salokcinnodrog

I'm off today until Friday. I was supposed to be going to Redmire, but dog sitter let me down, (not necessarily a bad thing), and seeing how weedy Redmire is at the moment put me off, so it is over to the syndicate lake. Plenty of pellets, maize and boilies in the gear, along with the dog food and tackle. Really not sure how to approach the lake as sitting and waiting for the fish to come over bait has not really worked. Finding them in 40acres of very weedy water can be tough, swans, tufties and coots make life harder

And that alone made it a success 😉

It actually produced my last 2 fish out of the syndicate. The lead and rig all in the bag fished with bottom baits. No need to slow it down. I knew I was on a weed free area, rich in natural food. I had retrieved leads and rigs and pulled in bloodworm just stuck to them.

Welcome to Carp.com

Yet at the same time, if there is a continuing supply of food (not necessarily natural), with a decent supply of useable energy source, I.e carbohydrates as in bird food baits then they may continue to move around.

I think digestion slows down in the winter rather than bungs them up, although in More from the Bivvy, one of the Rainbow chapters does mention fish full of boilies and how they were rolling to clear their systems, so I could be wrong. This is where bird food boilies with a better digestion rate could be the 'goto'.

In Tim Paisley's To Catch a Carp he mentions baiting up on Birch Grove with Micromass pellets, available at the time from Nash. The carp were ripping the bottom up long after the pellets had been eaten or dissolved. The smaller coarse pellets break down a lot faster than the larger more heavily oiled Salmon and Halibut pellets. Smaller food items can produce preoccupation to the state that the fish ignore everything else; hemp, pellets and some small seeds especially seem to produce that effect. I've seen carp picking up the hemp, ignoring tares that were in the same mix. Years ago, late 1980's/ early 1990's I tried baiting up with shelfies, Richworth Streamselect or the original Crafty Catcher. Only 2 flavours produced continued feeding, Salmon Supreme and King Prawn. Any other flavours, including Tutti Frutti, the fish would only pick a few up before leaving the area. From that I came to the conclusion (my own personal experience) that baiting heavily with attractor bait shelf life's was not worth the effort. Fish them with a stringer of freebies, but not bait up with them. Yet bait up with a good decent food bait, fishmeal, meat meal (chicken, liver, beef) and the carp would continue to feed on them. The difference between the two was interesting to watch. The attractor bait was like a sweet or dessert, nice but you couldn't live on it, whereas the food bait you could survive long term. Even birdfood boilies did not produce long term feeding, they had a short term 'catching life', before they needed changing. Compare that to the fish or meat, which could catch for years. Milk proteins only worked long term with the addition of The Addits, bromelain and Bengers. If they were not added the bait could not necessarily be digested very quickly, or the proteins were not useable. Of course, then came mixing bird foods with milk and fishmeal...

I've seen 18 and 22mm Halibut pellets take over a month to break down. The smaller ones do soften and break down faster, especially when they have been drilled. Don't know if you remember it, I put some pics up on here, some halibut pellets soured the bottom for months, nothing would come over them, not even the roach or perch, and they killed the bottom weed

Or place my rigs by hand😉 Walking my lines out I found keeps out line twist, which I did get from distance sticks. Not sure of the physics of that but distance sticks definitely increased it.

That's what spare bankstick's are for😅😉

Very good hook that. Very strong and one of my choices on Earith. Gardner Muggas, again good hook, probably one of my most used patterns. You want a hook very sharp out of the packet, have a look for VMC 7025. They hold their point, and I bet very few people could get ANY sharper than them

Right, back online. Sorry, I have removed the argument, insults and the continual taking to a tangent. Sadly it does now read slightly skew whiff, but is on track

Bait floss and rig rings for me. Hard to say on best tackle, possibly the big RH cradle, better than flat mats imo, or quite possibly the Solar P1 Pod. The versatility is darn good from low tips, to 5ft high for distance and to get over weed with just an additional set of stainless banksticks. Stainless banksticks, never destroyed some are original Solar's from 1994/5 time, possibly even earlier

Pretty much go back to what was working before. Remember how to feed, as you do on the float rod, little and often, or regular recasting with the feeder. That freelining dog biscuits is one of the best ways to catch carp. On a water I fish, freelined dog biscuits straight from the rod tip (that close(!)), is a very good Catcher. A mate regularly catches 20fish a day on freelined bread, half a slice at a time. In spring and summer, the method feeder catches well, as does fishing a float with sweetcorn.

The carbon cloths of the rods produced in China are not as good as those produced in UK, Japan and USA. Due to various sanctions the Chinese state is not allowed to trade in higher quality carbon