emmcee

For me watercraft comes with time learning on the bank. You can't learn watercraft at home so any time you spend at the lake , no matter how short amount of time you are learning or at least you should be. Its seeing the small things that improve you as an angler. A showing fish, a fish sheeting up are the 2 big signs. Without these 2 signs a lot of anglers are stumped. Of course some are naturally better at watercraft than others but you have that in all walks of life, kids who are naturally intelligent, one is better at football than others etc etc.

Time is only any good if you use it wisely, so making the most of your time is essential. The saying "1hr in the right place is better than 24hrs in the wrong place ", rings very true. How long do you spend walking your lake on arrival for a 24hr session say? Do you or rather would you walk it for 23hrs to guarantee you had 1hr in the right place? Let's be honest ,most people would like to say yes but in reality 90% wouldn't do it. A lot of it boils down to how much effort you're willing to put in. I know and admit that my last few seasons on dinton I caught next to nothing and that was because I couldn't be bothered to do the work, I needed a new challenge. I join a new lake and I'm there the first day I'm allowed plumbing swims, baiting up, watching the water as much as possible. I learned the fishes habits very quickly. Winds and air pressures in my opinion are massive influences on fish, well they certainly have been on the lakes I've fished but they were different from lake to lake. Do you keep notes, a diary from each session? The weather conditions, fish caught and from where on the lake, the date, moon phase, air pressure etc. I had loads of info written down from all the lakes I've fished. It helps so much. All this is done whilst I'm at the lake so it's not extra time needed to do it. Luckily I've got a good memory but if I didn't it was all there in black and white. As for needing time to learn watercraft, yes I get that. For me though the signs you look for to find fish are the same for every lake. The difference being on each lake is the fish routes , where they are in what conditions etc. That takes time obviously.

Totally agree.

The only thing money would give you that you don't have is more time to fish. That still doesn't guarantee fish on the bank. Even with all the top gear, tons of bait and all the time in the world people would still blank. The primary thing you need above anything is watercraft, and that costs nothing and the top anglers have it in abundance.

It's not money that catches the fish though. You can have all the money in the world, all the time in the world and fish that lake, doesn't mean you'll catch it.

I was sat with a bloke on dinton black swan once. A dog strolled into his swim , stuck its head in mateys bait bag with his boilies in, sniffed and ran off with out taking a single one. I told him his bait was rubbish as my dog, most dogs scoff bait down. He laughed it off thinking I was winding him up. This happened a couple of months into the season and he hadn't caught by then. A week later he came up to me and asked if I was pulling his leg, I said absolutely not and he needed to change bait. He finally changed bait a while later and started catching. He then started to leave the odd bait on the floor of his swim everytime he fished to see if a dog would eat it, solely for his confidence 😂.

I've used the daiwa floorit. It's still on the spools on my 3lb Tc rods. I found it a good line. Sinks and casts ok for a fluro. I had it on all my spools, only changing to gardener gt/hd when I got on my current lake as I wanted a line that would cast but also sink in time. On a side note, I've never had so much line frap or line twist since going over to the gt/hd. Definitely be changing that before I go again. Oh, I've got a couple of spools with the fox flurocarbon on them, it's pretty good. Sinks like a stone but not good for casting (if you want to hit 100yds I mean).

I was the same to start with on dinton. I fished it how you should fish it. I soon learnt though that during my time on there the fish didnt like being chased around. You flicked a lead at them and they were off. If you could be one step ahead of them then all well and good but these fish at the time had no pattern. So falling in to the bait and wait trap happened to many. Don't get me wrong, some anglers would chase them around but only a couple of them were successful and they were both exceptional anglers, probably the best I've fished with.

So certain anglers fish the same swim week in , week out? This was the case when I first got on dinton white swan. It was handy in a way because you knew where the anglers would be and you had what was left. Sometimes this was good but obviously on occasions it left you away from the fish. But everyone left each other alone so I soon got sucked into the same routine. I picked a swim that no one fished and thought to myself I just need to out bait those around me, which I did and caught my fair share. This is what the blokes on there at the time called "bait and wait". Certainly a good way if everyone respects what you're doing and vice versa. But also a quick fire way to lose your angling skills and you become lazy (I know I did). It was like this for my first 3 or 4 seasons until a lot of the original members moved on and having "your swim" soon became a thing of the past. Those that couldn't move on from that time were left struggling but the ones who adapted back to find the fish first etc caught.

