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Tigger

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Everything posted by Tigger

  1. I've targetted rudd off the top many times FT, it's enjoyable. I used floating casters, but to make them float (even black floaters) i'd put on two or three casters and gently squeeze them so their insides come out. I would leave the white gung to seal up the cases and trap more air in the shell. This made them float better. I would either cast my bait out and catty out around it, or catty out and cast amongst the freebies. I have also had lots of success using floating bread. Floating baits work great after dark also and it really is good fun watching your starlight/glow light slide across the surface in the dark!
  2. I had a pleasant couple of hpurs trotting today, I say pleasant because there were clouds giving some protection from that horrible scorching sun of late. I don't know if it's down to the ozone layer being destroyed or what, but this year I just can't cope with the searing sun! Anyhow, back to the fishing, I had a number of dace roach and small chub and a single but xxl gudgeon lol. No barbel today, biggest fish caught were two half decent chub. I'm confident that if i'd switched to a link leger and touch legered I would have caught barbel, they just weren't having a trotted bait and I couldn't be bothered to change my set up.
  3. Thanks Martin, i'll check it out bud ?
  4. Just deleted the clips as it isn't fair on other people who fish there to leave them on for too long ?
  5. Thanks Martin ?. Yes, the camera is a go pro bought for cycling. Thought I would take it fishing and see how it worked. I only took the clips for my self really, just messin about with it.
  6. Here's a clip of a trotting session I had a week or so back. It was in a swim where once you hooked a fish you can't give any line or the fish will be lost in sunken trees....
  7. I had a couple of hours out trotting today. It was cloudy and cooler at our house and so I was happy to go. Unfortunately as I got nearer to the river the sky cleared and the horrible blazing hot sun came out. It was 18 degrees when I set out and 23.5 degrees at the river! Anyhow I had to walk a mile up and down steep hills and through steep sided woods so thick with undergrowth they reminded me of a tropical jungle. I was under constant attack from horse flies and one managed to inject me before I squashed it. At the river I dropped into some shallow rapids and tried trotting for an hour or so catching a number of dace and small chub but nothing to put a bend in the avon rod. I moved into another shallow fast flowing pool above me and had some more dace and a decent chub of around 3lb. I decided to walk several hundred yards below my first spot to another fast run off and had a nice chub which I took a picture of. With no more joy in that spot after a dozen trotts I moved back to my original spot. I removed my float and set up a link leger and tried touch legering as the fish obviously didn't want a moving bait, even when held back and slowly eased along. Anyhow the change of tactics proved to be the correct thing to do and within a few minuites I had a decent barbel followed by two more barbel. I was glad I chose to take the 11ft hardy avon rod as it serves both trotting and legering purposes very well.
  8. When we were kids we would go first thing and we'd nick milk and pop off the milk float as we walked up the roads to the path across the fields. If we couldn't get any pop off a milk float we knew several houses on the walk that had pop delivered along with their milk. We would make sure we only took one bottle from each house so theft wouldn't be thought of and the milkman was blamed for it. We would get dandelion & burdock and orange, all fizzy stuff which would cause your nose to sting when you finnished your swigg of it. I know it was wrong and it was thieving but it was all part of the crack at the time. We would keep the bottles in the water in the keep nets to keep it cool. I remember that carpet of thick mist on the surface when we arrived, and the excitment of what we might catch. One day I went on my own and had been happily catching small tench and crucians for a while when I heard some strange snorting and grunting noises right behind me on the banking level with my head as I was sat on my basket. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I looked round and there was a dirty old tramp sleeping in the dew covered grass withinn a few feet of me! We would see that tramp quite often and he would have a wash in the water and sometimes catch perch and cook them on the bank. Back then tramps were quite common. I wonder if they were old war veterans, much like the american vets from vietnam who lived like that when they returned home?
  9. I used to do exactly that at the local asdas Ken.
  10. Like you I don't often use a guard purposely, I just left the guard on the reel. It is removable very easily via only a couple of small screws. If you look at the design of the guard it doesn't inhibit casting, sort of extended bickerdyke guard. I was casting a 3 gram wire stemmed float 30yds yesterday and landing on the spot ok so it was fine. There was little to no wind when I first arrived yesterday, but after about fifteen minuites a down stream wind developed and increased as time elapsed so maybe the guard helped me a little. I can't cope with any other guard than a bibkerdyke as the prevent wally casting.
  11. People often choose the colour of the crumb on the clarity of the water. Personally I just get whats available in the shop, for the biggest part I would go with brown crumb. If you have a decent blender you can make your own bread crumb but by the time you've bought bread etc etc it's easier to just buy some. It's usually cheaper the more you get and if kept in an air tight container it lasts foe yonks. For me the crumb is only a binder to keep my particles closely grouped when they hit the bottom of the water. If using a method feeder I use crumb, you can mix it like glue so it's still on the method feeder when you bring it back in, unless something has pecked it all off. Regarding your other groundbait, yes, mixing it in with crumb is a good idea as it would be cheaper and if using the other fancy groundbait gives you confidence you have the best of both worlds. One thing I sometimes did was mix in a bit of robin red with the crumb, in reality I don't think it made a jot of difference lol. Because cumb is cheap to buy you can add extra particles with the savings onfancy geoundbaits. You can mash up some prawns, add some maggs and casters, corn, pellets etc and imo it's a better option than flavoured powders.
  12. Recently JWYoung centrepin company have released a new true pin called the Triton. Anyhow, I got one yesterday and had to go a try it today. The reel was nice to use but better at the end of the session when it had been run in a little. There was an awful downstreem wind making fishing across river and keeping the float on line a tiresome job! Anyhow, all I caught was dace and two small barbel, but it did mean that the reel had been christened ?.
