carpepecheur

I bought one of the very first Deeper sounders as soon as they became available. I have to say it is a miracle of technology and have been very happy with it. Now the GPS does not work and I can only use it in “boat” mode using my phone’s GPS for position. I want to buy a new one but see that now there are a lot of options (with prices to match). I understand the science between different frequencies and I understand the CHIRP technology. However, I cannot find my way past the marketing speak on their web site. It seems to infer that you can use all three frequencies using CHIRP technology. Surely it cannot scan all three frequencies in one pulse? It would make the pulse far too long. So am I right in thinking you have to select which frequency you want to use (100, 240, or 675). If this is the case does the CHIRP technology work on each of these three frequencies? And, for the frequency it works on, what is the range of frequencies in the pulse? This might be listed in the manual under specifications. If anyone has used one of these new versions, it would be interesting to hear if it makes much difference in normal fishing situations.

Grovelling apologies but I gave some incorrect information. The "Tousanticovid" app that acts as your "pass sanitaire" (vaccine passport), CAN be downloaded in UK. (My friend said he was referring to another attestation needed in connection with his residence permit.) Don't worry, it is in English and is easy to use. There have been rumours on Twitter that the UK QR code is not always recognised. If this should happen, simply take it to any pharmacy and they can change it for the European QR code. Just to underline the point, it is OBLIGATORY in all restaurants, bars and cafes.

Can I add some useful information without it being taken as political. To enter many places in France you will need a pass sanitaire. You download an app called Tousanticovid from Google play. You then scan the QR code you were given at the time of your vaccinations. However a friend has reported that this can only be done once you are in France (unless you use a VPN set to France) as it seems to detect your location. Bon chance.

I would have thought that border problems were relevant to persons wishing to fish in France. If any of my comments have offended anybody then I apologise. That was never my intention. I only like to set the record straight where I think misleading information has been given.

If you want your views taken seriously, it would help if you did not make such grossly misleading statements twisting the actual situation. I assume you refer to the Council Directive 79/693/EEC of 24 July 1979 on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to fruit jams, jellies and marmalades and chestnut purée which was justified by the fact that differences between national laws relating to the products concerned could result in conditions of unfair competition likely to MISLEAD consumers. That was FORTY TWO years ago. It was clearly explained in annex III that for the purposes of that Directive, the following definitions shall apply: 1 Fruit Fresh, sound fruit, free from deterioration, containing all its essential constituents and sufficiently ripe for use, after cleaning, removal of blemishes, topping and tailing For the purposes of this Directive, tomatoes, the edible parts of rhubarb stalks, carrots, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, melons and water-melons are considered to be fruit ‘ginger’ means the edible root of the ginger plant in a fresh or preserved state. Ginger may be dried or preserved in syrup. If you take the trouble to read the whole directive you will see that it was aimed very specifically at what additives could and could not be added to jams, preserves, marmalades etc. from a health point of view and to prevent unscrupulous companies adding vast amounts of cheap fructose (for example) just to gain an unfair example. It was designed very specifically to protect to consumer. You really ought to read the OJ to understand how the EU works. I understand that you would vote for Brexit again having weighed the pros and cons so it would be very helpful to us less informed people if you would explain what the benefits are. We are just coming up to month 9 of Brexit so could you explain how your life has improved in any way. I don’t mean quoting wishy washy words like freedom, sovereignty, taking back control, democracy etc and I don’t expect a pseudo neo-economic dream of jam tomorrow. I mean real practical examples of how your life has improved - because I can give you several examples of how my life is now a lot worse. Is your weekly shop cheaper? is there a greater choice of goods on the shelves? Has your salary gone up significantly? is housing cheaper? have those pesky immigrants living next door been sent home? is the NHS incredibly improved with the promised 50,000 extra nurses, 40 new hospitals and £350, million extra per week being spent on it? I am not trying to be confrontational or disrespectful. I am genuinely looking for PRACTICAL benefits of Brexit.

