Posted by keens on August 29, 2009 under Catch Reports | 
During an annual August holiday in Mevagissey, Cornwall, Barry Osborne and his friend Phil Hingley fished off Barry’s Warrior 165 named ”Welsh Warior”.
The trip produced a good array of species including Bass, Pollock, Whiting, 
Pouting and Mackerel. The best of the catches were an 8lb bass caught by Barry and a 13.5lb pollock caught by Phil. both fish were caught on firetail Jellyworms and both released! They also produced a mass of good sized whiting by fishing daylight feathers tipped with fresh mackerel.
A good days fishing was then finished by catching bass and mackerel off the harbour wall on silver and red Toby’s.
Posted by Keith on August 21, 2009 under Carp and Coarse Fishing, Help and Tips |
Okay, so we’ve discussed the all important factors of camouflaging all the rig materials in my previous article, but does this really make that much difference to our catch results?
A basic rig approach coupled with a Snowman double hookbait presentation.
Well, I’ve been out this week for 4 days on a mission to prove the theory of rig camouflage or not as the case might be.
The venue I have chosen for the test is a regular haunt of mine, a private syndicate water near Reading.
The water stands at around 35 acres in size with a mass of features above and below the water.
The ones I’m really interested in being the invisible ones below the surface.
A crude example of the rod positioning
The water has other obstacles to make allowance for; these are numerous underwater obstructions such as old gravel extraction machinery left from the initial dig during the late 60’s to Zebra Mussel beds and the dreaded Signal Crayfish!
The depth varies from around 3 feet to 9 feet at the deepest point. There are many bays, unfishable areas and overhanging trees to also contend with…….so, as you can see I have it all to do just to get into the fish!
My first thought is to target the silt areas as opposed to the gravel as these areas are easier for the crays to locate our baits on. I prefer to stick with a fruity boilie only approach as crays love pellets and fishmeals!
The choice of lead for the right situation is crucial
My rig is very basic and is made up of around 11-12 inches of Soft Korda Hybrid braid.
A Wide Gape size 6 hook and a curved piece of dark grey Gardner Covert Shrink tube placed over the hook eye to aid the hooks turn with-in the fishes mouth.
The Middle Rod and Winning Combo!
As you can see from the pictures I have shown, the rig materials blend in well with the different kind of bottom materials.
Kryston Dark mantis or Korda Hybrid for over the silt.Korda Supa Natural light brown and green for the gravel and weed.
For this experiment I fished the 3 different materials and rig items for 48 hours over the same patch of silt.
Rods were marked up using marker braid to insure that all rods were fished at the same distance each time. The rigs were placed some 30 feet apart and a small handful of baits placed over each rig (30 boilies).
Each rig was then placed in a Microcat Bait boat and positioned in the correct spots……no favouritism was given to any one specific rod.
Green rig materials are great for weedy situations
The middle rod of the 3 had the correctly coloured rig material for the silt.
My first action was on my right hand rod…..with Gravel brown Supa natural and a sand lead. This turned out to be a bream. I repositioned the rig and my next fish fell to the middle rod. A nice 10lb ghost carp!
I had to wait around 9 hours until my next run which came again to the middle rod and a much better fish of 21lb 3oz. To make sure all was fair I rebaited and positioned all 3 rods at the point of capture on any one of the 3.
A tench of 6lb then fell to the left hand rod (green materials). Then another run on the middle rod followed some 2 hours later in the dark! A 14lb mirror graced the net.
Now some people may argue that the rig material makes absolutely no difference to catch results in the dark.
Well this experiment kind of blows that out of the water as on the second night of fishing I took no less than 11 fish on the middle rod including a new Venue PB of 30lb 5oz! And guess what? Not a sniff from a carp on the other rods!
Proof it works! 30lb 5oz of Mirror Carp
If that’s not enough proof of the effect of camouflaging and just spending a little more time and effort on our rigs then I don’t know what else is!
Give it a go…….I think you’ll see what I mean!
