salokcinnodrog

I would have said the Gardner Sticks as the best manufactured, but if they are not long enough, then how annoying. I use the original Cobra Ace I think it is, a properly curved plastic stick, by estimate I would say it is over a metre long. I can stick 20mm baits well over 100metres, although occasional mixes I do have to wet the stick as it will split them, even shelf lifes. I prefer frozen baits that are just thawed on the outside, but still hard in the middle. I was saddened when Cobra went under and Nash bought out the name as I simply don't like the Nash Cobra sticks, the quality and feel is totally different, and yuck!

Hmm! My local EA bailiff wears his EA jacket and hi-viz, so you can see he is EA when he walks up to you. He is also very polite and does chat and ask how things are going, he is into normal fishing conversation. It probably helps that I know who he is and he knows Sky. He has asked to see my licence once, then the next few times I have seen him he didn't bother, quite possibly because it is to hand. The EA can easily check on a hand reader if you have given your name and address, and have ID to hand, although I do not know how if there is no phone signal in the area. It may be that it is done afterwards, so any non licence holders get a letter through the post. My money is on someone trying it on. I bailiff a fishery and even when selling tickets or checking tickets I'm polite, albeit gruff as is my way normally. If I don't have my ticket book to hand I do have the owners number to hand so I can let him know that I have spoken to 'such and such', insert name and text him.

Most anglers put far too much bait out when they fish. The problem us that they turn up on a day ticket lake, even a club lake and immediately want to fish over 'their' own bait, without knowing what is there already, what other anglers have put in, so spod or Spomb in 5kilos of spod mix. The fish don't have to move far to feed, they are able to pick and choose. It doesn't help right now that the water is so warm, the air and water temperatures are high, the fish are just mooching because the weather is uncomfortable to feed heavily in. Best way to fish for most is just a hookbait with PVA bag or stringer. There are times when putting plenty of bait in us the right thing to do, but I don't think most anglers know the waters they fish well enough.

The other thing is, it may possibly be members or officials within the club doing it off their own backs, not necessarily with club approval.

Get straight onto the EA. You ( as in the club) do not know if diseases or parasites are present, which is why they are so stringent on consent. It can only take one diseased fish to wipe out a water (I have seen it happen). The only exception is if a club/venue has multiple waters on one site and are already registered as a fish farm I believe.

10mm gap between boilie and hook, often with hair made of dental floss. I usually use a sliding rig ring on the hookshank to tie the hair to. I think I made the backlead point on another thread, they reduce indication, ditch them. *edit*

Sorry, I can't say anything yet as it is so new, although I do know it has been mentioned a long time ago on here. I was fuming about Alton, even more so with this weekends weather, perfect for a bite or two. Elmo, what a muppet. I'm still trying to work out whether he was talking to you or to his walkie talkie. If he isn't fishing, then as far as I'm concerned it is your water. If he had prebaited previously, then a polite word would have done wonders. If there is no-one about then digging around with a marker is you learning the water.

I've been speaking to the owner of a very special syndicate in Suffolk. The lake is around 40 acres, and hasn't been heavily fished for 30 years, he has only had it for a couple. I do know a few of the fish in there, original stocks, and there is a proper ongoing stocking policy. It is not a cheap syndicate, but compared to other waters most definitely not over the top.

In that case if it is the mechanism, my playing around after a couple of casts is why I don't get a bad one. May be that just juggling the mechanism to get a 'better fit' sorts it out. I don't know why, but I do seem to have a number of springs from various things that have ended up in my tackle box, so if I have bent or broken a spring I can replace it.

Spods do take longer to empty than Spombs, you have to let the spod 'drift' to be sure it has emptied, whereas the Spomb drops the load pretty much on impact. Also load a Spomb with a scoop so you can keep bits out of the nose, but a spod can be catch and dunk into bucket. Something else is, if you have a spod with tape over the holes, or no holes at all, you can add liquids in with your particles, whereas a Spomb that liquid drains. I do mix boilies into my particles and put them in together in the Spomb. The boilies sometimes even go in the day before I go fishing... I have found though, that boilies for some reason tend to stick in a spod, they jam themselves in against each other. I do use both the spod and the Spomb, although the Spomb does get the most use. I have not had a bad Spomb, but I do tend to make sure I get the locking mechanism sorted, either tightening or loosening by turning the pin around in the nose. @yonny, do you think the bad Spombs could be from bent or twisted stem to the swivel? or is it from locking mechanism? Oh, do make sure you add a Spomb float. I unpin it and have trimmed some pike deadbait poppers to fit in the tail inside rather than outside.

