salokcinnodrog

I saw Dave Lane fishing zig rigs with dog biscuits on Suffolk Water Park in swim 1. The swim is at the extreme left of the far arm, and he was casting to the left side of the swim, next to the rushes, and continually firing in mixers. The little wind and drift there was was pushing the floaters to the left towards the rushes. He had a number of takes from there, including the biggest fish in the lake close to 40lb.

That is very handy. A depth finder and prod sticks will be a very handy addition. You said the bailiff has caught from the deeper water? I found on some deeper waters if the surface layers are too warm and there is no wind chop, then sometimes the fish go down deep rather than up. I think Rod Hutchinson did write something similar about French reservoirs. Whether it is the water is cooler, or more probably, more dissolved oxygen in the cooler water.

I wish! Barrow for me, although I have been lucky and seen fish near the car park a couple of times, which meant just unload and go. I did actually bend the handles on one it was so heavily loaded! I know that Luke Moffat banned curved shank hooks at his lake in France as he was concerned about mouth damage; some big fish them! Korda, Caperlan and Atomic all do decent gripper leads, although years ago I simply put swivel leads in a vice and gave them a squeeze to flatten them. Or a hammer...

Welcome to Carp.com I hate to destroy your illusions, but a number of tackle brands all use the same factories to produce their gear, hooks are no exception. For example you may find Mustad make hooks for Atomic, Sabre, Nash etc, as well as their own brand. Many hook patterns have been around for years, and have come around from different fishing areas, fly fishing, sea fishing, but carp fishing for changing rigs and switching to the latest fashion...

A pop-up is not always the best bait for a zig rig, especially a bright yellow one. Looking up from the lakebed, any surface bait appears dark, black, whereas at the same level in the water you can see the colour. I have seen carp regularly caught on sweetcorn and yellow pop-ups turn their noses up at them, they totally switched off yellow baits. Also some flavours in high levels can be repellant, pop-ups can be in that level, or the flavour itself can be a switch off. A lake I fish you can catch carp on any colour pop-up except yellow; orange, pink, white, brown will all catch, but stick a yellow pineapple or an aniseed and bunspice, nothing. Another lake we used to fish over beds of sweetcorn, then the carp stopped getting caught over it, and totally switched off from Enervite Gold boilies. I suppose you can class a bait fished at mid depth on the marginal shelf in a metre (3ft) as a zig rig. I caught a lot of fish on them two years ago, a piece of black foam with a few plastic maggots sewn to it, or even just a plain sliver of green or black foam whipped to the hook shank. I even caught on 'zig bugs' fished on the surface with mixers around them.

I'm not going to be much help on the rod or reel as I still use my Century DD Big Bertha and Shimano Aerlex. However when it comes to line on it, I still stick to 15lb Mono, with a 40lb Mono Shockleader. I personally, have had braid cut a groove in the tip and butt ring of a spod rod. I have also found that because there is no stretch in braid you are more likely to crack off if you are hitting the clip hard.

Thing is carp pairing up is often males, no females in the area. The females move in and the groups of males then jump in. I have watched it, and in carp, as many are loners more so than most other species it is identifiable, especially if you know which fish are females. Male carp are, as most species smaller than the females. The grouping up can actually take place a week or more before spawning occurs, and if a cold snap happens, the fish would be waiting around. The best way to find out is the males (of most species) develop breeding tubercles, and apparently from research, the more prominent the tubercles, the more chance the male has of keeping his mate, although you get 'chancers' On Nazeing Meads Brackens Pool a few years ago I caught a male dripping milt, I got it straight back, yet that year they did not spawn, a cold wet snap put them down and they did not spawn at all. The males stayed grouped together until late July hoping almost. Again pike can be the same, a few males pair up before the bigger females move in, she may be courted by more than one fish.

Most of the time the old closed season March 15th to June 16th covered the tench and carp spawning times, although occasionally they would go through to the end of June or early July. Possibly the only fish it may have missed is pike, which I have seen spawn at the start of March, even the end of February in warm early months. If you think about it, almost every species of fish in UK, we want to catch them at their heaviest weight, so will be fishing right up to spawning times, including pike. This year I stopped fishing for pike when I noticed I was getting males chase the females in the margin as I was netting or returning them. One of the fish I landed was 2lb heavier than her autumn or winter weight, she had recovered from a cormorant strike, not long before a mate caught her, the scars and markings were a match when we checked pics. She had obviously fed up, enough to heal and build her roe up. This is where Yonny and I disagree on fishing during spawning times, but I do understand his views. One of my Ardleigh carp I caught while fish were spawning in the reedy inlet to my left, the fish I caught came from the deeper water around 50metres away. Had it spawned, or was it going in there? It wasn't an empty fish, no 'spawning scars', although long term battle worn. Again at Taverham I watched fish spawning on The Meadow area, yet there were fish who weren't Meadow fish, at their end of the lake still feeding. I would think the best choice is close off swims that can reach the spawning areas when the fish are there, but then again, if the lake is fished by numpties at any point, or those who don't know shutting may be the option. I have seen fish spawning, emptying out, and quite literally within hours are feeding heavily again, at the other end of the lake, or even munching their way through their own eggs. Some fish are always 'footballs', that is their shape, the strain or mix that they are. Look at Italians, often dark, but massive gut. Get a mix of strains in a water, you get Leney scale pattern for example, but with Italian shape. Dinks or Dinkelsbuehl carp are also gutty. I started this reply, but Dayvid made another post in meantime, so I'll do a quick edit. 16.11 in Nazeing normally weighs 45/46lb. A couple of years ago she had dropped to 36 in July, she had emptied out totally, and was caught just after. By September she was back up to 45lb.

