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marcus

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Posts posted by marcus

  1. I have a 'Book of Love' which is a small journal I began in 2002 to chart my fishing all over the world. I note the weight of all of my and my fishing buddy's fish and bait caught upon. I also sketch diagrams in there to show the mapped swim and anything I change as the session goes on that results in bigger/more fish.

    It's really interesting to look back through and re-live the sessions and how the evolved as I became more attuned to my environment and the fish's movement and feeding times. The 'Book of Love' is twinned with 'The Scales of Truth' too ensure I capture accurate weights :-)

  2. lol, no problems with that mate, most Americans & Canadians don't know how good they have it with a state license - which is why most of my angling is now done over with you chaps. If I fished for Salmon and Sea Trout, my rod license would be $108 and to fish a Salmon beat up to $500 per day in addition!

  3. correct Bob, a rod license does cost around 40 bucks and it entitles you to fish with two rods. If I wanted to fish with three rods I'd have to buy 2 rod licenses which entitles me to fish up to 4 rods......expect very very few places in the UK have a 4 rod limit!!

    We've been campaigning for years to get this changed so we can buy the number of licenses for the number of rods we'll use. Also bear in mind that buying a rod license doesn't entitle us to fish anywhere. For that we need to buy a club or syndicate license which typically costs around 200 bucks a year and might give access to one water or up to 30 or 40 waters (sometimes rivers, canals and lakes too) Some of those waters will need an extra license (sometimes called a gold card) to fish the best lakes with the biggest fish. Sometimes to get a gold card you have to have been a member of the club for a number of years and shown positive free activity in the form of work parties to improve pegs, pull snags out of the water, build otter fences etc) before being offered the chance to buy a gold card membership. If you do get a gold card you may not be given full access to that water, you may only fish during the week and possibly for no more than 48 continuous hours, and not returning within a further 48 hours. Other times it might 'a week on, a week off' rota. On many circuit waters you will never be able to fish in a particular peg or swim because it's tied up by a small group of anglers who work out their own rota, so the next guy is just arriving as the last one is packing up. In some places this is allowed, in some frowned upon and in some not allowed, but it goes on on all circuit waters

    There are some waters that cost around 1500 bucks a year to fish, some of Rob Hales waters command that fee but it's an exclusive set of waters. Some waters are classed as day ticket waters, so you either turn up and fish and the bailiff takes your cash on the bank, some you have to book in advance with the bailiff, or occasionally via the website, other still you have to book a particular peg for a particular length of time (say peg 3 called the Willows from 6am Saturday to 5am sunday. Some waters you can only book for a minimum amount of time. So at the weekend you have to book for 24 or 48 hours, nothing more or less than that. The day ticket waters are like paylakes and most of the carp are in a poor condition - that's a generalisation and not a rule - but are almost always rammed full during spring, summer and fall.

    I could go on but it's boring me just typing this which is why all my fishing is now done outside of the UK, it's not a pleasant place to fish for me anymore. But to sum it up: the rod license allows you to use a rod, where you choose to fish, and upon which kind of venue costs many times more and there's always restrictions on when, where and how you can fish

  4. interesting point Skeet. In the UK the further south you travel the bigger the fish, that obviously continues down in to France and beyond. Yorkshire has just produced it's first 50 as has Denmark, where some lakes in France have in excess of 50+ 50's. So yeah, you'd think the bigger fish would be in the southern part of the US, unless you have a larger than average population of BF'ers down there?

  5. Just trawling through some old pictures desperately trying to find a rig we christened the 'Yellow Peril' rig for the St Lawrence as Terry Fishlock has just posted up that he's made some more yellow leads ready for the spring thaw - anyway, I noticed that I've just had my 10 year anniversary with CAG and I came across a logo a former member - Danop - designed in around 2006 when we thought about going native.

    Ahhhh, our young and foolish days eh! #carpporn

    post-1033-0-05397300-1424297570.gif

  6. We've experimented heavily on boiled and flavoured maize at all times of the year and hands down have found anise flavour the best for spring. If you can find the massively concentrated food grade stuff sold in small 50ml bottles that is the best and is sold by lots of different merchants. We add half of the bottle to a 5kg boil so as not to overpower it. Near the end of the boil when the maize has split and the water has either condensed or evaporated, poor the anise in to a litre jug of water, and water on to the corn before covering and leaving it to get soaked up for the rest of the day. The sugars and starch produced from the boil react with the anise making it super sticky and pungent. When you're left with the last few litres of water in the bottom of the bucket, add bread crumb or groundbait to the liquid to create a sloppy mix of loveliness that will spread through the water column when spodded/spombed or dropped from a boat.

    We've experimented a lot as I mentioned and the only other flavours that come close are peanut butter extract, capsicum extract (a mega long range attractant and one of the 'secret' derivative ingredients behind Robin Red) and as hairwig said - garlic. I also used some of the bait emulsions K1 sell on the Trent Severn last year which did the business, yellow cherry scored highly. But do you know what? Don't look past a good old fashioned boil and soak!

  7. I've faced this a few times. Whilst it's practically impossible to play two carp to the net at once without an horrific tangle, what you can do is get both carp under control and tiring, then either pass one of the rods to a mate/bystander or place one back on the rest for a little while.

    The key is to get a rod in either side of your groin, push your butt out (skiing stance) and place your arm across your chest like you were crossing your arms. This leaves your left hand free to turn each reel handle as and when required. It does mean that the line will go slack at some point unless they're in to synchronised swimming (!) but you can get them most of the way in before deciding which one to place on the rest and which to land. Once the first one is in the net, stand on the handle if you're fishing at water level and play the other one in, unhook them both and pose for double :yes:

  8. There are millions of gobies in the river now. I did some underwater filming a couple of months back and there is an astonishing number of them. Good for the food chain and fish sizes though!

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