Very true, and I knew it was almost impossible for me to be fishing over anyone elses bait. Added to that I know it can take 2 days for the carp to come onto bait. So the hemp could well have been eaten by roach, the few tigers and boilies would have been the only things left.

I did put in a bit of bait at the start last week, a total of a gallon of hemp, around 2kg of boilies and then cast out stringer every day on the spot for 4 days. That works... I only had three carp, two 17's and a 21, but that is on a fairly lightly fished reservoir. I think NS fisheries Nunnery get the angler to do a session on the 'easy' lake to assess them, then if pass they can fish the syndicate lakes when approved.

Aye that is true. I think the 'pile it in' videos or DVD's gave a very false picture of fishing. Every angler wants to be fishing on their own bait so stick a few kilos in. On most occasions you don't need loads of bait, especially on heavily fished waters. In the heat wave we have had carp aren't normally going to be eating loads of food, especially in the heat of the day.

That sounds like a mare! I had a rough one this week myself. I had my ticket revoked on Alton after Eastern European anglers cast lures over my lines two nights on the trot. I went to have a word and they had no landing nets or unhooking mats. I was not impressed and gave them a mouthful after one got a bit rude. My mouthful is get fired up big time. As I went to pull away off site, a Range Rover ignored the fact I had pulled past parked two cars at the side of the road and carried on down the road leaving me nowhere to go. He pulled the "i'm further down the road, you should back up" so I made my point, and when he got rude, again I fired off, local residents complained to the fishery manager. I hadn't even parked in the road, I had unloaded, put my car in the proper car park, then when I left put my gear by the gate, got my car and loaded up. When I got home I got a phonecall telling me my ticket was cancelled. A long letter has gone to Anglian Water Fishery's headquarters! While Alton was closed after we were allowed to fish again when lockdown was eased I had a couple of trips on Essex Carp Syndicates Day ticket lake at Great Baddow. It does Google, and they are on FB.

Get your sewing needle out! A tiny rig ring on the knot less knot hair. Thread the needle through the worm and put them onto dental floss or fine mono. Then a double overhand knot onto the rig ring. If you want them popped up, a dog biscuit (or if allowed, a Cork ball) on the hair as well

A couple of Interesting thoughts on this; Years ago Mike Wilson was convinced that the different metals on the end tackle created an electrical field. Steel hook, copper or steel on the lead. Basically from my limited understanding, the dissimilar metals with an electrolyte like water between them create a tiny electrical and magnetic field. Mike Wilson was so convinced, he was playing about creating weights made of glass. There are more posts on this that I could or even should have quoted, unfortunately as I'm trying to keep it relevant on (page 1), and pushing the + symbol would quote every post complete, I can't add them in. The resetting rigs is an important point, but the more we can create a comfortable feeding situation, where the fish are actively feeding, then with a rig that is ejected, the same or another fish can carry on feeding, and take the rig again, hopefully at some point being hooked. An 'inefficient' rig on comfortably feeding fish can still hook them, whereas an efficient rig with non feeding fish probably or possibly won't. In effect the carp have to take the hookbait in either scenario.

@yonny, I think that a few anglers did know that they were getting done; it was the reason for development of rigs, obviously from the hair rig, sliding hair, D-rig even tubing on the hook and on. I remember reading articles or chapters by Ken Townley, Kevin Nash, Rob Maylin, and obviously Rod Hutchinson on watching rigs being ejected. I think the Korda DVD's put it to every angler rather than just the few who got above the rigs in the water and were able to watch the fish. Years ago on here in a thread I made the point, I don't think about rig mechanics, maybe I automatically assess and correct what is going wrong from my own observations. I do think that pop-up rigs behave very differently to bottom bait rigs. Many or even most pop-up rigs automatically reset, bottom bait rigs may not. The other thing at the moment, I have not been using a hair made from the continuation of the knotless knot on most waters. Most of my rigs have come on to having a sliding ring on the hook shank. I believe it was Rob Maylin who coined the term sliding or revolving rigs, that hair on the rig ring is exactly that. The reasons behind it: I can change the hair length to suit the fishing. I can fish bottom or snowman baits on the same rig. The sliding ring does reset. The sliding ring does not immediately give a 'fixed' pivot point. The fraction of the second extra time in the mouth as the ring slides up the shank before the baits pivot back on blowing. It may or may not be relevant, strangely I have not watched it in the water😖 What I do know is that from the first time I used it in 2008 on Brackens Pool, Nazeing, it produced fish, more fish to my rods than many who fished more time than I did. I wouldn't like to claim it was all rig as I was fishing very differently to most other anglers, using a fair amount of boilies when most were just fishing over a few.

