Dante

Hi Andrew If it was me i would enquire about having some casting lessons before buying new rods for that kind of range (and no im not suggesting you cant cast ) the reason i am suggestng this is, that with a casting instructor you will hopefully have other rods to practice casting with and you may find a rod that you like, feel comfortable with and can compress, as like Den said its all about technique rather than the rod and with some people a fast taper rod is too much as they cant get the best out of them and its not as if you can go to your local tackle shop and ask to try all thier extreme range rods in a field to find one that your happy with.

beautiful fish Den, not often we get to see a fish like that and by the sounds of it a very fitting end of a good week

Dave lane sti brolly for me all the way and its put up with some real strong winds on the pit i fish, spacious, dry and best bit of kit i have ever bought though i did go and get the winter skin for it as well just for a little more comfort in horrible weather (makes it a lot cooler in the sun as well)

Baby wipes, cheap as chips and nothing better for cleaning your hands before eating or after baiting up.

Nice fish and well played, its always nice to catch fish of that quality, dont they just hang on :D

nice fish Steve, its a wicked buzz isnt it :D

Transition all the way for me now i use it for both hooklinks and snag leaders wicked stuff.

Cant fault mine either, top kit

I used to on occasion struggle with hearing my buzzers going off at night (even with extension boxes) until 6 years ago when i bought a second hand set of delkims with the blue l.e.d's now i find the brighness of the l.e.d wakes me and not the sound (i always have the volume really low down now) also maybe worth thinking about the tone of your buzzers as its not always the volume but the tone that wakes you i personally cannot stand high pitched so my delks are set to a high pitch and that sure gets me moving. Maybe its worth going to your local tackle shop and having a play with some different types of buzzers and seeing which ones have a pitch/tone that even on a low volume irritate you then make your choice and if its some of the more expensive ones look to maybe getting a set of second hand ones off ebay perhaps, i paid about 20 quid a piece for my set of delkims and they havent even let me down once no matter what the weather

You mean you actually stop :D

Always worth a try Dan sling in some mixers and see what happens

Thats a very good assesment Budgie and your so so right, sad facts they are.

* climbs on soapbox* Thats why i quit pike fishing and running region 70/p.a.c.e.s. website, peter the hypocrasy (sp) that certain members seemed ok to follow while preaching conservation to the rest, for example on a trip to ireland a large double figure pike was weighed by hooking the scales under the jaw bone, so much for weigh slings and conservation :( After that i vowed never to fish for pike again at least that way i cant be a part of the decline of the species. * falls off soapbox*

Not my cup of T either, tbh i would have thought Pike are too fragile a species to be match fished for but maybe im wrong.

Nice one polly mate a blinding result considering the time of year and the weather conditions, well done mate :)

Great game and great fun Julian. It runs fine on my sys which is an xp2600 with 512 ram and a radion 9200 128 mb gfx card using omega gfx drivers and running XP Pro with sp2.

JRC STi all the way tbh a rock solid bivvy that will put up with a load of abuse

A tactic i have used with some success this year is to spod over a wide area of approxmately 30 ft square, working on roughly 4oz of bait per foot to try and create the same effect as if you had thrown 30 pva bags out in your swim and to make any carp actively search out the food rather than the normal tight bed of bait. Over the period of a day you can build up your swim without it costing a fortune in bait or pva, say maybe spodding up every couple of hours with a pocket rocket. As a bait delevery system i do feel its a great way of applying bait and have even had runs occur even as i have been reeling the spod in however as Blank says it depends entirely on the venue in question and wether the fish will put up with it.

Pva bags all the way for me in weedy situations. The lead and hooklink go in it along with pellets etc then that way the bag flattens the weed (hopefully) leaving the bait on top of it, one tip though, dont try to pull back the lead . Another way of dealing with weed is to use "The method" with your hook bait in the method ball as theres nothing to get snarled up in the weed (the method ball should flatten the weed)

I use a mixture of all sorts and sizes of pellets, pulses, and crushed boilies in my pva bags working on the theory of differing textures, colours and flavours adding to the Carps confusion of what is and isnt safe when they stumble on the baited area. I would also recommend the use of liquid molasses however bream adore the stuff so if you have bream in your venue expect to catch them.

Ah right all becomes clear , i use running rigs a lot now on smaller waters and i dont think i have any aborted runs on it, normally in fact when they go they normally scream off, i have also been experimenting with a confidence type rig (from the late 70's) using a tightish bead that sits on my leader (rod side of the lead) set at 3 - 12 inches from the swivel so they run and wack all of a sudden the lead hits the bead which drive the hook home, so far results have been good and in testing this looks to be as safe as any other rig, in clear water anyway. Indeed Peter if it aint bust dont fix it

What a beautiful fish, thats one thing with commons they dont often look bloated and over weight like the mirrors imho

I am 100% with the others here as well, I dont like lead clips and have always had a suspicion that they are not as safe as the manufacturers would have us believe. Run rings all the time for me with one exception and thats extreme range fishing when its onto a good old faithful helecopter rig, totally safe and reliable. Not exactly on thread but in the same area, why do hooklink manufacturers make thier hooklinks in 15lb plus so that we end up using a hooklink thats stronger than (in the main) our mainline? as surely it would be better from a fish safety aspect for the hooklink to break before the mainline?

How effective were any of our rigs back then lol but Peter please put me out of my misery what the hells a sliding rig

Nice forum Elton, no probs with using it ... yet. Sweet clean lines and tbh i love the colour too very easy on the eye. Your a brave man i am not sure i would have wanted or even been able to move that many posts withot screwing it up, hats off to you mate