Tight lines
Keith
Nuts about Carp
Posted by keens on August 18, 2009 under Catch Reports, Sea Fishing |
What an absolute privilege and a pleasure it was to welcome the worlds top casters to our club for the Century / Surfcast Wales International 2009. We had 41 casters from Wales, England, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Germany,
Argentina and Australia come to compete in two days of casting heaven.
The weather was fantastic wall to wall sunshine with a light westerly wind both days straight down the field; you know what they say “The sun always shines on the righteous”.
Everyone was in great spirits meeting up again to re kindle old friendships as well as forging new ones; there truly was a tremendous atmosphere both on the field and at the Saturday night get together with loads of laughs and good humoured conversations. Talk of the night was the massive prize table and with everyone guaranteed a prize to take back home what could they achieve.
Day one was the 150g where casters had 10 casts or until 16:30 to nail their 2 best which would go towards their final score. After an easy start with casters making sure of having 2 measures things started to wind up full blow tournament style absolutely awesome display by the worlds best. Way out in the lead was the undisputed world champion Danny Moeskops a lead that he kept all day with a succession of massive casts. Behind Danny things were tight with the positions constantly changing until the very last round where the finishing positions were
finalised .
Going in to day 2 the 125g Danny was first ,Andy 2nd followed by Steve Boyt with only meters between them, all to play for now but what to do ? Play safe and get those mandatory measures or go all out from the get go , well some took the safe option and others put down the gauntlet . Once again Big Danny held his form hitting leads right out the back of the court with his Century TTR leaving the rest of the world’s best to sort out the rest of the finishing order.
This was one of the hottest contested competitions ever at our club with the positions changing cast after cast, round after round, right down to the last cast of an incredible event and no one really knew for sure where they had finished up.
The officials then took the numbers and hid away in the cabin for what seamed like an age while others set out the prize table which just blew everyone away they couldn’t believe that our generous benefactors had been so
supporting of the Surfcasting community by providing awe inspiring selection.
Century GB in particular Mr Simon Chillcot who was our close partner in the event and to whom we hold a
massive debt of gratitude for their contribution which consisted of a staggering six TTR’s an absolutely fantastic rod that hold numerous casting word records and used by the vast majority of the top casters ,six E1000 eliminators a brand new design , slim but very powerful and already setting records and three Kompressor SS top end casting fishing rods all with bags and reducers not to mention the t shirts and badges. A special thanks much be said to Mr Lew Marsden for all his input and help getting this together.
We had many other companies help to make this event so prestigious and with great gratitude we would thank them all for their help and support. Keens tackle and guns , Pure Fishing , Chris Macey , Sakuma , Anyfish
Anywhere Torbay Angling and QTC. Please take the time to let these wonderful benefactors know what this
support means to you.
Finally just to say thank you to everyone casters, sponsors, organisers and spectators for all you efforts and
congratulations to the winners .
Kind regards Surfcast Wales
Posted by Keith on August 14, 2009 under Carp and Coarse Fishing, Tackle Reviews |
Daiwa Basiair 45 Qd
(Courtesy of Nuts about Carp)
Well, this is a review that I must admit to being so excited about for so long that I just couldn’t sleep the night before using them for the first time!!!!
Go on say it……….’You sad foolish boy!…….’ Sorry, but I don’t often get so excited about a piece of fishing tackle that I can’t sleep!
So, the new Basiair 45 qd…..is it really worth it’s massive and quite ridiculous price tag of £599 RRP?????? £85 SPARE SPOOLS!!!!!
The reel itself weighs in a shade over 15oz which makes it the lightest reel in its class by a million miles.
It’s an absolute gem to hold in your hand and it’s lightness is due to it’s make-up of air metal magnesium and ultra light zaion.
Apart from weighing about as much as a small roach, it looks absolutely stunning!
The 4.1:1 ratio pulls in a touch under 90cm per turn and running on 8 bbs including 5 crbbs, it is about as smooth as a hand made Swiss Watch!
The 45mm spool as on previous Basia reels helps to aid the caster to distances one can only dream of, with supreme line lay, a very high quality line clip and machined wishbone handle, all add up to quite something special.
