BillD
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Posts posted by BillD
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Paul,
Nice to see that you're still hauling.... Nice one mate!!
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What a special time for you and your daughter. Congratulations.....
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Scott,
Nice example............... We get the hair rig questions from time to time, perhaps we could pin Scott's link for future reference?? ................ Bill D.
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Hit the upper Housatonic for a few hours today, carp fishing was slow (1 fish). As is typical this time of year the Fallfish bite was on. I usually get a few by accident while fishing sweetcorn for carp, but this time around they were a bit larger, taking my pop-ups quite agressively! I also have caught them on surface flies when trout fishing. This one was quite colorful.
-Mike/CT
Mike,
I've never heard of Fallfish
Are they know as anything else? ............. Bill D. -
Thanks very much. The belt buckle is fantastic. BLING BLING
I had a fantastic time and I was very very pleased to win the big fish prize. It was unfortunate that more fish didn't come out, but since I won the big fish with a 17lb'er, I think that I benefited from the slow fishing.
BTW the Solar Croc Pod is an awesome piece of tackle. Once again BLING BLING
Can't wait to use it.Skerrje,
Congratulations...... good show
............... Bill D. -
Graham,
Nice fish mate..... looks like a great venue too..... Bill D.
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Nice job
Very well done....... Bill D. -
Fitzz,
Now you've done it
The dreaded "Muddler" debate is about to be unleashed on the forum once again ................. Bill D.
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My take is a Crucian Carp...... Great fish to catch on light tackle, especially from the surface
..... Bill D. -
Tried for the Grassies again today, they were still hungry. We put seven on the bank with this lean one being the biggest at 23 pounds caught on a Boilie Shop tiger nut boilie and popup, thanks Andy at Resistance for the fast shipping and Bill and Wayne for making them
Ralph,
Nice job mate
I'm glad that the bait is working out for you ..... All the best.... Bill D. -
Mario,
Very nice pics............ Bill D.
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Nikki,
Outstanding job
Well done, we hope to see you posting all your personal bests on here very soon. ..........................Bill D. -
Congratulations on popping your USA Carp Cherry
Well done mate...... Bill D. -
Ford Explorer to get me around but this is "Moby" which is my home when fishing. Bed, refrigerator, stove, running water, heaters, solar panel re-chargers on roof, tackle storage, etc. etc. It's great when you're going fishing, just throw in some fresh bait and go
............. Bill D.
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Welcome........ Bill D.
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Nice fish Vinny and very nice photos, welll done
............... Bill D. -
Nice fish Dean, well done
............. Bill D. -
Been a while since I was able to really fish this swim as I have been very busy with loads of different things.
I started fishing here again last week every now and then with mixed results mostly lost fish due to some seriously overgrown branches of a willow tree that the fish find as a magnet, but I keep at it and...........
I finally caught my first 20+ pound fish in over 3 months......sweet
weighed in at 21 pounds 10 ounce
Beautiful fish
It looks to be a lot bigger than 21. Well done...... Bill D. -
Nice one Lance.....
........ Bill D. -
Here's another way of looking at it. Say you wander about each day and you find two piles of food. They both smell really tasty. Let's say you eat pile A and get a belly ache. Next day you eat pile A again because it smells so darn good, but it leaves you feeling weak and tired and perhaps constipated. You might begin to lay off pile A.
Then you try pile B. Pile B seems to taste as good as it smells. Better yet, it leaves you feeling satisfied and energetic. Next day you're willing to try pile B again. After several encounters you begin to trust pile B as "good food." Pile A still smells good, but your past experiences put you off it a bit.
It's not exactly intelligence. Rather more like positive and negative reinforcement.
Here's where I run into trouble with the theory though. Carp are roamers and sample a wide variety of items through out their travels each day. If at the end of the day, a particular item either made them sick or really gave them a buzz, I doubt they'd know which item did the trick one way or another. The bigger the water, the less likely baits of any sort form a substantial part of the fishes diet. I'd think that both would probably be taken for quite some time.
Again, though, bait is very much about confidence. If knowing that your bait is nutritious to carp gives one more confidence, then perhaps you will fish better and bait up more often. I do think that carp can get conditioned to free handouts. Look at what happens with bread at marinas and on the water restaurants. Bread is supposedly very low value nutrition wise, yet carp often push each other out of the way competing for the next bit of crust. If knowing your bait is nutritious leads you to feed more an more often, then that confidence will help you condition the carp more onto your bait.
Another take though. Big fish don't get big by wasting all their time and energy on food items which don't benefit them. If it takes more energy to eat a particular item than they get from that item, you would expect the fish to shrink. Perhaps, big fish are keyed into foods that provide more energy and nutrition. Maybe the bigger fish key in on high value items like crayfish, dead minnows, blood worm, etc.