  13. Obviously you need to mix your groundbait to do what you want it to to attract the desired species. I never bother buying expensive groundbaites, I just use brown or white crumb, mix in whatever particles I want . I just mix 8t to do what I want it to do when it hits the water, mix it powdery/crumbly if I want it to break up higher in the water and mix it,like mortar if I want the crumb to keep the particles together until they hit the deck.
  14. Where there is money involved they farm anything.
  15. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    Round these parts the majority of barbel are between 3 and 10lb. There has been a lot of smaller barbel of less than a pound and smaller up to 2lb coming out over the last couple of years. I have had a good few of 10 to 12lbers amongst the fish i've had. However my heaviest fish was caught legering about 15yrs ago now and my heaviest caught whilst trotting was one of 13. 4 and the last one was 13 7, lets face it, those fish are just tiddlers for anglers in other parts of the country. The trent has been producing lots of whoppers for many years now and there are plenty other rivers with much larger specimens than we have in our local'ish rivers. I would very much like to catch a propper chunk on the float, sadly I don't think they exist in the waters I fish. Although, to be honest, i'm happy enough catching the sizes I do ....I think lol.
  16. As far as I was aware, halibut pellets are for feeding halibut, much like trout pellets were made for feeding farmed trout. I'm not sure but I think they feed farmed salmon on halibut pellets also.
  17. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    I've seen that picture a number of times Keith, but I never tire of seeing it, looks great ?.
  18. Snap! Very much hope he is ok!! I was mixed up in my previos post and thought the thread was about newt, only just realised it's about Phone.
  19. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    One of the clubs i'm a member of has some stretches of the severn and i'm hoping to get down there for a session or two of trotting sometime this year. I'm sure there's lots of great trotting on the severn, maybe higher up river than where your based? Regarding rods for trotting for barbel and chub etc, everyone has their own ideas as to what they think is best. For me personally I have a number of rods that I like to use. I have used the drennan super tench rod and it was very good, but, I prefer a lighter faster actioned rod and the first normark mkIl avenger is brilliant. Also, I very much like the drennan acolytes in the plus models of 13 and 14ft, then there are the browning spheres, daiwa RS PF rods, again in 13 and 14 ft, there are loads to choose from. I like using my hardy 11ft avon rods also, they are the only avon rod that i've ever come across that have been suitable for trotting. They are great in hit and hold swims and really do bend into a frightening curve with a chunky fish on! At the end of the day you just use whatever you fancy. For me, the reel has got to be a centrepin, once you get the hang of using one they are so much more fun than using a fixed spool, well, imo they are, but, there are more who would dissagree with me than would agree. Forgot to mention the line, I use 4 and 8lb mono on the odd occassions, but for the biggest part I use 6lb straight through to a 14s microbarb hook.
  20. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    I sometimes wish I had kept hold of my 510s and 8010s as I really liked them, I even had a brand new boxed 5010 as I only used two rods at most and had three reels. Keeping them would have been daft really though as for the biggest part of my fishing, which is trotting for barbel and chub I use a centrepin reel so they would only be sat in a drawer with my other fixed spool reels anyhow. I'm not clued up on the free spirit rods although I know several people who have them and think quite highly of them. I have a few different makes of heavier rods but only use them very rarely. Legering bores me and i'd rather catch one barbel on the float than lots on the leger rod. Sitting waiting for the tip to bend over isn't active enough for me. I actualy visited harrisons and checked out the torrix rods along side the chimeras and I opted to buy a pair of each no1 and no2 in the chimeras, I just preferred them. Harrisons let me buy them direct out of their workshop under arches. I prefered their factory rods to any custom ones I had seen. The screw down fuji reel seat rather than the screw up ones which seem to be favoured by most rod builders was a big plus for me. By the way,i'm not slating leger fishing, it just doesn't do it for me is all.
  21. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    I think as with most things "you get what you pay for", but ocassionally you can pick up something that bit special for less than the price expected. However, that is usually down to special offer or a closing down sale or similar of a not so normally cheap item. I think a reel with a low rrp isn't going to be up to much, but it may be good for a particular purpose where only a shortish life expectancy is required. Someone mentioned the old shimano 5010s I think, they were great reels, only bug bear for me was the little drop back of the handle when tightening up to a leger. I got shut of mine and got the next generation, the 500gtes and a pair of 8000gtes which have an instant anti reverse.
  22. Dusk, the twiglet zone is definately a great time to target roach ?.
  23. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    Mitchells! One of the worst reels i've ever used. That was the so called good ones like the old 300, 410 and match. There are some people who love em,but i'm quite confident that i'd prefer the modern Cheap reel S63 has just bought. Maybe it won't last so long though. I'd rather buy one every few months though than use a mitchell! Sorry if i've offended the mitchell lovers ?.
  24. Tigger

    Cheap reels

    I used to have a friend with a large northwest angling shop. Many years ago he was telling me about a load of reels he'd just got in that cost him a quid or less. He was amazed at how good they looked and felt for the price they cost. If I remember correctly he was going to sell them for 9 quid, so the profit margin was great! I honestly can't see how it's possible to make a reel of any quality for those kinda prices. Unless of course it's all subsidised as the Russians used to do. I can remember buying baikal shotguns, some very nice o/u single selective trigger ejectors for lass than 100 quid. They were subsidised by the russian government and so were realy good quality for little money so John may well have a nice bargain!
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