ouchthathurt

I make all my own bait mate, have done always, I’m still using the same fishmeal/robin red basemix, with shellfish sense appeals, salmon oil, betaine, same flavours and additives (with a few slight tweaks as the availability of ingredients have changed over the years - richworth flavour exchanged for same flavour but from nutrabaits stable as richworth became unavailable etc) I first developed this mix nigh on 20yrs ago and have stuck with it ever since, it’s worked everywhere I’ve taken it, I’ve got such supreme confidence in it, I don’t even think about bait when arriving at a venue, just concentrate fully on location and tactics suitable for the venue/swim choice/prevailing conditions etc knowing the bait, fished properly will do the the business. I have a small collection of fruity or meaty hi-vis pop ups if needed, and I roll my own cork ball pop ups that are identical to the bottom bait basemix, I just add more egg albumin to harden the mix up and air dry them in the airing cupboard for a few days to get them rock solid, then they last for ages. I only make up 30 odd pop ups at a time, enough to last 2-3 months. I’m so confident in my bait it doesn’t cross my mind that it won’t work, if I blank, it’s because I didn’t read the situation correctly or they just weren’t having it, not the bait. Keeps things simple for me.

I would usually go for a strongly flavoured pop up this time of year, mine are a washed out orange/pink colour, (not sure how they turned out like that, white Polaris basemix with robin red, Scottish salmon oil, frankfurter flavour and fluro pink dye and they came out orange/pink!) although my last session last week, all the bites were on fish meal/robin red bottom baits fished over 2/3kg of freebies. Fishing high flavoured fluro pop ups in isolation didn’t do a bite!

It was 4c when I walked the dog this morning, it’s around 8c at the moment but the sunshine is glorious! I’ve got another day session booked in for Friday, I’m hoping that now they’ve been moving around a lot more the last week or two, they continue to do so. I try not to look at the long range forecast too much, it just depresses me!

The clue is in the name really, chod stands for “cr**py horrible old detritus” according to Rob Maylin!

They appear to be crucians or crosses of some sort, I’d say goldfish/crucian crosses. The heads and body shapes are slightly off for true crucians, but they readily interbreed with goldfish. Difficult to say though, do they have barbules?

The basic set up of the chod/heli system or set up is the same mate, the “chod” aspect is the actual hooklink mate. It’s very short, used with a pop up. Check out some YouTube videos pal, they will make things a lot clearer. I use helicopter rigs almost exclusively, if fishing in weed, I just push the top bead up the leader to about 6-8” to allow the hooklink to slide up the leader which allows the hooklink to rest on the weed. Best thing is to work out what the bottom is made up of, if it’s weedy, try find a clear spot then use nice simple rigs. No need to over complicate things mate, especially if you’re just finding your feet. Simple rigs are the way forward, location of the fishes feeding areas is the most important, choose a decent bait that you have confidence in and stick to it, use pva bags if you have confidence in them as they can present well over many different bottoms, except thick weed in my experience. There’s lots of knowledgeable anglers on here, (I’ve been carping since 1993) and we will all try help you out!

Are you using it naked (I.E. running on the mainline) or tubing or a leader materiel (like leadcore)

Have you thought about getting a small castable weed rake and giving that a few drags on your chosen spots mate? That will tell you what the weed/bottom is like, or the fox grapnel marker leads would do.

Easier said than done! Lol! After bite is good, I tend to use piriton (chloremphenamine) if the topical stuff doesn’t calm it, it’s an antihistamine that can make you drowsy though at times.