Brian,
You make some good points, as usual
I think we should be looking at instinct and cause & effect rather than "intelligence". All animals make a choice as to what they will eat regularly, sometimes that choice is based on experience sometimes from an instinctive reaction to a set of stimuli. Of course there are exceptions (I'm waiting for the "cigarette butt/spark plug" post ).As for confidence I think you're right, I feel much more comfortable knowing I've got a good bait in front of the fish. As I've said more than once, if you're fishing a one-off on a water that you won't be fishing again and again then any old bait will probably be as good as any other. If you're considering repeat sessions on a single water, that's the time for concentrating on the best quality bait available. A balanced bait is the goal, correct proportions of Protein, Carbs, Fat, Fibre, Vitamins etc...... Takes some work but I believe the results are worth it.......
.........................Bill D.
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Thanks for all the kind words guys...... I appreciate it
......... Bill D. -
Egg and Milk ................... Bill D.
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.......... It was nothing definite, just the merest suggestion of something more solid. More of an impression of a movement under the water than anything else it still caught my attention enough to make me concentrate on that particular area.
I had almost written it off as imagination when a long, dark shape, incredible to my young eyes, materialized for just a few seconds, traversing a clear patch between two shallow weed beds. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen! This was a fish, undoubtedly a fish, but what could it be? Nothing I had seen before of that I was certain. I waited and waited in vain for another glimpse but it was not to be. Dusk fell and I remained, quiet and still by that quiet, still water but I saw nothing else that day.
The next morning I was up and out, down to the farm to see the cowman who was in charge of the farmer’s herd of Friesians. He was a typical Man of Kent, quiet and taciturn, but he had taken the time in the past to show me some of the secrets of the countryside: the rabbit warrens along the hillside, the Fox’s Earth, the Badgers’ Sett, and many a night I had quietly waited in the moonlight for a glimpse of the vixen returning to her cubs or the big Brock badger dragging piles of grasses back to the sett for his bedding. This day, however, all I was interested in talking about was fish, specifically the fish I had seen in The Pond the day before. I learned that it was a carp!! My first ever glimpse of a common carp. I had heard of them, of course and read some articles about them although the written words concerning carp were few and far between in those days. These fish were invariably described as “wily”, “subtle” and very hard to catch. Bob (the Cowman) told me that the carp in The Pond were seen from time to time, especially in the hot days of summer, but that none of them had ever been caught, either by accident or design. To catch a carp; this then became my quest for the remainder of that spring and summer. Although I was not to realize it for some time, it became a quest that was to last for the rest of my life. Now, over forty years later I’m still learning how to catch these magnificent fish.
Bait was my first concern. What to use? Maggots would not be suitable as the roach, dace and perch ate them voraciously. For inspiration I re-read Isaak Walton’s “The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation”, which was first published in 1653. Since the many small perch would be first to the worm and I drew the line at making a paste with the flesh of a rabbit or a cat, it would seem to me that a hardened bread paste, sweetened with honey would be my bait of choice. Different variations on this theme were used on each subsequent visit to The Pond, all with the same result, no carp, even though I saw them regularly cruising just under the surface of the water. Had it always been so? Why didn’t I notice these fish before? I can only believe that I looked without seeing. Concentration is one of the most valuable lessons I took from this experience.
The summer came to its inevitable close. Undaunted and if possible even more determined I vowed to begin the campaign anew the next year.
All that fall and winter I fished the local waters, canals and park lakes, for my beloved roach but the carp were always in the back of my mind. I haunted the local tackle shops and picked the brains of any patron that professed even the slightest acquaintance with angling for carp. I came to the conclusion that my first efforts at catching my quarry were probably as good as any other with the exception of stalking. Stalking! What a concept. If I could cast to a specific fish then I could use any bait I wanted without the danger of it being snapped up by smaller fish. Already I was categorizing my previous targets as “small” fish, fish to be avoided. Was I now a carp angler? Perhaps not yet, but the metamorphosis was beginning. I remembered Walton’s advice to “chaw” (chew) bread and use it for bait. My plan was to use bread flake and attempt to target a specific fish, from the surface, close to the bank. A total reversal of the tactics I had used the previous year. From the surface because those were the fish I that I could see more easily; flake because of the success I had with it fishing for roach; and close to the bank because I hadn’t, as yet, worked out a way to cast a surface bait any distance.
Summer rolled around and we began our trips out to Kent once again. I remember that, for some reason, we began later than usual that year and it was already June before I saw The Pond again. I was actually shaking with excitement as I crept up to The Pond the first time that year. The morning mist was still hovering over the surface but beginning to swirl and dissipate under the first rays of the morning sun. Standing close to the stooping willow tree, and old and trusted friend, I watched the surface of the water and listened for any tell-tale splashes that might reveal a feeding fish. I cast to a few fish that day, and to many, many more in the days that followed without ever enticing one to take the bait. Even with these disappointments I still believed that I was on the right track and success would be mine eventually. I was correct!