Every tackle tart alive will want one of these ‘Directors’ reels, but joking aside……this really is a spectacle to behold in the market of the highest class executive reels range. One which all other companys will want to follow!
It may be the wrong financial climate in which to release such a high price tagged Item of kit, but lets face it……it’s not everybody that’s going to want to purchase a reel of this calibre.
If you are one of those breed then give the Basiair a second look as it really is architectural angling magic!
I’ve now been using the Basiairs for a shade over 7 months and I am pleased to report that they are still as smooth as the day I purchased them! A regular gentle clean with some warm water and they come up like new!
I can honestly say after banking 4x 30lb + fish, numerous 20’s and lots of doubles, over distance, short range and rough ground, they still out perform anything I have ever owned or used………..pure bliss from Daiwa!
Posted by Keith on under Carp and Coarse Fishing, Help and Tips |
Rig camouflage…….possibly not a thought at the fore front of many anglers minds when approaching a water for the first time. I always here conversations about what baits are working well or where’s the best place to fish.
A typicaly silty corner of an estate lake. Rig camouflage is essential here.
Yes, these are very important topics for discussion, but way ahead of all of these is that of rig camouflage.
The reason for my saying this is that it makes little difference if you have the most incredible bait and the best swim on the lake. Put an obnoxious rig into the swim and it’s very unlikely you’ll tempt anything! If you saw a bright red needle sticking up through your lounge carpet it’s pretty likely you’d see it before you stood on it. Camouflage the same item to the carpet colour and ‘ouch’……a trip to A&E!
So, let’s take this to our lakeside situation. The bottom make up of every lake or pond is different to the next one. For example a water with plenty of overhanging foliage will have dropped much of it into the water over many years of Autumnal seasons. This degrades on the bottom of the lake and forms a thick black smelly sludge, which we know as silt.
Imagine presenting a bright yellow or green hook length material over this black sludge. It’s not going to look that crash hot! We need to make sure all our terminal tackle blends in with the bottom material.
On the other end of the scale, a very dark hook length and rig items is going to look well out of place on a bright gravel bottom in a crystal clear gravel pit. This all sounds clear and quite obvious when we talk about it here, but I couldn’t honestly count the amount of times I have had to explain this on the bank side.
When you arrive at your chosen fishery, have a good mooch around the margins and see if you can gauge what sort of bottom you may be about to place your baits on to. I even go so far as to put my arm in and reach down to grab the bottom. I try to pull up some of the bottom and have a good look at it’s texture, colour and food content.
(This could be snails, lice, daphnia or bloodworms). All this is useful information, we get an idea of the type of approach and possibly even our baiting tactics before we’ve done anything!
Our next job would be to use our ever trusted marker rod and feature finding lead to cover some of the bottom. This should give us a clear idea of what we’re up against. (I’ll cover this in depth in next months article.)
Don’t forget that the more items you add to your rig, the more there is for the fish to see. Keep it uncomplicated and you’ll inevitably get more results.
As some of you will already know, I am an advocate of slack line fishing. This basically means that once I have cast out, I will pull a few yards of line from the reel and let the line sink to the bottom. This will allow all of the slack to fall into the shape of the bottom, thus hiding much of the main line. Bear in mind that you’d need to fish a running lead rig so as to be able to register bite indication. Imagine if the line you used was a similar colour to the bottom of the pool? Almost invisible to the fish and surely a massive heave ho for you confidence too.
Company’s such as Gardner and Korda spend huge amounts of time and effort investing in terminal tackle that will blend in with the materials of the bottom. From Tulip Beads, Tubing, Lead Core Leaders, Leads and even Teflon Coated hooks and swivels which stop shine and glare from an external light source.
17lb 13oz mirror caught using camouflage techniques in silt
All these items will increase our chances of bagging a fish. (please take care with your rigs when mixing and matching tackle items from different tackle company’s, I would suggest if your in doubt ask your tackle dealer for some help with selecting the right items.)
