yonny

Caught my first carp of the year this weekend after a winter in which I did next to no angling for one reason or another. The weekend started well with 3 carp and a tench. Another bite resulted in a loss on Saturday morning but it was enough to have me blagging another night. Unfortunately, despite that warm sunshine, that cold easterly had them backing off and without a move on the cards I was stuck camping for the night. Still, a lovely weekend and I just hope I can get back out at some point soon. Here's the best of them. The linear is I think an original, typified by the little melted heart-shaped tail that most of the OG's in this water have. The common is I think a stock fish but no less welcome for it. Clearly one on it's way to being a real biggun.

Yeah. Not what I expected!

Scared the hell out of him!

When I say spotted one I mean nearly collided with it! Clear as day.

My twin brother spotted one in Fineshade Woods a few years ago - he's a mountain biker and regularly is out and about exploring hidden trails in the wilderness. If you google it you'll find reports of one spotted quite regularly in that area. My brother knows what he's on about so I'm sold.

Same.

Standard operating procedure innit......

Nah, you're doing it all wrong fella. The correct way is to clear it all out in spring, then slowly add it all back in, plus more, over the course of the year 😅 Yeah it's tricky to justify hauling stainless around nowadays with such decent ali, carbon and titanium stuff available. The obvious answer is your mrs buys you some new stuff 😅

I think they're quite similar. Both take a bit of playing with to get them formed perfectly.

Agree. The proper ones are the nuts. Half the price of tackle brands, ten times as tough, and carpy as Terry Hearns nut sack.

British Army NI Patrol Pack. These are getting tricky to find in good condition. Most of the surplus stores now show as sold-out. I used my old one for 15 years+ until the foam padding in the straps and back plate became brittle and it became uncomfortable to wear. I managed to find a dealer on e-bay so messaged him and he went through his stash and found an absolute corker..... almost looks new which is mad since they've not made the DPM one for almost 20 years. That's me sorted until 2040 now 😁

I was in that swim in 2007 when the big floods hit. Me and my mate were chilling having had a couple when the most intense rain arrived. We were bivvied up maybe 15 yards back from the water and in the space of an hour the water had come up so much it reached the bivvies. We had to pull everything out of the ground and dump it in the van to get out. Very nearly got flooded in. It was crazy. Sorry to hear you've had problems. Don't let it ruin your session. Enjoy yourself 👍👍👍

Same stuff as the Gardner with a different label as I understand it. Decent.

Me too. Yes and no. The use of propolis originates in koi keeping. It creates a barrier on the wound to lock out any nasties. This is fine when a koi is living in a posh pond with clean, filtered water with controlled salinity. Not so fine for a carp lake - you risk locking nasties IN to any wound. Best bet is to use a proper antibacterial/antifungal treatment (like the Gardner stuff), and then use propolis afterwards👍

Nah.... if anything, your hooking potential is amplified on the zigs imo. Your hook length/link is already tight to the lead i.e. there is no slack to take up. If/when Mr Carp takes the hookbait, it's immediately under tension unless he dives down which is extremely unlikely given what we know from the numerous underwater vids in circulation. Ergo, the likelihood is a hooked carp. Zigs can give odd bites - sometimes screamers, sometime massive drop-backs, and sometimes those odd bouncing tips that you describe (which tbf you can visualise if you imagine Mr Carp flapping when he realises he's now attached to a lead system 6 ft below him), but I can almost guarantee you that changing to a 6 magnet roller will do absolutely nothing in terms of telling you if a carp is attached. They are either hooked or they are not.... I certainly wouldn't go hitting single bleeps without a visual indication that you've hooked one. I would certainly change this before I changed the roller on the alarms buddy.

For real distance you need a long, curved stick. For accuracy and shorter range, straight is best. Hated them. It's like going back in time 20 years when we were all spodding without the line clip. All over the place 😂

These are great for providing enough light for the camera to find it's focus point - I use one myself - but a flash is still critical to great night shots imo.

I've tackled up my fave rods for this one. A set of X-Lite's I had built by Nick Buss back in the day and rebuilt last year by Roger Hurst. Only used them once since the re-build. Lovely rods and perfect for small waters such as the one we're on. They actually caught my current PB back in 2017..... which you were there for! I'm hoping you bring me luck once again😉

Class, @jh92.

So some other set is reserved for landing the record?!!!

Result mate.... well done.

I bet it didn't this morning!

You sound like them! 😅😅👍👍

It is legal for approved parties (which are very few and far between) to capture and relocate otters from within fenced fishery boundaries under certain circumstances. You risk prison for shooting one.

I agree. I've been carp fishing for more than 30 years now (which probs sounds like nothing compared to some on here). Yes, of course it's changed in that time. The biggest change I've seen is the disconnect between young and old. Back in the day, it was the love of carp fishing (which included all the blanks, rubbish bivvies/bedchairs etc) that bought everyone together - a common love/obsession of this fantastic sport we all live for. You'd have youngsters, old boys, cops, criminals, brickies, students, lawyers and god knows what else on the bank - all getting on like a house on fire because we shared this bizarre infatuation with a fish. That togetherness is still there for those that seek it and most of the youngsters I meet on "proper" carp lakes are as driven by this love of fishing as anyone was back in the day. I see very few with a "catch at any costs" attitude tbh - they're just keen as mustard, as we all are or have been at some point. In fact, the guys I see ruining this comradery are generally the old boys, rejecting the youth (as is unfortunately so common for any generation), because they talk funny and push boundaries in their pursuit of carp. Tolerance is a virtue. Younger generations owe nothing to older generations. They are a product of a society that WE have all influenced in some way. They cannot choose when they were born. Next time you're out, have a chat with that spotty teenager who's up and down trees and moving swims 3 times a day before settling down to smoke a joint in the evening. Once you get past that ridiculous way they talk (😂) you might find he's an ok guy.