Tenchbloke

........ Interesting to see the pictures of Alan Wilson at Startops,i saw him many a time during summer around that time, belive he was camped out fishing startops for the record roach at that time and virtually lived their for the season.Had his own marker bouy out which he fed up with bait every day.You must have been brave fishing startops i alwayd found it a perticularly hard water albeit with big fish, but definately a water for the long session type of bloke! Me i fished the one next door regularly for decent bream and roach along the pathway between the two Reses in the tree swims .Much later on they removed the Trees and i was so disgusted i never fished it again.

wychwood rogue baitrunner is a nice reel...picked mine up for 29 quid ata local tackle shop..Carp fanatic reccomended them to me as a company that supplies cheap high quality product!

i brought 2 argos specials for 14 quid each complete with bag ,insulation taped up the battery compartment for exta waterprofing and have had great results with em for 5 months thru the wettest and worst conditions available . For a hard pressed cash strapped junior or bloke who thinks spending 60 quid on em is bollacks ,they do me just fine. would be interested to know why on earth people would spend so much on the damn things! whats does a "Quality " alarm do which mine cannot?

Ta m8 ..one of the main reasons i came up with this is because i will sometimmes recast 2/3 times to get the meat in the right place above my loose feed area.Ive never been the most accurate caster and though i do overcast and then pull into position ,i normally fish a water full of lilly pads and some bottom weed where 2-3 feet left or right and your baits lying on a pad waiting for a frog!! or pulling into position sometimes gets the bait covered in bottom weed,so in reality it helps me get new bait spot on by recasting without watching the bait sail off on my final attempt to get it right.

Good point m8,i try and cover that by dipping the cube or paste in the liguid from the loosefeed i use ,normally hempseed and tutti frutti flavoured crushed sweetcorn.Sometime i will wipe it around the fatty deposits from ther baitbox carrying my Meat really not sure how long the experts on this would want to keep a bait down before recasting ,mine tend to stay on the bottom probably 30-45mins or so before lack of a bite or even small fish nibbling make me feel a sence of paronoia that perhaps the cubes covered in weed or complely missing!! maybe i should get used to fresh bait every recast

hehehehe obviously not much of an idea judging by the responce ,guess your all seasoned veterans. Any way for me a new convert to the hair rig game it at least got me thinking!! So For all the new uns to the sport haveing spent yesterday useing the method ,i found that to keep the tube locked to the hair so that strikes do not remove it if u lose bait,simply get a boily stop whose thickness is larger than the tube diameter!!! Hey never said i was clever pulled in 2 carp both over 10 pounds on sunday and a Tench so i was happy and only used 5 cubes in 6 hrs float ledgering saves on the spam!!!

glad im not the only returning guy !! also been away for about 9years left just as hair rigs were the craze couldnt be arsed trying to tie em..now im dumbfounded by the new stuff in tacklshops And Geezus H the price!!! racks of plastic baits of every type ledger rigs that looks like a puzzel from a flaming christmas cracker(Bolt rigs?) Funnyfloats called polaris costing the earth! braided line i cant even cut with me old scissors!! and doesnt seem to take kindly to my knots! 3 score and ten types of Pellets of every flavour and colour ...nearest i ever got to useing a pellet was the ones i used to buy at the castle down near chichester for 50p to throw in the trout pool!! Dissolving PVC bags the (the ones you fill withfeed and the bait that you accidentally dip into the water as you get ready to cast causeing you to ecclaim "Oh ****!!" as you hastilly lift up your rod tip dispatiching said bait over your head as you despeartely try to cast out before it selfdestructs!! electronic boxes for finding fish the American way (as if im gonna have one of those stuck on the end of a bankstick, I have some pride you know!! and thats just on my first visit to a shop! Anyway where the heck is My Dacron Gone to!!!

