newmarket

Nope , rest of the paste I rolled last night , come home from work and they’ve each got their own massive San Andreas fault running round em …at least the others lasted 3 days before rendering themselves useless . I’ve halved and reversed 2 half boilies on the hair before so looks like I’ll have to try it again this weekend . Asking for trouble though , those pasties get half a Boilie in their gob and I’m not going to connect with a fish all weekend am I ? ☹️ oh well .

Nice to be able to pick and choose when you can fish . id have found a way not knowing when my next opportunity would be .

They’re all cracking up now Nick . What did I do wrong ? Maybe I let the paste dry out a bit too long before I rolled em ? The B5 paste , at the time , was definitely a bit drier than the Snail in texture to begin with . You lot have considerably more knowledge than me on this sort of stuff so any suggestions as I’m supposed to be out next weekend and with a busy work week ahead again time is against me a bit .

I have a small , well 40mm problem . One of my prototypes has formed a rather large crack the size of the San Andreas fault …. how can I stop this happening ? I’m scared to use a baiting needle in the ‘good’ ones …

I’d hurry as it’s warming up again next week

That’s the idea mate 😂 They make the 24millers you put me onto look like marbles lol

Well today I started to construct some 40mm-ish hookbaits . Mike Wilmott from Essential bait had advised me to try making some from their paste so thought I’d give it a try today. I got some of their B5 shellfish paste along with some Black snail , 3 x 100g balls of each to start with as it’s just an experiment. As to be expected I turned to our Nick for any advice he could offer as although I had made my own boilies a few years ago , tweaking an Odyssey xxx base mix , I don’t have any means to roll anything bigger than 20mm. He told me that a few mm of paste wrapped around a 20mm cork ball should achieve a zero or neutral buoyancy Boilie boiled for a couple of minutes . Anyway I could only source 19mm balls . the texture of the pastes upon defrosting were quite different , the Snail staying together and rolled out with a mini rolling pin made 4 approx 40mm baits …they only needed to be approximate I’m no perfectionist even when it comes to fishing . The B5 on the other hand had a completely different texture and kept flaking and falling into little parts . Years ago I might have added some oil to keep it together but Mr Wilmott has obviously seen this before , after all it’s his paste , and having told me this might happen advised dipping my hands in lukewarm water which did the trick and I was able to roll the paste between the palms of my hands . I needed more paste for this though in order to keep it together , I only managed to get 3 baits out of 100g of paste . now as I say , I’m no perfectionist , it was difficult to tell the thickness of paste around the finished baits or even if the cork balls were central within the paste but I don’t really care tbh , at least not until I see how they react in a glass of water once they’ve dried out properly in a couple of days . If they waft that’s fine if they don’t that’s fine too . Im pretty sure they won’t pop up properly as I’ve used too much paste . Over the weekend I’ll experiment some more and make some solid boilies (the plan being merely to stop 5lbers getting them in their mouths and buzzing off with em 🤣. I have some wooden balls in various sizes I’d like to utilise but the problem there is they are pre-drilled balls which will make it difficult to keep attached to the rig so if anybody has any ideas on how to get around this then I’m all ears (or eyes of course). Plan is to dry em out for a day or 2 and add some liquid food or glug every now & again in preparation for my session weekend of 29th July . Here is a couple of pics , firstly of todays end product and also the Combi rig I intend to stick em on next weekend .

Hello mate , when I got my new glasses at Specsavers I got offered a second set of glasses at a greatly reduced rate and I chose Polaroids. Prescription is the way to go mate , you have to be comfortable by the pool and be able to clearly see it’s contents . whatever that may be 😊

My thoughts ? What’s wrong with the line you use at the moment ?

That’s how I’ve been looking at it as well . At least that and making sure all this stuff iv been buying arrives on my early (shift) week so I’m home before the Mrs ☺️.

I’ve read articles where unflavoured baits have destroyed waters . It depends on which company makes em of course but a lot of attraction in bait is given off in the amino acids & other attractor stuff that’s in them …. ( I don’t understand much about the make up of bait ) . so whatever you decide to do with em leave a few unflavoured. It could be a good move.

It’s far from ideal conditions but when , like me , you have to plan your trips well in advance then you have to make the most of it . hopefully by the time I get out again , the 29th , things will have cooled a tad . Dont forget though , a bad weekends fishing is better than most other things .