I confess I argued strongly against Brexit but now it is here we have to take any positives from it we can. I understood, only from reading on UK forums, that there was a big problem with East Europeans stealing carp from fisheries. I (perhaps naively) assumed that now, thanks to the imposition of freedom of movement, this problem would be resolved. I am sure there must be many more benefits to come from Brexit? We have plenty of otters in France but they don't seem to pose a problem to the places I fish. The French love to hunt anything that moves so that may be a contributing factor. I agree, Italy sounds very enticing. Remember you can only stay in any Schengen country, like Italy, for a maximum of 90 days in any 180 day period. This includes holidays and business trips also made in that time.

Nothing worth having ever comes cheap. Those anglers who invested all their cash and energy into providing carp fisheries for you seem to be paying the price. On the plus side UK venues seem to be booming even if it does mean a waiting list or two. Surely you must have seen a decrease in East Europeans stealing fish for the table? I am sure there must be many more benefits to come. I think this is unlikely. The full force of the customs restrictions does not happen until October. At the moment we are enjoying the benefit of a temporary waiver of some restrictions to ease us into the effects of Brexit.

I have no experience of this drone but the two features that caught my eye were the 1 inch sensor on the camera and absence of geofencing.

Float fishing has brought back a lot of enjoyment to my carp fishing. You have to actually fish all the time rather than waiting for something to happen (if that makes sense?) I always go for the lift method with homemade porcupine quill and a single shot of the appropriate weight for conditions. I usually fish in 5 to 7 metres of water so I leave the float free to slide up to a knot of marker line set at the relevant depth. In answer to the op I think no hook link is needed and 30 grams is way over the top. I strike to set the hook rather than rely on a bolt effect.

Good point and I think you are correct. However I am sure you will find that it will only make the French more vigilant towards UK cars for on the spot fines. Another thing to be aware of is that next year they are introducing something that the locals refer to as "noise radar". It measures the sound of the exhaust and you get a fine if over a certain level.

With respect Golden Paws, your information is incorrect. The French are are simply implementing the EU rules for non-European countries that have been in existence for many years and which the UK, when it was a member of the EU, helped to formulate and voted for. You raise an interesting point regarding Northern Ireland. The same rules that concerns Striker must surely apply to any anglers going to Northern Ireland to fish. Although N Ireland is part of the United Kingdom it has remained in the single market and is obliged to conform to the single market rules. The same rules that the UK, as a member of the EU, helped to formulate and vote into existence. All the UK has to do, to be able to export sausages from UK to N. Ireland, is agree to conform to the same quality standards for the preparation of sausages as the rest of the EU has done. For some reason this is politically unacceptable. The alternative is to abandon this agreement and move the border from the Irish Sea to between North and South Ireland. This would infringe the Good Friday Agreement. If this were allowed to happen, the rest of the civilized World would certainly turn against the UK and the “troubles” would start all over again.

Sorry, I don't know of any anglers who have been stopped. But plenty of friends have done the post Brexit trip.. All I can say is that the rules are not applied in any systematic manner. One friend who runs a small market stall had his entire stock of Bisto confiscated and was given a formal warning. When he asked what that meant, he was told next time he was caught he would be taken to court and the "Bisto" incident would also be taken into consideration. The penalties can be severe but were not designed to address boilie smuggling Another friend had his Mercedes sent over to be delivered before the end of the Withdrawal Agreement to avoid any problems. The garage screwed up it it was delivered on Jan 6th (only 6 days after the WA ended). It cost him €7,000 to legalise his car. My best guess would be that you will be unlucky to get stopped. If you are and it is your first offence, you may only get your bait (or whatever) confiscated and a caution. BUT, remember there are probably more jobsworths in France than UK. I can assure you, from personal experience, that it is not worth having a customs caution against your name. Even though you make it past the port you may not be in the clear. I am not sure about North of France but here in the SW you get customs officers turn up at random roundabouts and do spot checks. My suggestion would be to mail order bait to an address where you are fishing and not attempt to bring any food stuff with you. But whatever you do BON CHANCE.

The customs rules apply equally to anyone who is not a member of the EU, whether you from Tooting or Timbuctoo. There is a brilliant marketing opportunity here to sell vegan boilies to British anglers wishing to take their own bait into the EU.

Sorry striker I misunderstood your question. The rules are clear, you cannot legally bring in meat or dairy products as an individual. In practise many people engage in smuggling and some get away with it. Not everybody is checked.

