carpepecheur

Gutted for you. They do become part of the family. My sympathies.

Or you could get a bait boat .................... ................ I'll get my hat.

It seems there is a consensus that using a pendulum cast for carp fishing is dangerous. I would probably disagree because it allows you to get the same rod compression with a lighter weight, or more compression with the same weight, or the same range with the less effort and more control. Pablo seemed keen to get maximum range but if the pendulum technique bothers you, the next best thing to address is the drag during trajectory. There have been many suggestions as to how to reduce drag such as lead shape, line thickness or material, rod ring size and type, reel diameter etc. etc. My interest is in quantifying what changes actually make a difference. Fortunately, a technique was developed in the late 16th century by Galileo who started dropping things from the top of the leaning tower of Pisa. He proved that if you drop two externally identical weights, but with one much heavier than the other, they will hit the ground at the same time. So if you want to check if a flat pear is more aero dynamic than an Arsley bomb, simply drop them both at the same time from a high structure and see which hits the ground first. If you want to check out the drag of your rod set up, use two identical leads. One you let free fall as the control weight, the other you attach to the end of your rig attached to your line with the rod at right angles to the direction of fall and the bale arm open and let it go at the same time. Obviously the free falling lead will hit first and the amount of time behind it that the attached lead hits the ground represents the effect of drag in your tackle. You can repeat this as many times you want until you have worked out the most efficient tackle combination to reduce drag. The trouble is that this requires very precise timing to make the comparison and a stop watch is simply not good enough. The solution is simple. Using your smartphone, simply record the sound of the two leads hitting the floor. Then look at the sounds in an audio editing app. You will get a graphic visualisation of the two impacts and can measure the distance between them to 1/100th of a second. .

I'm not much of a caster but in my youth I did a bit of beach casting. I am not au fait with modern techniques but in those days there was one technique that increased the distance I could cast quite significantly. It was (and maybe still is) referred to as the pendulum cast. There are only two parameters to get max distance and that is the angle for maximum range (45 deg) and speed. The speed comes in two parts. The first depends on how you wave your arms and legs about when casting and the second is unloading the compression you have put in the rod.. A heavier lead helps you get more compression into the rod ro release when you cast but it needs more effort on your part. With the pendulum method, you swing the lead like a pendulum up and behind you before you cast then you start your cast just as the weight is swinging back down towards you. The momentum in the pendulum coming towards you makes it easier to get maximum compression into your rod, thus a greater tip speed, thus a greater distance. I just wondered if this method is current practise in UK or, if not, whether it is worth consideration.

Take him now. Collies are fast learners. Mine started at 6 months. The first time I had I had a good fish on he thought the carp was attacking me and went in after it. Now he sits and stares at my rod tips all day long. I swear he knows I have a bite before I do because his ears prick up and his body tenses. If I am away from the rod he will bark. Who needs an expensive alarm? A treat after each fish is returned maintains his interest. 😀

The equinox is just a single moment of the year so can have no effect at all. The seasons which follow from that event have a huge effect on fishing so could conceivably have some bearing on what type of carp you catch. IMHO whether the moon has an effect or not simply depends on how cloudy it is. Or, to put it another way, how much light is being cast on the lake during the night.

Since this thread started I have been looking again at self takes again. I tend to use my phone for a lot of photos and there is an app which you can read about here which gives you both an intervalometer so no need for fancy remote triggers BUT also exposure bracketing so you can get several shots at different exposures and choose the best one. I will be testing it this weekend.

If you have plenty of time to invest but no cash I recommend looking at CHDK This is some free software that you can load on to most cheap Canon cameras. You just save a script on your SD card then , then when you switch on your camera it starts running that script. There are plenty of free scripts to download including several intervalometers working in various ways. I bought a cheap Canon Ixus for £5 about 10 years ago and spent a weekend working on a script for self takes. All I have to do is switch it on, there are no settings to select, it just starts taking shots every 5 secs (programmable) in sets of three. One auto exposed, one a fixed amount under exposed and one a fixed amount over exposed. If I wanted, I could also take them alternately with and without flash. Even though I have more expensive equipment now, it is still my go to camera for selfies because there is nothing to go wrong.

I seem to remenber,when I made my own boilies, if you microwaved them instead of boiling them, you can turn them into wafters or pop ups depending on time they were zapped. However, you do need an understanding wife.

Australia has just announced national donut day. That is 24 hours without a single new infection in the whole country. They had to impose very severe restrictions in August but they do seem to have worked. If everyone sticks to the guidance and avoids contriving excuses for ignoring them then perhaps we can have our own donut day.

In a normal world, I would usually order stuff to my daughter's address in UK then pick it up when I visit. So I am probably not a representative case.

I am not sure if you are aware of this Reedy but your web site cannot be accessed from France. If I use a VPN and pretend I am in UK it does work so it is not a problem for me but it could affect some potential sales for you.

I think I have posted this clip on here before but it does show an alternative way of getting a lot of bait out quickly. If you are prepared to experiment you can get a large amounts of bait out quite a long distance with very little effort. On the lake shown in the clip, I was using it quite regularly at 70 metres. (which is where the fish were not its maximum range). It costs next to nothing to make.

