Tog

looks like this has turned into a pike bait thread?

Was the ferry a HSS 'big cat' type? These do seem to cause huge wake/waves see DFT site: Maritime Safety.doc I seem to remember hearing of shore anglers washed in around Harwich when the first one started running. Looks like no lessons were learned. Edit note - fixed the document link. Newt [ 14. May 2004, 11:41 PM: Message edited by: Newt ]

Pete, I'm in! as a previous reply stated all these new Europeans comming over love a carp for the 'fest'. I recon we only need to whip em out of a puddle and then chuck em in a nice stream for a week to clear out the mud & debris, e'h Voila 'cheap as chips mud free carp', in your tranny up to the smoke - sell e'm out the back of the van to the polies & romies @£5.lb. Nice little earner mange tout! s'pose we could whip of their heads & guts to flog to our piking chums - probably make a damm good bass bait to!

Water hoggers can be a right pain, often kipping in a bivvy with no bait on just to hog a swim till dusk. As previous replies - your swim is to the centre of the lake & half to each side - yup endy swims are tight but we all know lunkers like the margins - especialy if the rest of the lake is festooned in lines! Any angler who won't play should have their book marked and reported to the club involved - any angler who won't show his membership book should be asked to leave the fishery! If i've turned up early & set out a long line to the margin oposite & later someone turns up there I take it as 'the rub of the green' & hope when I come down for a few hours one evening someone else has baited up for me

Hey! thats angling for yer!, Was fish caught 'off the top' on a floater? maybe they have 'a monthly' or su'mat.

This whole 'stillwater/river' thing baffles me. Many Rivers are slower than so called lakes. Canals can steam along! Certainly trout breed in lakes with no problems & they are as finicky as dace. If the fish do OK in the enviroment they are put in I don't see a problem.( Koi in a back garden pond seem to do ok). Nature seems to allow for most variations and I expect that somewhere in Europe Barbel thrive in a natural lake formed during the last ice age. But at the end of the day overstocked muddy puddles are not the nicest places to fish - so don't fish there!? If the punters didn't turn up the owners would make sure that changes were made.

I was once dragged around a french campsite lake by a grassy, Was a boiling hot day and the fish had taken to staying int the middle of a big weed bed with an opening to the main lake. My bro in law & me decided to drift some bread in from an open canoe to see the results, sure enough I kept getting takes and eventualy hooked one - I got it into open water & it dragged us about for 10 mins until we got to shore where I could fight it from the beach, eventualy it & me tired and a lad came with a big carp net & landed it, As I was pondering what the hell this monster 'mullet' was he informed me it was a grass carp & went 18Lb! Fan bloddy tastic fight! thx m8 whoever you were! Later that year I helped some lads who kept casting for some grasy's on a Dorset trout lake (I now knew what they were!) I gave them some of my sandwich to use as a fly & the lad hooked it on a trout rod! me & the two lads took turns to play it & once we'd landed it a 'fishing widow' in a car nearby came and took some piccys that aparently were in the local paper, I think that one was 15Lb? nearly pulled the poor lad in! All this has got me thinking of starting the season targeting them!

Carp can taste bloody good! The chineese do a dish called 'Mandarin fish' They take a whole fish (often a carp of 6-10 Lb) prepare it by cutting the sides in a criss cross like a ham and cover it in sweet & sour sauce before baking. Delicious & in all good resturants you get to chose your own fish! Did'nt the first carp in the UK get stocked by monks for food?

A TV shop must inform the govmt of the customers details. To get car tax you have to show ins&MOT. Is it too much to ask tackle shops and fisheries to check the angler has a licence when purchasing a ticket? Regular anglers would obviously be 'skipped' as they have produced previously. Club anglers who do not need to purchase 'tickets' should be checked by their club bailiff when checking their 'book'. Cheats are stealing from honest Anglers just like car tax dodgers! :mad: In 30 odd years of angling no EA/NRA/water board bailiff I have met (only a few!) has asked to see my licence - only odd fishery owners and a club bailiff or two.

All UK services kit has a 'sell by' date, If its not issued within that period its sold at auction or tender - ie surplus! In the 60's and 70's there was not much call for clothing and it was sold for the scrap value of the buttons & cloth! PS shop arround for the stuff as I've seen some dealers charging 2x prices of others & always haggle!

Nope - there's not just 14,000 licenced anglers - the EA only checked 14,000 anglers! but the figure of 10% is probably correct. Maybe more fisheries and tackle shops should check the licence on anyone after a day ticket? I know some do!

Fly Rod?, Nope to fish the Test you need to remortage your house + sell the wife & daughter! Mind you makes your trip sound a bargain against a beat on the Test for a year or two! I actualy started angling with Fly & Spinner & got into coarse when holidaying in France & watching Dutchmen pull out monster carp - thought I'd have a bit of that! Cheap fly fishing can be had in Dorset at 'golden springs' anyone want to have a bash - let me know!

I 'par boil' the chummies, put them in a plastic 'tupperware' box , drop in a little hot water and nuke them in m'wave for 20secs. They come out all rubbery - hook & hair easily and last a lot longer then soaked ones. The best chummies can be got from pet food shops - gert great biguns that the carp love! & 1/2 the price of a box from happy shopper.

John, Pub you were in sounds like 'The Mayfly' twixt Stockbridge and Andover. You should have tried a 'dog end' for them - used to work a treat off a bridge just upstream with a handline! (i'm not too sure if they went for the nicotine or coz it looks just like a trout pellet) Thought we were bringing back stringent controls for the grock's this season - or is it just the test anglers who have to be Jersey residents

Very 'water dependant' most fish would 'return to station within 1/2 hour, some will move off to 'station #2' for the rest of the day! I try to enter the water a good cast and a few strides below any target fish - but you often spook one you did not see! best not to wade if you can. I have caught fish from a spot I just left the water from so its worth a try! We've all had a fish go through our legs - take station 20 feet above us and take a fly on a short cast! good luck Toggle

Dog ends - yup ciggy butts make a great bait for pulling stocked trout from a river with a hand line! (misspent youth and all that). Easy to hook - lasts for about 5 trout before you need to find another one.(its amazing how easy it is to fool a Test trout when he has'nt seen a food pellet for many years).