Ken L

Yeh, but, no but I hate people who use utterly pointless additions to phrases init. Y'know warra mean ?

Avoid futons ! They look like a good idea - they arn't.

I'm not a fan of suspending hard lures. They always sink on a wire trace and it's had to control their running depth at distance. Soft plastics are another matter and I love being able to twitch and jerk them subsurface.

The rod sounds fine but as has been said, the Ondex isn't exactly built for distance fishing. Your best bet would be to load your 30lb braid onto another reel and spool up with 10lb Fireline* - making sure that the spool is reasonably full but not quite as full as you'd fill it with mono. You've not said what reel you're using but a smallist (fairly light) one will help you move the rod quickly enough to punch the lure out. I would personally use a 1000 size Shimano on the sort of gear you're using. If all else fails, try fishing some little soft shads on jigheads or some 3" swimbaits (much the same thing, just that the jig is built into the lure) 'cause they're heavy enough to cast further and they work pretty well with a simple straight retrieve at this time of year. * I'd move over to a fused line like Fireline at low breaking strains (although 10lb Fireline actually breaks nearer 16lb) because it's much less prone to wind knots and looping on the reel.

I've never had anything remotely uncomfortable occur on a forum but depending on the severety and plausability of the threat, I'd consider making a formal complaint to the police. I'm sure that any dedicated PeTA type troll could hide their identity if they have the sence and IT skills to do so but it's quite likely that they've simply logged on using their home PC in the mistaken belief that they can hide behind an "anonyous" avatar and user name.

I'm not so sure about us not having any chipmunks. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=1...-name_page.html

I occasionally fish park pools in Birmingham that have three feet of water, two feet of carrier bags and a foot of mud before you get to the gravel bottom. Almost without exception, the carrier bags come from people who feed the ducks.

Baitcasting with smaller crankbaits and spinnerbaits will see me drop my trace length down to maybe 9" because I like the simplicity of the flick back and punch forward one handed casting technique with a baitcaster. Unfortunatly, I can't do this with surface lures because I want my traces at least 15" long. This is because with the spinnerbaits and crankbaits, the fish will hit the lure from the side or from behind but with surface lures, it's not uncommon for fish to charge them head on and I have had them sever the line on their teeth before I've even had chance to strike. The longer traces do limit casting technique but better that than the alternative. Incidentally, I've tried casting with a really short drop as Newt describes when using a mono leader and couldn't get on with it - I must have hooked the tip of my own rod half a dozen times before I changed back and gave up.

I use fishbase all the time but of late half the links have either been dead or have come up without a photo. I thought this site was an interesting adjunct to fisahbase myself - and there are some nice photo's when you click on the individual fish pics.

http://www.jjphoto.dk/introa-fish.htm

This guy is in the news today. http://www.sky.com/skynews/picture_gallery...09659-1,00.html Obviously his weight is killing him but he's so heavy that he would have a hard time going out to get food. So somebody the "loves" him is stuffing him full of grub.

WH Smiths. Open any O/S map and look at the contour lines and just read off the numbers.

The met office are still not sure whether this is comming out way

Oops. Sorry. You could always try it on some poor unsuspecting soul.

I should have a recipie for carp curry knocking about somewhere - I think it's Malay or Indinesian. You could always try it and let us know.

For the fish I'm going up against, I have an uptide rod and a "65" sized Okuma big Pit reel loaded with 30lb line. For Spinning, I'll have a StCroix Tidemaster paired with an 8000 sized Stradic. I mentioned the Okuma Halogen because it looks a nice little reel and I might get one to strap on my baitcasting rod for the summer. BTW Jeepster I've not forgotten what I said about the rod but I'm kinda rushed off my feet at the mo and I've not seen a tube suitable for posting it lying arround.

I've just seen an Okuma Halogen baitcaster on sale for a little shy of 30 quid. All aluminium construction, looks good but I have no idea how good a reel it is. If anyone has any experience of this reel, I'd be very interested to hear what you have to say 'cause I'm in the market for a replavement for my ABU.

Weird that it seems to work with IR remotes. Leon. I'm going to go looking for old remotes in junk shops now. If I find one with the word "Sonic" on it, it's mine.

At various times, I read of 14lb chub in Croatia, 7lb perch from the Volga Delta, 25lb zander from Germany and a record 57lb pike from an Italian lake. This raises an interesting question about just how big the fish that we all target can get. Does anyone have any interesting accounts of monster fish of the same species that we have in the UK ? - and no cop outs like Cosmio Barbel.

Thats a hell of a fish and a can't help wondering whether they are the so called "Mahseer" that grow to huge sizes in the river tigris.

Removing the whale is easy. All you need is an underwater speaker and a Chas and Dave CD positioned upstream of the beast. The only hard bit is stopping it from beaching itself in a desperate bid to rid itself of that nasty southern racket.

That should only work with an RF remote. For the infra red ones, look at the pointy end thru the LCD monitor on a camcorder or digital camera. You can see it flashing if it's working.

The ASDA boxes are indeed the dog's danglies for the money. I picked up one of the ALDI boxes tonight. Not sure about using them forsoft plastics in case the box goes icky but having got a good look at it, I'll probably pick up anoth couple tomorrow so I can keep my larger lures handy and safe.

Actually we only have 10 days sceduled on the river chasing Mahseer. About the same after the Barra and then the posibility of another stretch chasing Mahseer in Nepal - that last bit isn't firmed up yet but I understand that we've been offered the use of a private cottage next to a river where tigers are occasionally seen, so I'm guessing it's a national park. Seriously though the program sounds good. I just hope he catches more Mahseer than he did Arapaima - and that he uses a rod this time.

Information from Fishbase.org. "133 cm TL (female); max. published weight: 6,599 g". That's a little over fourteen and a half pounds. Even if we look at the unofficial fish as the benchmark, there's still better than a pound to go before we get to limit - even if we assume that Fishbase's upper limit is as big as they can get.