Ginger9991

I have one, Brought it as i only fish nights after/before work. I used it over December/jan to work out the depth of spots (because it was pitch black when i arrived) and i would often flick out zigs during the night. Opinion: Meh, Served its purpose of giving me the depth of the lake bed when arriving in pitch black, never used it to find fish so i cant comment on it being any good, have used it probably 3 or 4 times since January during daylight, mainly to confirm that my marker skills were accuate... in terms of feature finding....i dont think i have found a lake interesting enough to find drop offs etc. I will probably start another lake in december, It will come out of the bag again for a few sessions, It will go back in the bag soon as i can see in the evening..... Save £200.

Nah i wouldnt have thought so either but thats the only way of telling if this spray actaully does anything, I dont use spray and if im using dips or gluggs then my bait has been in it for an extended period of time not just a dip and chuck.

I wonder if you sprayed some directly into a pond, would the fish react to it?

Love the bags, just make sure when your sitting down to do one, everything u need is in hands reach. Maybe just start with pellets in the bag first until you get the hang of it, Smaller the pellets the better. You will mess some up, you will mess up with some baggy bags............just keep practising and once youve got them nailed they are a great tool in your arsenal. I use mine with a 3/4inch ronnie rig in mine and on my curent venue switched my results round!

Hello, Im working up there for a few days in a couple of weeks, I have fished Cromwell (pretty busy at the moment) and i know of the A1 pits, Any other decent day tickets i get pitch up on for a night or 2?

I have fished a few moon phases over the last few years and i cant say i have noticed any difference. A full moon creates a great view of the lake, theres something really nice about it, Playing a fish whilst a full moon is up, Being able to see the full battle in the dark is amazing and more memorable. Do more big fish come out at a full moon, or do people just remember these fish better due to the conditions around them? Also what is a big fish? How big does a fish have to be to be affected by a moon phase? Do so many anglers fish by the moon that more fish are bound to come out? If anything i would expect a full moon to produce more fish then just the bigger fish if it played a part at all. I dont believe it affects the fish, But all the same i would fish a moon phase (especially a full moon) as its just a great time to be on the bank, amazing views.

Fished last night as the weather looked brilliant, wind, Rain, none of this 30 degree rubbish, Caught 1 within 30 minutes of getting the roads out 4lb..Thought to myself here we go........nothing else for the rest of the night......so in the best weather for some time the lake switched off, no one else caught. How wierd.

I dropped Baitworks a message to see if they would roll me anything bigger then 18. Unfortunatly at the moment they wont but they plan to bring bigger baits out. Mark sent me a few FB voice messages providing some suggestions (which by the way is brilliant customer service as i bet im not the only 1 asking questions). He mentioned coating the boilies in a paste and boiling for 30secs/1 min to help create a skin and increase the time it takes for the paste to break down.

I would nt use photos to judge the size of a fish the 23lb below looks tons bigger then the other picture......which was 37!.....

i was kind of thinking of attracting them to a spot i wasnt fishing or maybe dropping a rig a rod length or 2 off a baited spot... More a case of pulling the smaller fish to an area i wasnt fishing

Only the 1 worth picturing from monday nights session. 17lb

Cheers everyone. The feeding them off might not be 2 bad an idea, However even the silvers are in thier thousands so it might take a hell of a lot of bait. my go to tactic has been a solid bag with a 12mm pop up on a ronnie (on my previous venue) i darent try a solid bag on this place but that Ronnie set up did land me a 2lb roach..... I have had some decent fish from this venue up to late 20's and on my 3 sessions i have managed a 17 and a 23 but work overnighters on this place wont work unless i can carm down these smaller carp, from 7pm to 7am on mon-tues i had 9 carp probably under 8lb giving me a pretty rubbish sleep (i can deal with that if there were better fish). The bites from the better fish are amazing though im not sure if its the weather but god they have probably given me the longest battles i have ever had. Im slowly working my way round the lake trying different swims but the small carp seem to be pretty much everywhere, will get some bigger baits and see what next sunday night holds in store, you can use 3 rods so i can put 3 different tactics into play and look for a bit of a pattern.

