old_carper

guinmav - Andy i second all you said about waters further south. I lived in cheshire for 36yrs and fished all the same waters you mentioned. 5 yrs ago i moved to a sleepy village in south Wiltshire called Dilton Marsh. Now I have sooo many waters to choose from its unbelievable and most have 30's in at least and no trouble in sight. Within 1/2 an hours drive from the house I can be fishing for 30lb + carp and most are day ticket waters.. I pay £35 a year for Devizes Angling Club which gives me 12 miles of Kennett and Avon canal just for starters and night fishing. I am also a member of a syndicate water for £25 a year. Next time your down this way (westbury, warminster, salisbury) give us a shout an I'll try an meet up. Were you in Prince Albert fishing society?

Get the Beekay Guide to Carp Waters. Covers the whole of uK and a good dose of European waters. Great book as it provides details for all waters it contains. Gawsworth Hall in cheshire, Redesmere (used to be Frank Warrick's stomping ground), Capesthorne Hall used to do day tickets (but may have changed) join stoke on trent angling as they may have the rights to the latter two. I cut my teeth on sale water park when it was relatively safe years ago, a great runs water, had 15 out of 23 runs in 7hrs one evening fishing the far side last 2 swims near the nature reserve. I used homemade boilies over huge beds of maples,,couldn't go wrong. But alas the tackle thieves an thugs started to dominate and many a person awoke to find all but what he was sleeping on gone. They even took one guys bivvy while he was asleep in it, hence adding baseball bats to your tackle bag. If attempting this water PLEASE note: if kids throw things at your bivvy,,DO NOT chase them, you will return to an empty swim. they are only part of a gang, the rest wait for you to chase the kids and then empty your swim of tackle.

Chateux Lake in Poitinviniere near Rialle. Great lake but not exclusive so wont have it to yourselves. It is a big lake though with great head of carp to 50lb+. A nature reserve is at one end and there is an island which can be fished from. Ken Townley of carpworld magazine fame fished it a lot and said it was one of his favourite lakes, he even run an article over 2months for the magazine. I have fished it and it was good, I shared the lake with a frenchman and two dutch lads and we all became good friends. It is a day ticket water with night fishing. the largest city nearby is Nantes where you will find the largest tackle shop/hyper market you have ever seen akin to a super sized B&Q but just selling fishing tackle:D

the only problem with winding in 2 or 3 feet of line after casting would be if your using pva bags, stringers etc, or fishing tight to snags/small features,in fact using these items would probably negate any need to retrieve line to avoid tangles

there is a product out there that you apply to the hook length that actually stiffens it, cant remember what its called but it then disolves in the water once cast out leaving your hook length in a supple state

first post on here as just joined. Ok now for some constructive comments, Ideally the fish should be hooked during the ejection phase and the first rig would not achieve this, as already mentioned the hook would be ejected bend first, the second modified rig is really no different than using a stiff hair rig as used in the 80's, the main problem you have being as the rig is ejected the stiff hair does not allow the boilie to be overturned as it is in a fixed position and cannot get blown out of the way during ejection to allow the hook to set. in other words the boilie is masking the hook. IMHO i would go back to the first prototype, lose most of the tubing and bore a much bigger hole in the boilie which would then allow it to slide on the d part of the rig and hence move out of the way during ejection of the rig....it really couldn't be simpler. sorry if i offend anyone, your on the right track though