newmarket

Took Tj fishing yesterday, he wanted to go back to where we went the first time . My old lady picked us up after work but it cost me £35 in a taxi to get there ffs 🤦🏼‍♂️ Very quiet initially, not much going on , not a lot coming out all round the lake , and as a result Tj’s concentration level began to waver somewhat and he started getting a bit restless. Hooking into 3 little carp and having em falll off didn’t help , his Autism makes him very over-emotional , tears etc but somehow he stuck at it . I changed the rig on the Whip , explaining to him that the hook was blunt and may explain the losses , about altering the depth regularly to find where the fish are etc . He seems unable to leave the rig in one position for more than 3 or 4 minutes and ‘casts’ on a regular basis ( resulting in tangles etc which we all go through I spose) but as soon as he caught his first little Roach his interest rekindled . He said he wanted a ‘monster’ like last time 🤣

Since returning from holiday I’ve taken all sorts of advice re my boilies ranging from longer boiling times , adding oil to the paste , using a dehydrater when drying them out , all sorts of stuff . So I’m going to order some more paste from Essential baits and experiment with little batches to see what works best if at all . Im off for the day tomorrow (Friday) with my boy and his trusty whip to my local hole in the ground to see if his interest has been sustained… he says he wants to catch another beast like last time 😊 so I think it will be . Oh before I go , does anybody here think one of those Nash ball makers might assist in the production of huge hookbaits at all ? I’m hoping to target the deepest area of the lake on my next visit to determine if the larger girls may be holeing up there 😉

Morning everybody , sorry I’ve not had time to update this thread , had lots on . I actually fished the weekend after my last post above , since when I’ve spent a couple of weeks in Egypt doing naff all except a bit of scuba dooba diving which I thoroughly enjoyed even if it played (and still is) playing havoc with my ears . I was hoping to get a spot of fishing in but it would appear that since the last visit (pre-Black Death) the Egyptians now frown upon fishing and just about every species in the Red Sea is now a protected species. That don’t understand the concept of catch and release so that didn’t happen unfortunately. Anyway I digress . Yes , weekend of 29th of July I hit my syndicate lake again , the challenge , if you recall , being to avoid constant tiddlers with huge 40mm+ hookbaits … you know the ones that kept cracking 🙄. Due to the hot weather the water levels were amazingly low . It’s not a deep lake anyway but certain parts , in particular a couple of the swims I had my eye on , were alarmingly shallow . I’m talking 18 inches deep shallow …not the type of depth I could imagine a 20lb+ Carp to be lying up in. Anyway with the whole lake to choose from I decided on the same swim as my previous visit a month before . They say familiarity breeds contempt , I say I breeds laziness lol. I had a very good weekend . I broke the habit of a lifetime and actually weighed most of the 20 or so fish I banked …just to compare with my previous session ….lightest this time 12lb . The stamp of fish as a whole being bigger this time around . All my hookbaits were 40mm+ B5 and Black snail . The boilies that were cracking stayed intact mostly and those that had split in half stayed on the hair beautifully to get the job done . As most of the fish I caught were obviously having difficulty getting them in their oversized gobs. The most frustrating thing was having to sit on my hands when the transmitter was going into overdrive . They were moving the baits resulting in 3/4/5 second blasts and obviously then dropping them . Being patient and waiting for fully fledged runs was the name of the game . This was the largest of the session , a tad over 18lb .

Sounds like a plan mate . And if your old lady is anything like mine it’s probably France ? Fish with us or no France . 😊

You mentioned above about the kids ‘learning to cast and that’… Arent you just a little bit worried that one of em is going to hook into a 50lb carp or similar ? I have problems with lively doubles sometimes 🤣…and I wouldn’t want to stick a proper monster like that on the end of my boys line until he had a bit more experience. That’s not a criticism so don’t take it the wrong way but I’d want my boy to serve his time before throwing him in at the deep end. Back on topic , I’d trust the Tacklebox combo . You get what you pay for with them mate 😉

I’m not trying to be funny mate but they will eat that in ten minutes. Imo of course. The Boilies that is … dunno how much particles you have of course. Best of luck 👍🏻

What sort of fish will they be targeting with you on your trip Elmo ? Size etc

Elmo , you know Tacklebox do a combo set up for those 6ft tree rods don’t you ? I would think the reels would be ideal for use with the tree rods hence the combo deal ? https://www.tacklebox.co.uk/rods-en/stalking-rods/combo-deal-tb-darent-valley-6ft-2.5lb-tree-rod-kit-bp-4.html at least you know the quality will be good.

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 😂