I found the avid and Gardner ones to be pretty good, the Nash unleaded leader is very thin and I found it fiddly to splice but it’s another option mate

I find that down here in the south east, they usually start waking up about now. Personally, I look for signs from nature to know when the “right time” is, I look for the first buds on trees, when the days start to lengthen out, snow drops starting to bud, spring lambs etc. It might seem daft, but I find that when the trees first start budding, that’s a good natural sign. Waters that are shallower (hopefully with good sunlight to warm it up) usually wake up sooner, they seem to react to rising temps quicker. I’ve got 3 waters that I keep tabs on, the lake that’s got max depths of 6ft is already producing fish, I had 5 out in 4hrs on Monday. The 2nd lake is only 2 acres, with depths of up to 9ft, but it’s very sheltered and doesn’t get much sun this time of year, it’s quite dark and dingy and hasn’t produced a fish in months. The last water has depths of 18-20ft and usually doesn’t regularly produce fish until mid March - beginning of April. It’s slower to warm up. Yet this year, after a stocking of 15 carp, it’s done half a dozen bites over the last few weeks, which is against the norm, we think the new fish have spurred the old stock into having a munch. Simple way to know if your lake has woken up is to fish it really, but when I see the hours lengthening out, blossom buds on trees and bushes starting to open out, I feel more confident. I think the increasing light hours wake them up, although cold deep water can keep them more sluggish longer then carp in shallower water.

That’s just catch and release at its best nick! 😁 good result mate, well done

Any joy?

You’ll do it mate, it’s all about the willpower!

Many thanks all, just to recap the quick session, I got to the lake about 0920, had a quick mooch about, just had a really good feeling about the swim I chose, the wind was trickling into it and it was quite mild, there was some bubbling in the silt about 6-8ft off the reeds and you could see the reed stems knocking fairly regularly. The swim I chose gave me the best angle onto a snag tree buffered by large reed-beds. I used helicopter rigs made up of Nash heli kits to tungsten tubing. 3 oz leads with trig-hammers size 6 to 8” 20lb Esp striptease two tone in brown, fished as a blowback rig. First fish came fairly quickly, and fought quite hard for a little one, it partially straightened the hook, second take was missed, the hook point had turned over on the strike, so tied up new hooklinks swapping the trig-hammers for wide gape barbless in size 4. All hook holds were solid in the bottom lip, all about 1/2” back. After every bite, I put a handful of bait out over each rod, plus pinged out half a dozen every 8-10mins one by one - this produced a bite within seconds of them hitting the surface. Ran out of bait after doing 2/3rd of a kilo, I didn’t bring the whole kg as I thought I would end up with some left over which I don’t like re-freezing once defrosted. I was fishing up against the snag tree with the L rod and up against the reeds with the R rod. 4 bites came to the R rod. Fished in 3-4ft of water on silt. Packed up just after 1pm and headed home.

Well as we used to say in the army mate, “at least they can’t make me pregnant” unless you happen to be female I suppose...

Deep breaths mate, deep breaths! This will all be over soon, hopefully!

Shame that the fly tippers are out... just chucked over the fence by the lake entrance, left something with their address though... oops! That’s with the bailiff now... for me it home time!

Carp no5 of 6 runs, that’s it I’m out of bait! Fished from 10-1, so well happy with that, no monsters but it’s broken the 2021 duck. this one beat me right up, had to chase it down the bank with a landing net and unhooking mat over my shoulder!

Carp no4, I’m popping the barbless hook out in the net and letting them go, rather than bank them as it’s pretty mucky and slippery in this swim. This one probably scraped double figures. I’m looking at having to pack up soon, I’ve done all my bait bar a handful, that’s about 2/3 of a Kg since 10am. It’s raining, (I haven’t got a brolly!) I’m soaked through but still!

Carp no3 7-9lb (ish) unhooked in the net. 3rd fish from 4 runs so far, bumped one fish off and found the hook point turned over. Was using trig-hammers, now switched to fox wide gapes as I’m having to hit and hold, fishing to reeds on the other side.

Carp no2 ripped off as I placed the bobbin, 6-7lbish. Unhooked in the net.

First blood! 7-9lb (ish) common, unhooked in the net.

I’m on the bank, rods out, gentle warm breeze drifting into this bay, had a few liners... fingers crossed!

This is an excellent point... motivation is extremely important! Lol!