It was at the end of July that I got my first ever take from a wild carp. The fish approached the bait and sucked it in without the slightest hesitation. It was the angler that hesitated; I was simply stunned by the fact that the fish had taken the bait and watched it open mouthed for a second or two. Almost disdainfully he spat it out and casually swam away across the pond. I was devastated and elated all at the same time. I now knew that my strategy was sound and that my tactics would work if I was patient, and alert! The next weekend I was back and in my favourite place once again. This time there was no mistake and I found myself fighting a fish that made some tremendous runs and showed its strength by powerful surges right up to the moment I slipped the net underneath it in the shallows. I couldn’t lift the net out of the water at first. Not because of the weight of the fish, but because my arms were weak and it felt as though all the strength had left my body. I had caught a carp, a carp that had almost certainly never been caught before. I later weighed it on a spring balance and it weighed in at seven pounds. Not a monster by today’s standards but what a fish it was to me. I gently lifted it from the net and studied its perfection. A bronzed, golden coloured common with a perfect scale pattern, it was the prettiest fish I had ever seen. I had no camera, of course, in those days the Brownie Box Camera wasn’t a standard item of tackle, but as I looked at the fish I realize that I didn’t need one. The image would stay with me forever.
I caught no more carp from Bagshot’s Pond that summer which, as it turned out was to be our last summer visiting the farm. I never saw The Pond again after that last momentous season. I will always be thankful for the opportunity I had to catch that one, oh so special, fish. I can see it in my mind’s eye yet and it is still, to me, the most beautiful carp I have ever seen……..
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I've been thinking a lot lately about the way this forum is developing and it seemed to me that one or two of us are guilty of forgetting why we have all come together here in this place. I assume that we all have a love of carp angling. Everything else, to my mind, should be secondary to that. I got to thinking about how I came to love this sport and this particular fish. It was a lot of years ago now, more than I care to admit to sometimes but I still remember it well. I thought I'd write down my first carp capture, mainly to remind myself of those first early experiences. I hesitated to publish it because it is, really, a personal acccount. However, in the hope that some one else may identifiy with the emotions I describe I decided to put it on the forum..... So here it is, take from it what you will........ Bill D.
A journey begins….
In West Kingsdown in the county of Kent, not far from the throbbing, violent, fuel fumed Mecca of motor racing known as Brans Hatch, there was once a small farm pond. Known as Bagshot’s Pond it was not more than two acres in size and lay tucked away, surrounded by woods, far from the prying eyes of the public. The only visitors to this haven for the past few years had been the family of the farmer who picnicked there from time to time. Two of the farmer’s sons had fished it for the shining roach and dace and the occasional big perch with its black bars and wickedly spiked fins but other than that the water had lain undisturbed for years.
My family owned a weekend caravan on an isolated corner of the field adjacent to the pond. Here my father would take us almost every weekend in the summer months and for the glorious, never to be forgotten weeks of the summer holidays. It was an escape from the hot and humid slums of the East End of London and an experience that I have never forgotten. I had already been fishing for a number of years by this time (I was about nine years old when we first went to Bagshot’s pond in 1958). I had cut my teeth on the roach, dace, gudgeon and bleak of the Medway River at Yalding where my uncle was the lock-keeper. I had caught no big fish, no records by any means but I was bitten by the fishing bug and infected with a love of the sport that has never diminished.
What a difference a location can make to the whole fishing experience! After school in East London I would carry my tackle down to the Limehouse Cut, which was a canal so foully polluted as to seem barren of life at a cursory glance. I quickly learned though that it supported a variety of wildlife: birds and animals rarely seen outside of its narrow confines and, of course, fish of all the “coarse” varieties. I learned to love fishing the “Cut” and, not knowing any difference, I thought that it would be hard to find a better way to pursue the fishing that I had come to love.
Then I spent my first weekend at Bagshot’s Pond. No traffic zooming along a main road behind me, no fumes, no towed barges forcing me to move all the gear back to the soot-grained walls, no rats (well, water rats yes, but they were different to the cat-sized city rats I was used to). It was just a different world.
Early one morning, in the springtime, I arrived at the bank of The Pond (and after this particular day I never referred to it in any other way, it was always THE Pond) and set up to fish for the roach that were so accommodating to the young angler still learning his craft. I set up with a small quill float set to half-#### and added some tell-tale split shot an inch or so from a size 18 hook on 2 pound test line. A single maggot was threaded onto the hook and gently cast into the still water under a nearby overhanging willow tree. Fish after fish fell to this simple setup and I was perfectly happy, in my element, placing the fish in a large keepnet to be weighed at the end of the session and then returned to the water unharmed.
As the sun moved across the sky the shadows in the water changed and the pond’s appearance changed also. What was once bright, reflected, shimmering light, dazzling to the eye now became subdued and mysterious. Murky depths that somehow held promise of rewards as yet unimagined. I remember I stopped fishing for a while this milestone day and just sat, gazing at the reflections rippling on the water’s surface. At one point I noticed, from the corner of my eye a more substantial movement. ........... continued
Precision Boilie Making With Rick Walker
in Pictures, Stories & Video
Posted
Rick,
Loved your video with my old friend Mike.
Those must be some pretty old ingredients you're using there mate!!
I hope you caught on the baits. We may be "defunct" as a commercial bait supplier but we're still very much in the boilie business, mostly for our own bait.
If I can help you out with some supplies let me know (BillDowler@comcast.net), we'll see what we can do..... All the best.... Bill D.