salokcinnodrog

Good Morning and Welcome to the posting or dark side. Fishing is a great way to relax and cure many ills. I know how it has helped me through my dark days. I hope it continues to heal you. Take care and have fun

Until the coffee my receiver hadn't gone sticky or lost colour, possibly because I keep it in the case.

To be honest, boilie wise I stick with one bait all the way through the year. Ages ago on here I wrote up a list of bait ingredients on Now I don't know what the current EU regulations are regarding importing bait ingredients or base mixes into Sweden, but I can say honestly that CCMoore, Sticky baits and others all produce good base mixes. German or even Danish bait companies might work out better. To start with I would be fishing sweetcorn, chickpeas or other particle baits, then as you find out and bait more introduce boilies

Had to order myself a new Att receiver, a high wind spilling coffee in the bivvy over my old one doesn't help keep one working...

I've used Drennan Super Specialist and Specimen hooks for floater fishing for years. The Specimen's are fine for open water and fish up to double figures, although you can land bigger fish if you go carefully. The Super Specialists are better for weedy or snaggy waters and bigger fish. I'm not particularly good with zig rigs, but have on occasion fished them on a particular water, where I used size 10 Solar 101's which was simply what I had available.

I think it was Steve who was a member on here had the big Graviers fish at a World Record weight, only to be beaten the same week by a Rainbow fish.

In theory, commons might be 'warmer' than mirrors with their complete scaling and moving about more. @levigsp might be the person to ask about that! I know on my lake, only 1 common has been caught since the start of March, every other fish on the bank has been a mirror. If you get into the equinox, certain fish seem to come out at specific times of the year or moon phases.

To be honest the questions might interlink. I know a number of match type waters ban 'successful' baits, be it pellet, boilie because 'such and such' won loads of matches doing his thing with that bait. As also mentioned it does serve to keep carp anglers off the lakes, which may be the biggest advantage of the bait ban, but without outright banning carp anglers. Most boilies now are nutritionally good, not all, but most. You could quite easily make up a boilie base mix, but use it as paste instead of boiling it. That way you have the nutrition and increased attra

Always nice to receive thanks for advice and opinions. Something else that may be relevant is the lake bed, if much of it is silty, the fish that feed regularly over silt may possibly have softer mouths than gravel bottom feeders.

North America definitely has more commons than mirrors. Real leathers are a very rare beast indeed. In over 30years of fishing I have only ever caught 2 genuine totally nude carp.

A water I fish for carp to double figures, I still concentrate on fishing the float with sweetcorn and lift float. If you put in much groundbait, you get other species more than carp so I use loose fed sweetcorn. On occasion I do use pop-ups I don't put any, or very little, feed around them. In fact I almost fish them zig rig style, well off the bottom.

I must admit I would only be using Specialist or Avon style rods on a water like this, with 8lb line. Hook size sounds possibly a bit big, for me it would probably be a 14 or 12.

Are you looking fixed spool or even centre pin? I often use a centrepin for stalking, either freeline or with a lift float. If it is fixed spool you are after look at Shimano ST4000 Baitrunner

Spawn already? Not yet😉 Carp won't be ready for spawning until the water has been 18 degrees for at least a week, probably late May, early June. As for sacking or retaining fish, just for a few minutes while you sort the camera gear out, an hour at the most if you have someone come and take pics. This fish was retained while I ran half a mile to get another angler to do the pics. I can do my own self takes, but do prefer someone else to take pics as I think results are better.

As has been said, mostly waters that are match angler orientated, not wanting carp anglers. To be honest, it is not a problem, boilies are often inefficient, they catch less fish than most other baits. Sweetcorn, luncheon meat, pellets, paste, various particles all catch carp as well as other species.