Better to be safe. If you don't think you can fish to them safely, then you are doing exactly the right thing, trying to draw them out. Fishing to snags, as @Carpbell_ll has said, you need to be set locked up, and on your rods. No leaving them unattended! I prefer pointing the rods directly at the snag, no bent round tips as that can be enough for the carp to pull the rod over the alarms and take it into the drink. The theory is not giving any line, the fish arc away from the snags on the take.

Yes it does mean you can see some of them. Uncaught fish often show up at spawning time April is unlikely when they spawned, larger and deeper waters take longer to warm up to the temperature carp need to spawn, so even now some may not have spawned yet, and if the carp are area residential, they may not be ready. Not every carp in a lake spawn, although @Levigsp has written about an exception, or they do not spawn all at the same time. The exception is if new male fish have been stocked into the water, the next year all female fish will spawn. I must say though, and I am not disagreeing with Frank, but in a large reservoir it would be difficult to prove that. So if not every fish in a lake spawn, there are some that can still be fished for! In fact to be honest I am not totally sure of the need to close a fishery when fish spawn, other than to stop anglers casting into splashing bundles of spawning fish. Some aren't spawning, some are munching mates fish roe! In fact it is likely carp seen splashing in April, could well have been eating perch, roach or other fish spawn that do not require such high water temperature. Not all carp appear to spawn in the same area, although there is often one feature that provides the right environment, be it rushes, lily beds, overhanging waterside grass, then most will spawn there, but on larger waters like reservoirs then there may be more than one spawning area. Pretty much as soon as the major spawning is done, fish go on a munch, energy and protein hunt, protein for tissue repair, and energy as first requirement. Carp may also spawn more than once if the temperature is warm enough. As soon as they are emptied, the body starts producing eggs again, so they can go off again.

Something else that works as a zig bait is real or fake maggots on the hook or foam, but real can be a pain if you have loads of silver fish in the water. Using real maggots is not that hard but can be fiddly. Using a needle thread them onto a length of dental floss or fine mono, and then attach that to the foam or cork on the hook. Spraying a few maggots over it with a catty, or even floating maggots in groundbait... You get some real hits on that! I do prefer using adjustable zigs to keep the hooklink length shorter. With the adjustable zig I work from surface down rather than bottom to top.

The aniseed is definitely an attractor, smells very nice to me. I used to get split bags of whatever Pigeon mix when I was working at Gladwells, never minded which I got, they all worked, you just had to check if there were large seeds or maize in there and be sure to soak and boil if there were. Pigeon mixes, Chicken corn, whichever all work. The pigeon mixes do tend to have a few extra goodies in, for conditioning pigeons (d'oh😁), whereas chicken corn is maize, whole and split, grain and usually a bit of rapeseed.

My landing net for years was a 36, then that got 'promoted' to stalking until eventually the spreader block broke. It got replaced by a 42 Gardner net, that was heavy. Stuck with 42 ever since, although I do have a specimen pan net for smaller fish and bream. Since then I had a Nash Outlaw 42 until that broke, although now using a Fox Warrior, but I have replaced the mesh a couple of times

I use Verselle Laga garlic oil bird food in some of my baits. Good additive in my pop-ups, but it does stink a bit!

Found them rock hard, but they definitely catch!

Good bait for chub, even as they float. Carefully hook them, with maybe a cork ball on the hook eye, then freeline or drift them in the current, although you might need a controller to get a good straight drift as they are so light.