Can’t say I have Milady 😊

Know the feeling 🤣

Sounds like he’s a busy boy now . Maybe laying off Staff in order to keep his prices down is one way of reducing overheads and is to be commended with obvious sympathy for those that lost their jobs ( if indeed that IS the case , I’m obviously just guessing). As an aside , Shelf life are now back on the menu at Essential. Mr Wilmott has obviously sourced what he needs from elsewhere. Bit late for me though as I was already committed to 20kg of fresh stuff . My garden is now full of air drying bags as I only managed to squeeze 5kg into the freezer . In the words of the song , there’s a whole lot of shaking going on 😂

I did actually consider some Carpy green sticks by Taska (£10 a pop) but in the end decided to buy twice instead of 3 times 🙄

Ok thanks for all your replies suggestions and insights. cost is not Really an issue though of course nobody likes to spend more than they have to to get the job done . I narrowed it down to 3 and as I really want some Black ones so choices were limited that I could find . The ones I found that had no horrendous reviews ( even the Century Neville’s) were… Matrix Blackouts Fox quick release sticks and the Jag Prolites . Rightly or wrongly Ive plumped for the fox QR’s . I took into account the (massive) little add ons like stage stands , stabilisers etc that I’ll want eventually and found Fox to be most cost effective plus there’s a Tommy bar type thing concealed in each stick . Also as somebody has suggested a second hand drill might come in handy 😊 Time will tell …

That’s how I see the goal posts , buzz bars etc , might as well use a pod … I like the rod tip pointing at the bait if possible too for indication purposes. Always try to be practical rather than tarty .

I would say absolutely nothing 🤣

Hey you lot , I have a question . What possible practical advantage can you get (and I say you cos I won’t be doing it) by using sticks & buzzbars as opposed to a pod ?

Meaning it as a compliment Steve I would consider you quite Old Skool when it comes to this fishing lark so I have a lot of respect for any suggestions or info you come up with ( despite your choice of football team 😊). Which Sticks do you employ ? I bet you’ve had em for Donkeys …

Hi fellas, there are surprisingly few threads on here about Banksticks so thought it ok to start a fresh one … can’t stand Pods , for a number of reasons , and it’s single sticks all the way for me . I recently bought some new ones made by a company called Lidsters that I found on EBay but they’re really skinny lightweight and not up to the job especially on the gravelly swims at my new lake , probably down to my decrepit arms and hands as much as anything but they were cheap so I gave em a go and to be honest were not even as good as the cheapo silver Dinsmore sticks that I bought decades ago . Therefore I’m looking to invest . I found some half decent looking sticks made by a company called Taska that look a definite upgrade at a tenner a piece ( and I need 6) . Has anybody had any experience of these or indeed any Taska stuff to give me an idea on quality ? Or is it a case here of you get what you pay for with Banksticks ? Im not a fan of anything stainless really and I prefer Black/Dark colours and came across the pro lite carbon sticks by JAG which look the business but costing about £180 which would hurt for about ten minutes but at the end of the day is it worth shelling out for better ? Or is it a case of not really mattering about the quality of the sticks and more to do with getting a grip on a way of getting the damned things in the ground ? I’ve noticed Jag and Century amongst others do twisty things to help screw your sticks into the ground and some companies sell stabilisers to help keep the sticks in place along with screwy stands for use on wooden platforms but they APPEAR to be for their sticks as opposed to for universal generic sticks … I’ve even seen diggers to pre-make holes to slide your sticks into . Do these things work ? I’d have thought if you have trouble with getting sticks in the ground , stabilisers won’t be any easier ? Does the quality and cost matter or is it just me being Carp at it ? 😊 Discussion and recommendations if you please Gentlemen . And the first person to mention a Pod , I’ll get Nick to ban ‘em 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It’s like they’ve literally reproduced an advertisement off of a Chinese website such as Alibaba or AliExpress. I doubt Anybody , even complete novices will be sucked in by that surely ? Even a reputable tackle companies lead clips can be and are death rigs in the wrong hands anyway . Just my sixpence worth 😊

The only reason that Bivvy will be going up first is so it can . If last week is a guide those little cypri-tornado’s won’t give me any peace and if the weathers a bit iffy next time then I wanna make sure I can get the wrap on before the heavens open 🙄