crusian

A successful angler will always be on the fish and if that means spending more time looking/searching than fishing then so be it. If you're not on the fish then none of the other stuff (dissolved oxygen, rigs, tackle etc) matters.

Your eyes....... they're the most important piece of tackle you have.
Pressure, depths, temps etc etc are all good starting points but I'll not fish until I see a carp to fish for. You cannot catch what is not in front of you.

I have a photo at home of me with Bobby Kerr and Jimmy Montgomery - the captain and keeper from the '73 team. Bobby owned a pub a few miles away from where my Grandma lived so I'd visit quite regularly and often see ex players. The Stadium of Light has a stand named after Jimmy nowadays, harking back to that incredible double save in the final.

Well I'm old enough to remember 1973 , and Bob Stokoes' celebration .
😁

My family moved down south a year before I was born. Sunderland is in my blood (I obviously wouldn't have chosen to be a Sunderland supporter 🤣).

Cup half full , Yonny . You know that the Carp are going to start spawning soon ( in some places they have already had a go ) , and then they will need a rest to recover . So you are selflessly waiting until the end of June before you fish next .
😁
 

So are you from " Up North " , then Yonny ? . No wonder you look " well ard " .
😁

17lb. Despite the grimace, it made me smile, and laugh.
I'd only just cast the rod in after getting back with Sky after a walk round the lake when it went off, I was sorting out the next rod, mid PVA bag making. Bait was in the water 2minutes, not sure the PVA on the first rod had even dissolved.
First fish on the Shrimp!

Chelsea going down would have been my ideal as well.
 
Sunderland in Europe, that quite a thought, and not being funny, Europa League is a 'better' competition than Champions League. The teams for Champions League are almost nailed in at the start of the season, whereas Europa League can be anyone.
Mind you I do wish that we could also go back to European Cup Winners Cup as well, but UEFA and FIFA make too much out of CL.
Rugby altogether I love, although it has gotten a bit silly on head to head and targeting, especially in the mens game, and that's players who are going in too high and not wrapping up rather than referee being picky. 
The Red Roses have definitely brought the game to life for everyone. Women's games sold out, and in some big stadiums.
Mind you, I do miss Abby Dow, not as spectacular as Ellie Kildunne, but could she motor.
 

Well done to Sunderland, Could you imagine how smug arsenal fans would be if that happened though. No one wants that, they are already smug enough.I'm quite happy West Ham went down instead of spurs though 😂 
I've not been watching much kickyball lately, I'm all about womens rugby these days, went to Twickenham to watch the Red Roses the other week. They make footballers look like a bunch of Daily Express reading Karen's. 😱 
 
 
 

Hello @newmarket 
I was sad that West Ham got relegated ( would have been much happier if it had been Chelsea ) , but you'll now have all those " friendly " local derbies against Millwall to look forward to .
😁

I think I’ve kinda grown DOWN over the years 🤣

Welcome to Carp.com, although I struggle with doing grown up 

I’m sure this must be a new thing as I’ve never come across it before but why is Sweet Corn verboten ?

Morning Gents . I’m a moderator on a football fans forum and I’ve had exactly this problem . 
we have set in place a system where all new applicant members have to have their details ratified by a Mod and then have their application activated . 
 
The majority of new applications come from Eastern European spammers so their IP addresses give the game away straight away .
Those that are not so obvious get sent a related question by email to answer .
you’d be surprised how many Romanians think Bobby Charlton used to play for West Ham 🤣.
It means I have spend an evening once a month cleaning up the Spammer new account applications but it’s better than spending your whole life deleting and banning , which is what was happening before .
Genuine applications usually make themselves heard on the forum pretty much straight away and the obvious spammers can usually be spotted by their ridiculously Eastern European usernames .
 

Cup half full , Yonny . You know that the Carp are going to start spawning soon ( in some places they have already had a go ) , and then they will need a rest to recover . So you are selflessly waiting until the end of June before you fish next .
😁
 

Exactly..... I'm a hero really 😁

Cup half full , Yonny . You know that the Carp are going to start spawning soon ( in some places they have already had a go ) , and then they will need a rest to recover . So you are selflessly waiting until the end of June before you fish next .
😁
 

What a session. Well done to the lad.
Yesterday I went for a walk around a water on which I have a ticket starting in June. It's an awesome place, nearly 90 acres of water in a massive nature reserve/SSSI/SPA. A proper big pit with everything that you could hope to see..... bays, islands, snaggy margins, massive sheets of water that go on forever, a really impressive place. I actually fished this water ~25 years ago when I was completely out of my depth. I caught one carp, to this day one of the best I've caught.
Would you believe it..... I walked into the swim I caught from all those years ago, and there were loads of gulls diving on a huge hatch. I persuaded the Mrs and kids to stop for 5 mins so I could check it out. Straight away I spotted the carp popping there heads out feeding on this hatch, well within casting distance too. All that water and I found them straight away. Couldn't believe it.
Law of the sod dictates I'll not find another chance like that once my ticket starts but it certainly got the blood flowing ready for June!

Another afternoon on my local park lake and 8 fish up to 18-4 chalked up. It's not the most difficult lake in the world but it's nice to have a confidence boost to compensate for a run of blanks on other waters.
I was sending the boat out to the far bank  tree line with a combination of boilies, pellets and crumb and topping up every hour and the fish certainly responded to the bait.
I did chuck a little bit of crumb in the margins to see how it descended through the water column as I was worried it might be spreading out too far. A few hours later I saw a fish over the bait and it dropped down on it with it's tail waggling clear of the water as it mopped it up. Needless to say, my confidence on adding it to my baiting up has gone through the roof!

Quick night on the local day ticket on Friday. Managed to get on them easily enough but a bit disappointed to just catch the one. I put a bucket of bait out about 30 yards in front of me and got continuous liners on it from about 9pm until 3am. Bizarrely, the only rod to go was the one chucked under the bush in the near margin. I can only assume my hinges were not the one..... should have put bottom baits out.
Still, better than a blank and a very pretty little patchy common. I'll not get out again until the end of June which is a killer.

When I reached the age of 70 I thought I'd better start acting like a grown up. Didn't like it so I've gone back to being a pillock.
Far happier now.
Ian.

grown up !!!

I have a fleet of models, but these are mainly 1/10th rc rock crawlers here is my most recent one an FTX Trooper based on a toyota LC71, i have added lots of scale parts, great fun to drive

they look awesome, i have to admit to getting back into making and painting 40k stuff about a year ago. it is suprisingly calming to lose a few hours surrounded by glue and paint.
not sure if it's appropriate here but this is an excellent charity that uses model kits for veterans as it can help with PTSD and gives a sense of belonging to a community again, if you ever find you have a kit spare (can happen i have heard) they pass them on to others.
https://www.modelsforheroes.org.uk/