It's a cancer caused by aflatoxins. Bird peanuts used to be the leftovers, quite literally the rubbish that hit the floor, got wet, mildewed and attacked by bugs. However I think you will find they now have to be top grade human quality, so these aflatoxins are not present in them anymore. A 1kg bag is actually perfect, it stop you using too many. If you work on one bag per trip or for 48 hours then that prevents the 'addiction' that fishing with too many can create. Obviously, don't forget, soak for a minimum of 24hours and boil for 20minutes. Peanuts while they are high in Vitamin E, due to, I think, an enzyme inhibitor it stops the nutrition being utilised, so high quantities of peanuts are not good for carp, and many places ban them. Dried mealworms float, might be some alternative thinking coming around, like putting them in groundbait and wet spod mixes for floater fishing, or even as freebies for surface fishing... Or maybe grinding into base mixes... As for the wild bird seed, £1 a kilo may be slightly more than £12 for 15 or 20kg from an animal food store, but I have bought bags from the supermarket when out fishing just to top up, or not been able to get to the animal feed shop. The preparation is easy when fishing, I just pour boiling water over them in a bait bucket, put the lid on and they are ready 24hours later. You can boil them after 24hours, it releases sugars, and does make them more attractive.

Welcome to the forum. Anyone if you put it in the right place! Almost every single boilie available will catch fish, what sort of boilie do you want? Where are you fishing, a runs water or a harder lakes after big fish? Do you want an attractor bait or a food bait? Take your pick: Rod Hutchinson KMG, Monster Crab Crafty Catcher King Prawn. Dynamite, various flavours can't remember them all. Nutrabaits... Just four bait manufacturers, there are loads more...

Join the club! Ok, I have fished a few reservoirs over the years, so I'll try to give my best advice, but it will be long winded. Your tackle, 10000's will be fine, but bear in mind with 0.35mm 15lb line you will probably be looking at casting no more than 90metres. You may need to down the line size, possibly to 10lb and a shockleader to get any further, or as your other option, get Big Pit reels. Believe it or not, most of my reservoir fish have come at less than 100 metres range, in fact many within 50metres. As much time looking and walking as you can, usually I spend around hours looking certain areas even before I start. The shape of the reservoir can make a difference, a bowl you can walk one bank, if you have the sun behind you, with binoculars, if a fish rolls, you can often see it. If however it is divided into separate arms or bays then you will be needing to look closely. For some reason, the fish can really follow the wind, the stronger the better. It may not be fun facing into a strong gale force wind with pouring rain, but I have had my best result on Alton in those conditions, when I was quite literally peeking out of the door, or unable to sleep because I was worried my brolly was going to get blown away, and I have had a couple of nights when I was holding it down, with extra long pegs. A good strong bivvy is a must, cheap domes don't last! I rarely prebait, other than putting the last of my bait in at the end of a session. I have a good bait, I know it works, however it can take a couple of days for carp to come into an area. Every fish I have caught has come on bottom baits or pop-ups, none on zigs! Be confident in your rigs, a plain knotless knot rig with line aligner works, often no need to faff about. This 'slope line' is often a good place to fish, it is the spot I have caught many fish, both bream and carp, more so than deeper water. Most of my fish have come from between 6 and 15 feet deep.

I have used them in the past, you do have to make sure that they don't break. I had one break after it was lit, it fell off the coil and melted a hole in a bucket lid. Mosquito repellants are personal, and mosquitoes in one place will respond differently to different supposed repellants. Some people get on alright with Avon Skin so Soft, yet others don't. At Nazeing Skin so Soft was normally ok and kept me bug free, yet at Taverham Mills I had to use Deet based repellant. The higher Deet content the more repellant, yet the more of a headache it can produce. It will also break down plastics! Lifesystems Expedition + is around 50% Deet, as is Jungle Formula. The repellant effect of 8 hours is ok in summer, but come autumn if I spray just before dark, I could end up being bitten before I wake up. I'm not normally too bad with insect bites, just a slight itch the day after, but I have had serious problems when I was bitten by something in long grass and ended up with blood poisoning that saw a hospital visit. That would be my own fault for not spraying...

You can get Solar Indicator Heads only, or the complete P1 indicator system. I use the Short Arm Titaniums as swingers, quiver arm (tight line indicators) or set slack at maximum drop for running leads and slack lines: https://www.solartackle.co.uk/gear/titanium-indicator-heads

The best binder to keep it stiff is white breadcrumb. Vitalin and plain white crumb takes its time breaking down.

Joel, Welcome to Carp.com. Plenty of carp in various Midland rivers, the Severn Trent area has plenty of river carp fishing, and Ian has very nicely pointed out a good spot. East Midlands has The Soar, which I believe is a tributary of The Trent. Various clubs along there, so may be worth a dig around.

Is this any use? It is page 2 of a Chod rig thread: There are some pictures on there, and I have used a ring swivel, but it is fallen flat Please note, I do still make sure that if I have used a leader of any sort that the beads will go over my leader knot and the rig can follow.

The 10000 does have a bigger body, whereas on the smaller sizes I think it is just spool size.