It is not clear what you mean by that question. The atmospheric pressure at the water surface will be less compared to waters at lower levels and will vary with current weather conditions. Hydrostatic pressure will increase with depth of water in the same way as lakes at lower levels. What effect from pressure are you worried about?

I had a similar problem. I could not tighten up the rear drag tight enough. All I did was loosen the baitrunner drag as far as it would go then strip off some line against the light drag. I then reset it to it normal position and was then able to tighten up the rear drag enough after that, I have no explanation why but worth a try before going in.

I am lucky enough to be able to collect them direct from the growers in the Valencia region of Spain. The bonus, apart from being able to choose the biggest and freshest tiger nuts at a sensible price, is they make a delicious milk from Tiger Nuts called horchata. If you are ever there on holiday i the region, I recommend you try some. It is so easy to prepare. Just soak then boil then let it stand for a few days until it is irresistibly gooey to carp. I have never tried ready prepared nuts but cannot imagine them being as good.

As Yonny implies, there is no substitute for personal experience. I have also observed the same thing and have been using very short rigs for some time. From the millisecond the carp takes the bait there is a chance of it being ejected. I believe the longer the hook link, the more time you are giving the carp a chance to eject your bait. That is why I prefer short and active rigs. I seem to be out of step with the rest of you because I still use bottom baits in preference to pop ups. That may be more a failing of my pop up technique than anything else.

Many years ago, I got banned from a well known trout water in Scotland where we were catching huge pike using trout as livebait. Our offence was not for mistreating their precious trout but because we returned the pike ALIVE.

Food seems to be much more important to daily life in France than it is in UK. Checking out a new lake, I came across a couple of French anglers. “Any luck?” I asked. “Don’t be silly”, was the reply, “we haven’t even lit the barbeque yet!”

A French guy stopped at as he was leaving the lake today. “Any luck?” he asked. “About half a dozen carp but nothing very big”, I replied “How about you?” “I was fishing for perch (for the table)” he said “but caught nothing” then he added “I see you are fishing English style “ “Why, because I am fishing on the bottom?” I queried. “No” he said “Because you are put them all back after you catch them”

You have just highlighted the opposite of confidence. How many times have you heard people talking about fishing a “hard water”? I do not think there is such a thing. Different waters require different tactics. By describing a water as “hard” you are preparing yourself for failure.

A little off the topic of confidence but a true story regarding hypnotherapy. Client phones up and asked how much he would be charged to quit smoking. "Right", I said, "work out how much you smoke in just one month and that's what I'll charge." "Well I smoke around 30 cigarettes a day and each packet costs me .......... blooming hell", he said "I can't possibly afford that", and he slammed the phone down.

There's a difference between what I think of as confidence and recklessness. To be confident you need to try and anticipate every possible outcome and what the consequences are. I know nothing about horse racing but perhaps hard or soft going, form of your horse compared to others, what it had for breakfast etc. If you do this thoroughly you can nudge the odds in your favour but you will only see this over a period of time not on one race. Alternatively you could stick a pin in a list and live with the consequences. After a session of hypnotherapy to quit smoking a client went outside and lit up straight away out of habit. He immediately demanded his money back because it had obviously failed. He was asked to come back in 1 months time when he would get double his fee. He never returned.

Interesting points in your post Elmo. Your hypnotherapist is probably more skilled than you give credit for. Every client turns up with what is known as a “presenting problem” e.g. “I want to be a good gambler”. The therapist's job then is to work out what the real problem is. I think it is easy to miss the point about the significance of confidence. It is not really about what technique you are using when fishing, it is more about your own mind set. Confident people have more success than unconfident people. Read David Coulthard’s book “The Winning Formulae”. He confesses he was not the fastest or most talented driver in F1 but achieved considerable success by applying his mind. He would sit at home for hours mentally going through the next F1 start, anticipating every conceivable eventuality and methods to avoid or mitigate any problems. During the start of an F1 race, you have milliseconds to respond to a rapidly changing situation. If your subconscious mind is already programmed to react in an appropriate way you are likely to be more successful. Imagine two people on the start line of a 100 metre race. One is mentally rehearsing the start and visualising the race and seeing himself crossing the line first. The other one starts worrying about whether his shoelaces a going to come undone and trip him up. Which one is most likely to win? You can start to build confidence in carp fishing by applying your own experiences or that of others (reading their exploits etc). You can study fish movements, baiting strategies, clever rigs that are in fashion or one designed yourself. It doesn’t matter how you achieve that confidence. Put simply, if you are confident you will do better. When I am waiting for my next fish I do a Coulthard. I think what will happen if it takes off towards the snags to my left or heads for the tree roots on the opposite bank. What if I have to go in the water after it? Do I know where it is shallow enough to go in? Is the landing net ready to go? If I am drinking a cup of coffee, do I know where I am going to put it when I get a toner? Even if nothing happens I am planning my next strategy, change location, change rig or change bait? Who said fishing was a relaxing sport? Effort =reward.