The lost art of watercraft

Watercraft the single most important part of a anglers armoury and in many instances the difference between success and failure ......... from my observations  it seems to be a  dying or very much forgotten craft,  How many anglers today even bother to and use their eyes and look  around the lake , look in the margins or snags, climb a well placed tree or think about the effect that the sun and wind will have on different parts of the lake at different hours of the day....... not many. Then we also have to take into account angling pressure, other anglers bait and lines and taking all these factors into account build up a picture  in our minds of where the carp might be. The next thing is to remember to be QUIET......no hammers please ! in fact why put a tent up at all if it isn't raining hard. The first job after finding the fish surely must be to set a trap for them without being suspected of doing so...isn't it???   It is possible to to do this without the "aid" of a marker float,  it's surprising how often a bite can come within minutes of flicking a bait out ....even without a full bivvy plus winter skin set up.....honest. A big percentage of today's anglers seem to be doing their version of watercraft on the phone , facebook or twitter, I see them all the time arriving on the lake and as soon as they get out their cars, or sometimes even before maybe, their phone is glued to their right ear. The "angler" and I use the term loosely is wanting to know firstly , who's caught what?, secondly ....where? (and then finally the all important)...... when are the most recently successful anglers departing?or where is the closest swim that is available. Their watercraft now done, just two barrow fulls of gear to transport and then 3 hours to set up to a very high standard that makes said "anglers" chest fill with pride and obviously makes him the envy of all his mates .......but alas  his actions have scared every fish for miles. The scary thing is that most of the time I'm sure he's blissfully unaware of this fact and will probably blame his lack of success on the wrong bait, wrong rig or any one of a thousand well practiced lines ..........such is the sorry state I find carp angling to be in these days!!!!!

CARP RIGS ..............Blow back bol----cks??????

One of the guys down the lake the other day noticed that I didn't appear to be using a small piece of silicone  tubing to trap the hair down the shank of my hook on my standard bottom bait rig and asked me to explain why? after all it is very fashionable these days, well I don't give a flying hoot  really about wether or not it's trendy,the only thing i'm concerned about is converting as many pick ups as possible into takes! Let me explain................over many years of angling i've often been able to observe carp feeding  at very close quarters  on some of the gin clear waters i've fished, conningbook, milton, swan and harrow being prime examples and what i've learned by hanging out of trees wearing polaroids is that most of the time when carp are actually feeding they don't move off  at all with the bait  in fact exactly the opposite, nine times out of ten I would see feeding carp that were sucking and blowing sometimes just off the bottom and other times with their  heads buried and bodies tilted up , their gills expanding and then closing,  the pectoral fins would clearly be seen wafting up food in the water ......this is normal carp behavour whilst feeding. Therefore it makes logical sense to me that to stand any chance of the hook catching into the lips or inside the mouth of a carp feeding in this manner then the hair on which the bait is mounted needs to come off the eye of the hook or close to it, the other way with the silicone on the bend means that when the bait is blown out the hook will follow the bait.... bend first (the wrong way) and obviously stand no chance of pricking or taking hold in the soft inner mouth of the carp. It will however turn very nicely every time  when tested by being dragged over the palm of your hand i.e. when the fish moves off with the bait in its mouth in which case it is effective  ....but only if the carp are feeding in this manner ....my observations suggest to me that they certainly don't do that very much at all !!Alternately I have the hair coming from the eye end of the hook which means that the hook will again follow the bait but this time be blown out point first (the correct way) and therefore stand a very good chance of pricking or taking hold in the carps mouth. To me it's clear which way is going to bring about more pricked carp and i'm certain that i get more chances because my way works which ever way the carp are feeding that particular day, but if the carp are more or less stationary tilted up and sucking and blowing like I described earlier then my way will bring a hell of a lot more takes. As for the absolute garbage written by certain individuals  (the blowback rig ) claiming they know when they've " been done" because the silicone rubber has moved up the shank......do me a favour....Don't just take my word for it, look at it for yourself.. the only way that the rubber could move up the shank would be if the fish was so well hooked that the carp's flesh  actually forced it back, there is no way whatsoever it could happen when the fish is blowing the bait out because as i've said earlier the hook follows the bait from the point where it is attatched.  Try it out for yourself and make up your own minds.....also try not to follow trends or believe all you read in the mags!

tight lines Mr. F

Mr F's 1st blog

Fishing has always been my first love (apart from the wife obviously) and has captivated my thoughts since as way back as I can remember, from boyhood trips to sparkling streams fishing for dace and chub with my uncle Derrick to my first encounter with a pike aged 12. I started specimen fishing after a chance encounter with two floppy hatted anglers on the banks of river Trent who wanted to use my net of roach for live bait .Almost every weekend of my early teenage years I would take a bus trip on friday night to my aunt Norma's at Newark stay there so I could be on the trent at first light, it turned out that the two floppy hatted guys Dave Shepherd and Ivan Stennett lived only a few miles away from my parents house in Nottinghamshire and more importantly they had transport, pretty soon I found myself crammed into the back of their mini van along with all of our tackle and off to far away places and targeting all manner of species .Barbel on the severn, tench on nearby gravel pits, big roach and bream too, pike on the fens and then loch lomond in the spring, then there was carp fishing on the few secret pools where we knew they existed.... what a fantastic adventure and what fun it was too, nearly always rounded off with a few beers in a local pub... in those days  we made our own rods , alarms and baits in fact almost everything we owned  as it wasn't commercially available, all vastly different to today's scene. I fished club matches on saturdays and often an open on sunday I even managed to win a few. I moved to Kent in 1985 and from there on in have mainly fished for carp , to be honest i've just approached it the same as i would as fishing for chub on a stream ....by first finding them , then keeping quiet and then by fishing simple methods that I knew worked I caught plenty of carp everywhere I went . My first twenty pounder  was from the tricky Lydd lakes and my first thirty too an awesome zip linear of 32 lbs. From there to School pool where I met Jacko, Rod and Mowglie as well as many other top blokes,then  Savay which I absolutely loved, Harrow too my first forty coming from there in1994, more big fish followed much like like trains and buses . At one stage I was doing almost a 1000 miles some weeks some weeks for day only fishing but what a buzz it was, during the winter of 97 I had mirrors of 41 and 53lb 4oz in the same week and in my time there managed to tempt forties in each winter month.My time on Conningbrook too was amazing and to be one of the first on there and be able to reveal its intimate secrets was indeed a privilege. Milton too, fickle and tricky but what stunning fish, swan and tonford too as they were were excellent for midweek overnighters.  I've been on Dinton blackswan nearly 2 years now and normally fish there with my old mate Laney..... the place is simply awesome and a credit to Simon who runs it....... that's a brief history of my fishing life , I've loved every minute of it and firmly believe that you only get out of anything what you put in so I always try to work hard at my fishing, but  more importantly at the same time I always try to enjoy it ,I don't want it to be easy either as I know that the more difficult the task then the greater the sense of achievement will be when you finally reach your goal ….if you get my drift. I choose to fish for genuine English carp and haven't a lot of time for either overstocked garden ponds or imported jumbo carp. I'll be blogging about everything concerning our sport and letting you know feelings and views on all things carpy. I've had an excellent start to the new year where  in four trips to Paddlesworth the deep 30 acre Kent pit that i've been fishing this winter i've landed 11 fish already up to 35lb 12oz .I'm off for my first trip of the year to Dinton with Laney very early monday morning and don't mind admitting i'm feeling the buzz already..