emmcee

Yes , they do come big sizes. I told my mate about them and he uses the 6's. He absolutely loves them. And the bonus being, no carp tax.

Get yourself some "Varivas Chinu" hooks from Veals Mail order. They are a sea fishing hook, Sizes 8's and bigger. They are choddy style hooks, super sharp and half the price of carp hooks. If i was still carp fishing I'd 100% be using them.

When i first started out carp fishing i met a bloke on a lake i fished in the Colne valley. If I recall, it was before the hi viz hookbaits were all the rage was about but they were starting to appear more and more in the shops. Anyway, this bloke was a margin fisher, made his own bait but all in pellet shape. His hookbait though was always a hi viz pellet so he could see it better in the margin. He'd catch a few fish but he saw that the hi viz hookbait would be ignored mostly when one or two carp were on his spot but readily taken when 3 or more were feeding. I think most would agree that carp are easier to catch when they are competing with each other. He wanted to catch though when they weren't competing. One day i watched him bait a spot with his homemade pellet and slip in a hi viz one as well, the difference being the hi viz one was a freebie and his hookbait was a match the hatch (clever angling I thought to myself). His catch rate more or less trebled by making that change. When he couldn't get a margin swim he'd fish pva bags in open water and fill the bag with his pellet and one "decoy " hi viz pellet and he caught plenty. On a side note, I read in this thread about yellows for commons. Well, I nearly always fished yellows as my hi viz hookbait and nearly always caught mirrors.

There are still some true leney carp around today. My old syndicate had 5 or 6 different known Leney's still in there from a stocking done in the 60's I believe. I was fortunate enough to catch one on my second trip to the lake, the others eluded me. It was 50 plus yrs old when I caught it and that was over 10yrs ago. It was caught last year along with 2 others. So still definitely 3 in the lake and it makes them 60 plus years old. I'm pretty sure the committee of the lake have the receipt in a picture frame. This is the one i had, probably one of my most memorable captures if I think about it. Weight was irrelevant but it was 28lb 02oz. Sorry about the quality, had to take a picture of my camera screen.

I always used the richworth pop up mix when I rolled bait. Not sure if its still available but it was good in my opinion.

Thats a proper unit, though so is the one in the picture with it if the grassie is a metre long roughly. It's surprising how big they can grow in a pond. My two koi i currently have are both knocking 50cm to 60cm. One is a Sanke and the other a perfect zip linear karashigoi, I'll try and get pics but my water clarity isn't to good as I've just not had the time this year to keep on top of it.

I put a pergola over mine and then brought a uv rated sun shade/sail. Does the job, I've hardly had any silk weed since doing this a few summers ago.

When i had the 6 carp in my pond I put a lily in the pond. Next morning the water was like a cup of tea. The carp had literally smashed the clay to bits that the lily was planted in. Even despite the pot being covered in pond grit and then larger pebbles. They just smash all plants to bits given the chance.

I'd hate to see the size of the heron if it was to eat "whopper". That said the otter protection is a good shout if near to waterways.

Lovely sized pond mate, I'd love one that size but I know they are pricey to build/maintain etc. Do you have the automatic self cleaning nexus. Looking forward to seeing a few pics of the fish. I've got a tiny 2 metre square pond by 900mm deep. I built it soley for goldfish originally but I did have 6 dinton carp in it once upon a time and believe it or not one of them grew to just shy of 10lb and the rest all over 5lb. Sadly they all died due to a freak accident. I've now got a few goldfish, one gold tench, 3 x carp that i grew from spawn in 2020 from my old lake, one of which is probably 6lb and 2 x koi that are knocking 7 or 8lb.They've out grown the pond really and i do need to upgrade mine really. Time and money holding me back at the moment. I've got a bog filter on my current one and boy do the plants grow in that, especially when I up the feed in spring. The first picture is after I built the bog filter. The next picture is after one month, second picture after 2 months and last picture after 5 months and cutting it all back after 4 months.

Just reading through this thread and it got me thinking 🤔. I'd say about 95% of my UK big fish captures (35lb plus) were on pop ups and they were nearly always different colours to my free bait.That being said, I fished nothing but pop ups for a very long time so if I hooked a lump then it would have been on a pop up. It was only in the last 4 or 5 years of my carp fishing that I started using wafters a lot. I'm pretty sure that most of my French fish were on wafters though. A mate on dinton once asked me "how come you catch a lot of bigguns?". I put it down to the spots I was fishing if I'm honest and a large slice of luck but this thread has maybe changed my mind on that as I virtually always fished pop ups, he was a snowman or bottom bait angler. Interesting for sure.

If Tony proper Jack's it all in then the only person that will know the superaminos mix would be Geoff bowers ( Abs baits). My mates now get him to roll their bait as they don't roll their own and our bait was on the superaminos base mix. They catch well on it .

A lot of swims on dinton were rock hard, topped up with road plainings. I often smacked the pegs in with a mallet to the sometime amusement and sometimes anger of fellow fishermen. On one occasion I set up opposite two mates who decided to hurl abuse at me and call me a "noddy" across the lake for ruining their fishing, my reply was simple "how many 40's you had?". The reply was, silence 🤣. Unless you're fishing right in the edge i personally believe it has no affect, though especially so on a lake like dinton where dogs are jumping in all the time, kids throwing stones etc, the carp ain't bothered by it. Bang a peg in, it might bring the fish in. 🤣

Ive seen campers use these pegs and use an impact driver to put them in. They don't budge i know that, but carrying a drill is a pain if you're fishing.

Buckwheat has very low oil content and in my mind its the oil content that in hemp that makes it so good. Buckwheat to bulk out a particle mix yes but not to replace hemp , for me anyway.