As I understand the rules, post Brexit, you are not allowed to bring in meat or dairy products without an export health certificate. This is not something you can get yourself. So you cannot do it legally even with a customs declaration. If you want to bring your dog that is still possible but the rules are much more complicated. If you are coming for more than 90 days, you will now need a visa. Also, when in France, it has recently be announced that you will need a "pass sanitaire" (Covid passport) to go to places where the public congregate, As far as I know, there are no reciprocal recognition of documentation yet but considering the amount of tourists that come here, that is bound to change. Just be aware of it and keep up with the news. If you are coming to a managed fishery it is best to contact the owner for advice. I am afraid "project fear" is now project reality.

I totally agree with the approach of testing the rig against another that you have confidence in. I am extremely lucky in that I have sole access to a locked, disused gravel pit where I can guarantee a few low doubles in a short day session. That is how I gradually built up the confidence in the rig. The rig I described in the post is the most basic form but there are a large number of variations I have tried. Slipping on the line is one problem. Firstly, I rarely cast out if I am using a ledger style set up. I always use a bait boat even if I am only fishing a pub chuck away. If that is not possible I put my rig in a PVA bag to be sure that the presentation is not compromised when I do cast. However, you can put a float stop either side of the boilie to hold it in place. I more often than not use a floating plastic maize to stop the boilie slipping up the line (and also to help it sit on the bottom nicely). Another thing I have done is, when tying the hook, instead of trimming off the line left hanging, is to use it to tie a series of overhand knots up the line so you have a very long and ugly looking knot to the hook, then I jam the boilie over that knot. The question I find most difficult to answer is what type of knot to use. My original approach was to try and get the hook to push away from the boilie as it turns. I used a spade end knot tied to the shank of a hook passing through an out turned eye. The last cm or two was a coated braid stripped back to the flexible braid for the rest of the link. The problem with this is the direction the hook points, as it rotates, depends on the tension in the braid. I wanted the hook to rotate with the hook always pointing forward to find a good hook hold and this method did not give me control over that. My knot skills are very limited so I am not sure what is the best to use but it needs to connect to the eye in a loop. I use a tucked half-blood knot which is not pulled tight to the eye but stops in a loop. It is then locked by tying another tucked half-blood above it. This makes a very flexible connection between hook and line. I then tie a piece of thread onto the bend of the hook. The idea is that, as the hooks swings through its arc, that piece of line puts a slight drag on the back of the hook and turns the hook so that it is always leading with the point. I have taken a photo to try and demonstrate what I mean. Although I said that the rig was incredibly simple, it has had a lot of thought put into it.

Not at all - I never got that impression. All new idea benefit from serious scrutiny. I am hoping to benefit from the ideas of others. Yes I understand your thinking. Personally I would make the baits as nearly neutrally buoyant as possible. I do this by cutting a bottom boilie and a pop up in half and then threading the two together with the pop up half on top. If you then add more buoyancy at the hook end it could float up spoiling the action of the rig. However, i will have to test that in the tank.

Appreciate your interest. have a great holiday

No definitely use a separate hook link. You want a safe set up. I always use an inline lead on mainline with swivel at end of hooklink. I guess a stiff braid hooklink is OK but you definitely need a flexible line at the boilie end. It was not particularly designed as an anti-tangle rig. Personally, if I am casting I put the rig in a PVA bag (I have my own ideas about that too!). Where possible, I prefer to use a bait boat. I didn’t even know what a dumbell wafter was so had to google it. It looks OK. Definitely thread it on through its long axis. I have not found the need to put a stop above the boilie. I try to keep stuff as simple as possible but it should do no harm. You could also consider a floating maize instead of a stop. Good luck and let us know how you get on.

That is an excellent question emcee. No I do not mean hook pulls and I have not watched my rig enter a carp’s mouth. I have probably watched the same videos as you which is why I came up with the idea. I often use, what I refer to as, an “active lead” system. This is simply a collar mounted on the lead. I wind down and put a strong bend in the rod as the collar digs into the silt and the line is bowstring tight. The slightest movement of the bait dislodges the lead and the rod straightens. (I am sure I have posted this system on here before). If the rod straightens and I have no fish, I assume I have been “done”. Also, as previously mentioned, this year I have been float fishing a lot using the classic “lift” method. If I use the bald rig, the fish tears off straight away. If I use a typical hair, I do sometimes get a lift and return before I get a chance to strike. The same thing happens when using sweetcorn directly on the hook. From this evidence I surmise that the bald rig is better but I would be happy to listen to other ideas.