Yeah im expecting the rig to be moved about so just need to make sure its resetting as best it can so will probably be a blow back rig with a bit of balance to it and work from there. I might even have to deal with the small fish by introducing a lot of particle and hope they concentrate on that. I just think that to not have large baits as an option will be to my detriment.

Hi guys, So one of th venues i will be dropping on and off has a million small carp anything from 3 to probably 8 or 9lb have been destroying me, So the solution for me is bigger baits...bigger then the 18mm i already use. This place has fish up to probably 30lb, im guessing anything over 15 should be able to get a 22mm in thier mouths.......so i want to get hold of some 22mm, I dont really want to be making my own, not really got the time and i dont really want to invest in the kit. Can anyone recommend any ideas or a supplier that does boilies of this size? Could i use cork balls with paste wrapped around and some mesh to keep it on? How long would the paste last? Any help would be appreaciated.

I used to use thier website all the time and they were spot on. Havent used them recently though.

My 72 hour session ended after about 48 hours as it was just too hot. The fish were all chilling out on top and typically the lake had a no surface fishing rule which sucked. I was the only 1 on 5 acres of lake for my stay. It fished hard at first but once the cool wind got going so did the fish. Unfortunately most of these were under 5lb as all the big boys were on top. I think I had about 16/17 carp only 3 being doubles. Faced various issues, little silvers were pecking my boiles to death, small carp were giving me aborted takes or actual bites which meant I couldn’t keep the rods in the water for longer then an hour or 2, any spods of bait put out drove silvers into a Frenzy which meant there was little out there to attract the big carp. moved off the bottom and onto zigs..... more small carp! Anyway that’s a problem I have to try and solve, 1 decent fish was this 23lb. The fight was pretty special it had obviously saved a lot of energy recently!

Went fishing sunday night....got absolutely destroyed by the flying blood sucking devils.... What are people using to repel them? on my left foot alone i have 7 bites.....god help me not itch through my skin today.

Yep completely agree mate. As I have said in previous posts I wasn’t going to join as much as I like the place. My mate has recently wanted to start fishing and to take his boy (5). So thought I would get a membership there and they can guest on my ticket as it’s a good place for beginners. But the 12 rule has killed that.

Turns out you have to be 12 and over to fish there........what a silly rule especially on a venue that has 2 match lakes and all 3 stocks full of silvers.

I have a deeper pro+, used it during winter to map out the lake as my fishing is all after work so at that time of year, Was useful in the respect that it confirmed the depths i believed i was fishing in, It also showed me 1 or 2 features i had been missing. Its benefitted me more with my Zig fishing as if i turn up real late then i already know the depth in front of me and i can start working the zigs......Its probably not been out of my bag for 3 or 4 months now.

Well my recent great run is continuing. Got down the lake around 11 last night and by the time I pulled off at 8am I had another 2 carp (around 18lb and the stockie probably no more then 12lb) I also had 5 tench including the 2 monsters from a double take, must have been around 8lb but I forgot my weigh sling! That’s 11 carp and probably a million tench in the last 6 sessions. 1 carp short of what I achieved in the whole of last year on this lake.

So looks like i have managed to get some 9ft dwarf 3.5tc rods and a holdall for a decent price. Any recommend a 2 piece net? managed to get 2 rods and the holdall for £130 which i didnt think was bad.

