ouchthathurt

The boy and I managed one each yesterday, both had hook pulls from cats playing with the baits

The line on my reels are 0.40 18lb breaking strain coupled to 3lb 12ft carp rods. I fish some quite snaggy lakes and canals, this set up does me well.

What ever happened to the good old days when you just pub chucked it any old where and hoped for the best?? 🙄

I’ve found in the past when they are feeding on bloodworm deep in the silt, they can be annoyingly difficult to catch! My only success has been a small medusa rig with only a few red maggots, or I tear my hair out, cut my losses and try find them feeding somewhere else! I find they turn their noses up at “usual” carp baits, sometimes a small dendrobena might produce, something that they may expect to find there whilst rooting around. I’ve tried a bit of freelined bread flake in the past, but in my opinion, if they are preoccupied on the tiny goodies buried gill deep in silt, it can be a struggle to get them to focus on something else.

Awesome result mate and a lovely dark looking cracker, very well done 👍

So my old man called me earlier, came out to feed his Koi carp and some bar steward has stolen all his fish! Scum

Set of 2 rod buzz bars and bank sticks for a river campaign

Just brought 2 local club tickets that gives me lots of options for lakes and rivers, £130 both tickets

That’s the plan kev mate, I do the bass fishing as it’s a few hours and it keeps the fire burning so to speak. The canal will be a mega challenge, I don’t even know if there are any carp in there! But I think about it during sleepless nights, so the bugs still there, just gotta find the right venue.

I haven’t had the rods out properly in nearly a year… bit of bass fishing, but no bivvies or nights etc, my baby is 7months old, so session angling is off the cards right now. Haven’t even renewed my tickets yet! my local waters don’t excite me anymore, I don’t want to travel too far with the baby at home, so I’m a bit lost for ideas at the moment. the Royal Military Canal might be a fresh challenge, no idea what’s in “my” stretch

Many congratulations Nick, well done mate 👍

Quite right mate, blooming carp spoiled the shot!

shame it’s a no fishing lake!

what lovely ducks…

As Finchey said mate, over mud and stone you’re probably better off with a potato fork! I have used mine over mud before, but dependant on how stony the ground is, it can be a pit of a pain as one stone will jam the mouth of the pump making the sucking of the worm (oh err missus) very difficult. I find pumps work best over clean sand or clean mud, a garden fork or potato fork over shingly mud like estuaries

a few from this mornings beach session after bass

I usually dig all my own bait, but I was unable to get to the beach due to work and fancied a dangle, so brought some wraps. They were well past their best, the crabs enjoyed them though…

£12 for 3 wraps I usually get them by the score, but I was only planning a few hours and I felt 30 would cover it! As it was, I had 10 left over… blanked!

Newest purchase would be 30 lug and 4 new batteries for my Steve Neville buzzers

As you walk from lake car park to the lake, just before you get to the main lake, there’s a smaller pond that is separated by a huge bank of reeds. During times of heavy persistent rain or when it’s winter and the water level is high, the marshy ground in the reeds flood and both lakes fully join, when the water level drops, they can become 2 separate lakes. I never saw any carp in the smaller pond, although I did a few nights on it. I used to just concentrate on the large pit. If I remember correctly, there was a dog poo bin (the last one before you reach the main lake) next to this bin was a small path that led to the smaller pond, but it could all have changed now of course! It was a fair few years ago that I did any serious time on it

Hi mate, I fished there for several years but I can’t remember anyone targeting it for pike. Used to do some nice carp and tench, however there were only a small group of us targeting the place back then. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were not a good head of pike in there. I’d probably go for my favourite pike baits, trout, roach, smelt and mackerel. Fish one on the deck and one suspended. Or as the pit can get a good wind across it, maybe a more roving approach with a deadbait under a drift float to search out the water? When you first reach the lake from the lake car park, that bay (summer bay as we called it) was sandy and shallower. There was a bar running from the point across to the reeds on the other side at the narrowest point, there are supposed to be some proper depths (although I found that the depths were not as extreme as I heard quoted) I also heard of stories of a bus and a midget submarine in there somewhere that the Marines used to dive over. I never snagged them though! I saw a pic of a mid double cat out of there. On the “beach bank” which you reach following the paths down from the holiday camp, if you stand on the bank looking out over the lake, to your left will be a reed bed extending along that margin right round past the point and onto the smaller lake, to your right there is a tiny bay that was full of lilly's in the bay in the summer, that always looked pikey to me. As the lake is a bit of a forgotten entity, at least it always was, so the piking could be amazing, it could be patchy, but best thing is to speculate a season and give it a go! Good luck mate

Sent you a PM mate 👍