I can’t see that the rig is any less safe than a normal hair rig, however I have never had to deal with fishery owners so I would not comment on their prejudices. I also have no experience of so called “rig shy” fish. Salokcinnodrog made an interesting point about changing hair length to suit bottom conditions such as silt which set my grey cells rotating. I have a concern which I cannot find a way to test yet so I offer the following thought experiment. The problem, as I see it, when looking at explanations of how a rig works, is that it usually considered on its own in isolation from anything else that is happening in a carp’s mouth. A carp can only pick up a certain amount at any one time e.g. a mouthful equal to the volume of its buccal cavity. This will consist of water, silt, ground bait, freebies and hopefully your hook bait so how will this affect your rig? Just to keep the maths simple, imagine a cube of 27 boilies which equate to a single mouthful being sucked in. The top layer of 9 boilies will go well into the mouth. The second layer of 9 boilies are also comfortable inside the mouth. The bottom layer of 9 boilies will only just be inside the mouth. Now imagine each boilie is on a hair attached to a hook. The first two layers will be OK but the with the lower layer of 9 boilies the hook will never go inside the mouth so can never work. In other words you only have a 66% chance of the hair working. With the bald rig the hook turns above the boilie so you have a 100% chance of it working. Do the same with smaller boilies occupying the same volume. If you have a 4 X 4 X 4 pattern (64 boilie) using the same logic the hair rig will have a 75% chance of working (bald rig stays at 100%). So I would conclude the bigger the boilie, relative to the buccal cavity volume, the bigger the chance of a hair not working. OK that is an extremely hypothetical explanation but I think there may be SOME merit in the conclusion. When your bait is sucked up it is competing with all sorts of detritus to find room inside that cap's mouth. Please do give it a try Carpbell. I think it is good to have an enquiring mind and, as said before, let us know how you get on.

I have fished variations of this rig against traditional hair rigs and never had a hook hold outside the mouth in fact both methods hook just inside the mouth. I cannot remember any exceptions. The main difference is I get a few missed takes with a traditional hair but am hard pushed to remember any missed takes using this rig. Interesting comments, thanks for the feedback.

Could I just say something about testing rigs in general? I strongly recommend that you test your rigs in action by filming them being sucked up and then reviewing that action in slow motion or frame by frame. I forget who it was but I read that someone advocated putting a shot on the bend of the hook to get a better hooking action. The explanation for using it was pretty convincing. When I tested it myself I saw that as soon as the sucking stopped and there was no tension in the line, the hook just dropped down bend first with little chance of hooking anything. It is best not to take anybody’s word for anything without testing it yourself.

The hair has survived for 50 odd years so of course it works well. That does not mean it cannot be improved and I like to nudge all the odds gently in my favour. I did a lot of testing with the hair and found that the most important aspect for me IMHO is the position at which the hair comes off the shank of the hook. It needs to be just above the centre of gravity. Thus when being sucked in, and with the drag on the line, the point tucks under the boilie to make a smooth entry (and not hook outside of mouth). As soon as the line goes slack (when sucking movement stops), the hook drops down to an aggressive position. You can see this from screen shots taken from that video. IN OUT The drawback is that the whole of the boilie and the hook length must enter the mouth. Nine time out of ten this is not a problem. However, a carp can only take in one mouthful at a time and there must be times when the boilie does not fully enter the mouth in which case the hair rig will not work but the bald rig still has a chance. I am also convinced that the bald rig has a further advantage in that the sudden rotation movement makes the fish bolt straight away. Obviously I cannot prove this but all my takes using it are very fast. There are no casual nibbles as it were. I am enjoying float fishing at the moment using the classic lift method. If I am using the bald rig I get a very slight lift then the float disappears off to the horizon at speed. If I use a few grains of sweetcorn on the hook, I get the classic lift and have to strike the fish or risk losing it. I really do appreciate any input even if it is negative and I too am VERY interested in how others get on. When you have confidence in a rig it is extremely difficult to switch to a new method.