Sure no problem. So my standard fishing has always been a balanced half and half boilie on a blow back rig. Usually King Prawn and a Red Mainline fruitella, i love fishing over a bit of bait. Anywhere i had gone previously this has worked well for me. I started my water in December 2016 doing overnighters after work before going back to work the next morning. As usual, dragging a lead around swims trying to find gravel mostly, My first few months contained Tench if anything at all. I remember my first Carp coming in Feb so 2/3 months in the middle of a storm...Cant remember the name of it, Unforntunatly i couldnt fish that particular swim that night because it was in amongst the trees and i didnt want to die. At that time of year i was convinced that my problems were due to me turning the water into a foam finding spots (which is why i started in winter), the fact that i couldnt see any shows because i was on and off the lake during the hours of darkness and the fact the tench were getting into me before the carp. I had my next fish in May and by the time i was fishing just off the gravel (to avoid the tench) which was working...however its now 5 months in and i only have 2 carp. I was seeing on FB that fish were coming out, but they seemed to be to anglers that were fishing for a few nights, It appeared it was taking fish time to accept the bait. It was around this time i had heard people tell me they didnt like fishy baits, So i packed in the king prawn and i went over to Urban baits. The next session i had 1 then i had another 2 the week after (same swim,same spot) so decided to do a weekend.......I blanked. In this time one of the bigger fish came out the lake to a guy using....you guessed it! King Prawn! still i had some results, i wasnt changing. I messed about with rig length, with spod mixes but the results had dried up again. But this time its 6 or 7 months in, Whilst i still wasnt seeing much in the evening regards to shows, I was hearing them behind 2 sets of reeds, ! fishable but you would have to be locked up and on your rods, The other, i wouldnt class as fisable unless fishing it from a couple swims down and hoping no one showed up in between. I found the fish again with Maize and Urban in the spod, With maize tipping the boilie on the hook and even managed to nick one or 2 on a pop up rig (never used 1 before)....but the bites were few and far between, maybe one night i would get 2 then nothing for a month. I finished in January 12 carp in the first year, all doubles. the lake then shut for 3 months for fencing so i moved to an easier lake and decided to have a play around. The swim i had previous success from was an island at 20 wraps, I didnt fancy spodding tight to an island at this range, I was struggling to hit to spot with a rig and mesh PVA bag so i ended up buying a throwing stick and decided i would fish the island with boilies, And because of the distance and way i was smashing the rig out, I moved to Ronnies on a boom, so i started using pop ups again. So through Jan and March i done well on this lake, catching fish in the snow so my confidence was back up, Enough to start playing with Solid bags, whilst i didnt dare smash one 20 wraps (at the time) i was happy to use them over closer spots and caught a few fish. Now my lake was over again and i had decided, spodding was to much of a pain, its late when i get it out and i cant 100% say its over my rig everytime. On top of that i was wasting loads of it or taking it back home if i didnt feel i should be spodding. Boilie approach wasnt the one due to bird life and PVA Mesh wasnt giving me the confidence. i decided on PVA bags as i wanted a rig that was hidden and in amongst some free offerings. I also decided that im going to fish on the gravel again. First night went by and i didnt have a touch, Back to normal! I had noticed that i hadnt seen another guy using solid bags so thought it was worth a few weeks at least. Next session i banked one! and my first 20 from this water! i was chuffed, I caught a few tench that night as well the solid bag was working, 1 of my pop ups was working and the tiny Ronnie was working. The next session i caught again, a few tench also followed, I was shattered for work because of the amount of bites from Tench but its fine, Im catching carp aswell so i cant complain. I then went on holiday for a week, and as soon as i got back i went down the lake, banked 2 carp that night, about 6 tench (a few over 9lb) all between 12 and 5.....so i was really tired for work! 1 pop up in particular was doing the business, this pop up isnt sold as a bottom bait....and i think thats helping me! That brings me to the fish above. a lot of my fishing on this lake has been an education, Before it i had never fished popups, never owned a throwing stick and had never changed rigs much...oh and the solid bags. Looking back on the first season theres a fair bit i would do differently but i have got to the stage on this lake where i feel like i can catch now. I have had 6 sessions since it reopened and 9 carp in the last 5 nights with a couple lost as well. I have probably done 30 nights ish maybe a few more, 2 weekends (Fri-Sund) the rest being "quick overnighters" after/before work. Im back on there Thursday night but wont be on til 10/11PM and i will be off by 8AM lets hope i can keep the run going as theres plenty of nice fish i wouldnt mind landing!

Oh and also in terms of a bank stick or tripod?

cheers