I did put my name down to go back on white which could well crop up for me this spring. Been Chatting to a few on there and I'm more than likely to refuse it, sounds like it's full of idiots. Can't be doing with aggro when I'm fishing.

You can only go if its essential travel 😂 You'll have to let me know when you are down there, be good to meet you. 👍

100%. You can have the best bait, best gear etc but if you're not on them then it's all wasted.

Then I'd crack on with it. Just keep it to yourself 🤫

Well if people are putting it in catch reports then they can't be checking people. Or are these anglers posting in the catch reports bailiffs or in with the bailiffs? Or are they trying to pull a fast one, tell people nuts work, people try nuts and tell them they are on them and then get them banned. There are some very devious people about, I'm one of them 😂

The thing with nut flours is all the good stuff has been taken out (mainly the oils) , which in my opinion makes these nut flours nowhere near as good as the real thing. I tried blitzing peanuts years ago, all you get is peanut butter haha. The only nut I could blitz into a powder was cashew nuts but found it wasn't a good carp puller.

More than my life is worth letting that one out I'm afraid. I didnt believe it when I was told. I was then shown how, I still couldn't see nut in the mix and I knew it was in there 😂

If people are saying they are devastating then I'd be using them 100%. On lakes where nuts are banned 30% of my particle mix will be nuts. Though if you scooped up a handful of my spod mix you wouldn't see it in there and yet as I said 30% of that handful will be nut. I've had other anglers, bailiffs even, look at my particle to make sure I'm not using nuts and never been caught. 🤫😉

Are other members using tigers , peanuts do you know? Peanuts can be devastating on some waters where they've not seen them before.

I'd go with the all the particles and the boilies but the liquid additives and salt I'd leave alone. If you do the mix you've written down and on top of it one of your goo'd up hookbaits there will be so many signals the carp wouldn't know what is going on. Sometimes too many signals, especially if over powering can be a repellent. It might also be a flier, but have you the time to sit behind rods for a number of weekend's to find out? Less is more they say. From your list I personally would use 3 items and that's it.

The thing is you can get bait so cheap these days if you know someone in the know. I can honestly say that most of the anglers I know are paying between £5 or £6 per kg, some a lot less as they are sponsored by their bait suppliers. Unless of course you buy from the tackle shops and then you'll pay top dollar. Most companies will cut you a deal on 30kg plus etc, offer them cash and you'll probably get it even cheaper. Though it's no reason to give you a load of abuse etc. That's carp fishing nowadays for you. It's full of w######. Take up sea fishing like me, it's the future 😂.

I guess it all depends on your budget. In the past I've had fox alarms, delkims, stevie Neville's and I currently have Attx. Can't fault the Attx, in fact I can't fault any of the alarms I've owned. I can honestly say I've never had a problem with any of them. I've got my Neville's still but they are the old ones so no remote sounder box so I only use my Attx alarms and i think they're brilliant for the money. Been out in all weathers and still perform as good as the day I brought them (probably 10yrs ago, maybe more).

There are no hard and fast rules regarding which flavour you can put in which base mix. Though for me a lot of the base mixes from certain companies, they are best used with flavours from the same company. This is because certain powdered additives would have been added to said companies base mix which lend themselves to the flavours from the same company. To answer you though, solar club mix is a very good base mix. Obviously renowned for having the solar squid and octopus flavour mixed with it so should be good with a strong fish/crab flavour.

John Bakers would be my choice every time. His bio-shellfish is the one.

They are good. He knows his stuff and has been around for a long time.

I've used premier since 2002, love their bait. I've used a few of them but my go to are Matrix RR with matrix flavour, but for the last 14yrs primarily I've used a custom bait rolled with the supaminos basemix.