Hi Ladies and gents hope this idea may help you all keep that cube of L meat or yummy paste in place when useing a hair rig needs a little refinement but early days i devised this one about 3 days ago on the side of te lake i was fishing aftre getting a little frustrated at losing my baits continuously line cutting is the main problem i find useing meat baits and doesnt take long for the line to cheesecut across the bait,especially on retrieval or when u hit a snag. take some 1/8" stiff silicon tube(thats approx)....its got to be the stiff type with very little flex cut this about 1/4 inch oversize to the bait Push a baiting needle thru the very tip of the s tube at one end Pull tube through the bait with the needle nice and slow useing fingers to keep the tube entering at right angles(if you dont do this the tube will enter at angle and will split the luncheon meat as you pull through, If your to quick on pulling the same can happen!!) line up the hook end of the tube with the bait so its flush with bait and then snip of the top of the tube at the Baiting needle end to remove the needle leaveing just a little excess (to attach the Boily stop) now you have a nice stiff tube through the meat which you can pull through the hair ,the hair cannot cut the meat and the tube has a massive surface area gripping the meat /paste bait relative to a hair effectively stoping the cheesecutting action when hair is pulled through then attach you bait stops across the tube so it rests on the top of the excess and apply some superglue help secure it against silicon,push the tube with boily stop flush flush and trim other end to flush fit again Ive found this method very good enabling me to get multiple recasts from the same cube of meat and paste and even on failed strikes you find the meat will useally still be in place My main issues that im still hopeing to resolve is how to keep the silicon tube in place if their is a failure as occasionally when you DO lose the bait the tube will fall off something i dont want to happen as im not into polluting either fish or lake beds with bits of silicon!!.the superglue helps but is not perfect!.Things im going to try are :- cut a V grove in the top of the silicon next time to help bed the baitstop against it with the glue to give a better fix (not easy for chubby fingers like mine!!) find a plastic male ledgerstop of the right diameter to push into the tube once hair s threaded at the baitstop end again to prevent loss of the tube Anyway early days!!! have fun hope it helps!

Oh well not an unexpected responce i guess .....all a question of costs,whilst completely failing to answer the question of the issues with new anglers coming to the sport mid/late season ................... here we go! Thank you for your recent e-mail regarding our rod licence structure. The rod licences that we offer are for a given season not for a twelve month period, we offer full and concessionary licences which run from 1 April to 31 March on an annual cycle. There are a number of reasons for this, mostly to do with keeping costs to a minimum and therefore keeping licence duties as low as possible. Treasury rules dictate that income from rod licences must be spent within the financial year - by front loading our sales, we make best use of our income. It would be very difficult for us to plan our work if our major sales period were to occur late in the financial year. By operating on a seasonal basis, we can remind all anglers to renew their licences through publicity campaigns in March through to June. If all licences were issued on a rolling basis, we would have to operate a system of reminders for every individual licence holder at huge cost which would be paid for by anglers. The current licensing structure was arrived at after a public consultation exercise in 1994 and approval by the then MAFF Minister, and there are no plans to change the structure at the moment. I hope this helps to answer your query. Regards Nicky Nicky Lawton Team Leader - Licensing Fisheries Administration and Support Team Tel: 01925 542047 Internal: 721 2047 nicola.lawton@environment-agency.gov.uk

A 6 month would be a good starter m8 ,i would hope however the increase of Anglers buying a licence would offset the increased admin costs. Ive fired of an email to 'stephen.gledhill@environment-agency.gov.uk' one of the big wigs who handle the Angling side of things for his steal on the current setup,may as well "Rake the swim" to see if we can get someone running the show to put their point of view and maybe get him thinking about change! Ill let you know what he says if he bothers replying!

Let me start by saying i wholeheartedly support the concept of a NRL !! Im a returning fisherman out of the sport for 5 years ,and still we have this dinosaur of a national rod licence which runs from April-march How the heck is that going to encourage anyone taking up the sport mid summer to buy a NRL? God knows what the bloke who gets a fishing rod for christmas is going to do? shell out 24 quid for 3 months ? Nope it will simply encourage new starters and late comers to break the law, something we need to discourage not promote!! Its about time the licence was 12 months from date of issue ,im sure that would encourage more people to buy one in the first place Rant over and its off to the post office to be ripped of!!