quite easily make up a boilie base mix, but use it as paste instead of boiling it. That way you have the nutrition and increased attraction. Mould it around a couple of grains of sweetcorn, Cork ball (use putty to weight it and create a pop-up), or even straight on the hook.

Always nice to receive thanks for advice and opinions. Something else that may be relevant is the lake bed, if much of it is silty, the fish that feed regularly over silt may possibly have softer mouths than gravel bottom feeders.

North America definitely has more commons than mirrors. Real leathers are a very rare beast indeed. In over 30years of fishing I have only ever caught 2 genuine totally nude carp.

A water I fish for carp to double figures, I still concentrate on fishing the float with sweetcorn and lift float. If you put in much groundbait, you get other species more than carp so I use loose fed sweetcorn. On occasion I do use pop-ups I don't put any, or very little, feed around them. In fact I almost fish them zig rig style, well off the bottom.

I must admit I would only be using Specialist or Avon style rods on a water like this, with 8lb line. Hook size sounds possibly a bit big, for me it would probably be a 14 or 12.

Are you looking fixed spool or even centre pin? I often use a centrepin for stalking, either freeline or with a lift float. If it is fixed spool you are after look at Shimano ST4000 Baitrunner

Spawn already? Not yet😉 Carp won't be ready for spawning until the water has been 18 degrees for at least a week, probably late May, early June. As for sacking or retaining fish, just for a few minutes while you sort the camera gear out, an hour at the most if you have someone come and take pics. This fish was retained while I ran half a mile to get another angler to do the pics. I can do my own self takes, but do prefer someone else to take pics as I think results are better.

As has been said, mostly waters that are match angler orientated, not wanting carp anglers. To be honest, it is not a problem, boilies are often inefficient, they catch less fish than most other baits. Sweetcorn, luncheon meat, pellets, paste, various particles all catch carp as well as other species.

Abu reels! The 6500 multipliers were what almost every beach angler wanted, either the rocket or the mag version. The Cardinals were another reel ahead of their time, and it is probably only the Shimano Baitrunner that pushed Abu out of favour. The Ultra cast Cardinals were the last Abu reels I had, loved them.

Same here. I would rather have a better quality bait that I know the fish will eat rather than a bait that they might eat. Even on big waters I have had carp take the 'food source' rather than the 'sweetie'. Bream will eat anything, they tend to 'vacuum feed' an area, eating everything, whereas carp can 'pick and choose'. With carp you may be far better baiting with small patches of bait, rather than creating a bed of groundbait, especially in open water. That is not to say a carpet of bait won't work, but it can be hit and miss. On Ardleigh and Alton heavy baiting with Vitalin produced far more bream than carp in open water. It worked for carp if it wasn't on a bream patrol route, but they could take a few days to find it.

The bay

There are some decent braids around for mainline use that aren't mainstream tackle brands😉 You just have to double check every one first, getting other angler's advice and experiences. I think I paid £15 for 3 spools of the braid I have on my marker rod and pike rods. That has definitely been better than a major tackle brand braid I had been using

Forward this weekend to BST. Blanking can be a sad sign of winter, even if you know where the carp are getting onto them may be difficult, especially if other angler's are on the lake. I must admit I have not been putting much in recently while fishing, but a number of pike trips have enabled me to prebait a little bit with mostly Vitalin and maize. I know where there were fish on Saturday, let's hope they are still here today... A full day from sunrise until...

To be honest the only thing I would use it for would be on the marker float rod, or on pike fishing rods as mainline.

I think I could say in all honesty on Virginia that prebaiting was responsible for almost every fish. On Alton I am not sure, but have a feeling it may have given a couple of fish on first night rather than day 2 or 3. I wish I could say I had caught carp this year, but on the syndicate I joined in September I really had no idea where they were hiding over winter. Lockdown and no night fishing when we could get out again meant I honestly could not find them. For the past few weeks I have been trickling in a few boilies with Vitalin when I went up for a day's pike fishing. This week I did see carp, so at the moment I know where they are.

Or even with the Angling pressure on a spot! I used to have a very good spot on the end of the back channels at Taverham, once people saw me regularly catching from it, the spot got regularly fished and stopped producing. Another area, alongside one of the islands, a small gravel plateau just in front was also another favourite. The fish moved further out and down and stopped swimming between the plateau and the island.

A good 20mm from hook shank to the bait It really worked well on Nazeing Brackens pool; a quite heavily fished, even crowded at times, 2 acre lake with some wise carp, where you pretty much had to fish on gravel. Added to the running lead and I got proper runs. In 3 seasons I caught a number of rarely banked fish, including 3 30's. The only reason I stopped using it exactly like that is I moved onto the lagoons, and crayfish could be a 'mare playing with the bait.

I love and hate waters like this. Hate because it can be so difficult trying to switch them onto larger baits; I know you said bream and tench will clear up baited areas, will the carp push them off? And if you bait up with a mix of groundbait like Vitalin, and add 14/15mm boilies to the mix would they start to take them? It can be worth going in heavily with maggots, almost every fish will take them, but a Medusa rig, a Cork ball or piece of foam with boilies attached, either Superglued or threaded onto it can get attention. I did have a decent mag aligner rig, a fake maggot creating a line aligner, then a rig ring on the hair to attach a 'string' of maggots. The more maggots introduced and The bigger ball of maggots for bait seemed to produce bigger fish for some reason. Worked very well on one water in particular.

Don't think you want mine, I dislocated both shoulders playing American football. That and my knees... That is a beautiful looking place.

You will notice the smell reduces over time, so may not be as effective as new. Whether you keep them or not is down to you. Pellets, groundbait even boilies have a shelf life, including freezer baits. The oils in pellets and groundbait go rancid and can become repellant (even toxic) rather than an attractor. Anything you put in your freezer, is recommended to be used within a year.

Everything comes with practice, using a bait boat, casting, even playing fish. I fish waters where bait boats are banned, so my spod rod gets plenty of use, even with practice I still get the occasional miscast. It usually occurs when I try to rush a cast. Even on the reservoir, where bait boats were allowed, I preferred to spod bait out. A very good thing to practice is getting used to casting with the line clipped up, both with the spod rod and fishing rods. Something I do personally find useful is using just enough lead to get the distance. So say my cast is 100metres and I can easily reach it, or beyond, with 3oz lead, or just reach it with 2.5oz, then I use the 2.5oz. By adding a stringer or bag I should still be right on the clip. Loss of Aerodynamics vs test curve and best casting weight.