I should have said at that particular time, or cast. I have watched fish totally avoid pop-ups (and bottom baits), and until that pop-up is recast or moved it is left alone. With bottom baits leaving them in place can work, as much as 48hours. Again I have watched carp, even over washed out baits, ignore the bait and hookbait, until it had been in the water for a few days. On Taverham Mills I watched a couple of carp take every single grain of sweetcorn, except the hookbait. We got to the stage that even there it could take the carp two days to move onto boilie or particle baited areas; a complete transformation from times when just getting a few boilies onto the spot would produce every night.

I have sat watching carp on various waters pick up and eject goodness knows how many rigs. I have not yet found a single rig that is totally anti-eject, pop-up, bottom bait, or critically balanced. Pop-up rigs can be taken or ignored, if the pop-up is tested that rig is often totally blown, it just won't catch from the fish that tested it, or sometimes any companion fish in that group. A blow back rig will behave differently from whether it is a bottom bait or a pop-up; a pop-up will usually reset, where a bottom bait is stuffed. The strange thing is that bottom bait rigs can be forcibly ejected and blown out, or just 'fall out', where I have seen, personally, pop-up rigs tend to get blown out more. That may be different for others. Also rigs work differently on different fish, waters, lakebeds, even different areas in a lake. I think it was Danny Fairbrass who said (a fair few years ago, so it is possible his views have changed), that curved shank hooks don't need any tubing as the 'Kurve' itself that stopped the rig being ejected, however after watching my own plain straight knotless knotted curve shank rigs being ejected with ease by a couple of fish (not even big fish) I found that a line aligner does help. Extending the shank length on many hook patterns really improves hook-ups and reduces the chances of a rig being ejected, that is straight shank and curved shank hooks. This extending the hook shank lead to things like The Savay Looney rig, the longshank hook patterns, line aligners, even kickers as longshank Bent hook rigs were banned.

Jealous! That is one heck of a place. I've read about Tim Paisley sessions on there and the website is awesome.

The thing I have found with 'pure' fluorocarbon lines is that you have to stretch them out before use, which can be a right pain. Take your rod and reel and tie the end of the fluorocarbon to a firmly fixed point, then walk the line off the reel keeping it tight. When you get to the end pull it as tight as you can preferably walking back even further, then wind it back onto the reel. It still doesn't cast as far as mono, but hopefully you have sorted out the problems of coiling. I found the best compromise was a fluorocarbon coated mono or co-polymer line, P-Line Floroclear. It is still not the best casting line compared to mono, but it is OK

I have found that putty on mono or fluorocarbon hooklink materials can be a pain to make stick, especially bigger lumps. It will stick to braid, as long as you work it into the material, and it will hold around any knot or on tubing or around a swivel. It is ok to mould around shrink or silicon tubing over the eye of a hook, like on a Ronnie rig. I used mouse dropping pieces on a black Amnesia boom to keep it flat, even after a year or two in the rig bin (I have a few booms still tied), it would slide quite easily. As much as I like putty for exact balancing or overweighting, it has limitations; especially since you can't use it in waters with crayfish in as the little gits actually sit picking it off. My preferences are for weighting down are tungsten beads, olivettes or if it won't damage the line, split shot.

The other thing is it does also work like a Withy pool rig, with the excessive curve, the hard part is making sure you don't use overbuoyant pop-ups. You do really have to trim them down to get it right.

It does actually spin like a 360 rig in the water, better than a mini ring swivel and fish that close their mouth over the pop-up get hooked dead set. It doesn't work on 'suckers and blowers'. I think John Claridge was playing with something similar.

Suddenly got a bit of signal. Under the hook are 2 tungsten beads below a mini swivel. The Gardner Tripwire is overhand looped and lighter bobbed to prevent pulling through. It definitely works😉