As an example, here’s a few items I would use for my perfect tackle approach for a silty water:
Mainline: Daiwa Sensor Mono 12-15lb breaking strain. This is a good strong and dark monofilament which sinks well and will blend with the silt.
Hook length Material: We have a vast array of choices here….my favourite is Mantis Dark from Kryston. This has a plastic sheathing over a soft dark braid. Available in both 15 and 25lb breaking strains.
Leads: I absolutely adore the Dung Leads from Atomic. These awesome leads will blend in totally with the bottom makeup.
Swivels and hooks: Teflon coated is a must. These will not glare up off the bottom and spook the fish.
Tubing or Lead core leaders: These all need to be dark in colour. Greys or very dark browns/blacks are great.
So, as you can see my rig items should all match up to the dark silt coloured bottom and be pretty invisible to the fish. I would obviously change this approach to lighter colours for gravel or greens for weed etc.
Good luck & tight lines
Keith Supple
Editor
Nuts about Carp
For Everything Carp & Carp Fishing visit:
www.nutsaboutcarp.com
Posted by keens on August 12, 2009 under New Releases |
Brand New to store are our waterproof fly boxes. At 6″ x 4″ these boxes are an ideal size for the anglers pocket yet hold 120+ flies. 2 watertight clear compartment mean you can view all flies from outside the box and split foam inner means the boxes are built to last.
Click Here to Purchase Item
Posted by keens on under Help and Tips, Sea Fishing |
Question sent in by Kevin Phillips from Port Talbot;
I have recently joined a stillwater on a years membership. I am new to fly fishing and have noticed that a lot of other members use Shooting Head lines. I was told by another member that this will allow me to hit more distance as I have been struggling with my normal line. Would you recommend one of these lines and do you sell them?
Keen’s say;
If you are a beginner avoid these lines at all cost! The member is right in saying that a shooting head is for distance. However, what he failed to tell you is that to be able to use a shooting head you need to have an accomplished cast and good timing which you develop over time.
A shooting head is basically the belly of a weight forward line and you usually go one size heavier on the line rating. For example, if your rod is an 8 you would buy a 9 weight line. They are purposely made for fishing large reservoirs from the bank and casting into strong winds. However, all your fly presentation will go out the window and with a lack of timing you may break your rod.
What I would suggest is that you purchase a reasonable quality line in weight forward, possibly a Cortland Rocket Taper. These lines have good punching power against the wind but still retain good presentation. Also, I notice that you live locally to the shop. It may be worth you giving us a ring and booking a casting lesson with one of the staff. These are free, but you will need to pop up when we have the time. You will develope far more as a caster if you learn with a weight forward and if you perfect it you will hit close on the same distance as with a shooting head.
Thank you for your question.
Posted by keens on under Help and Tips |
Question sent in by Chris Evans of Barry;
I have used plugs from a number of different manufacturers and have had serious problems with them tangling, both on the treble and also I get a lot of line twist. I have used poppers and the problem goes away. Could it be tide causing the problem with the diving plugs?
Keen’s say;
This could be a number of things, but never usually the tidal pull. I have fished many lures in strong tides and never encountered a problem. However, tide can cause a problem if something else is not right. You do not mention the exact type of fishing that you carry out ie. spinning, trolling so I will run through the things that may cause this and hopefully you can define from trial and error.
The outright biggest cause of this is the way in which the lure is attached. I often see people tying directly to the nose of the plug with a blood knot. When you think of how the plug swims it needs to move from left to right. By tying directly to the nose you stop the plug swimming. This is when the tide causes a problem. As the plug is not swimming through the water it gets thrown about, often resulting in your 1st treble on the plug becoming tangled in the line. To eliminate this attach a split ring to the nose of the plug and tie to that, this will allow the plug to move freely.
Another cause is that you could be using a plug for the wrong application. By this I basically mean using a plug that dives too deep for the area. For example, if you use a plug that dives 20′ in a depth of 15′ the lures nose will strike bottom and flip the lure. Self explanatory to eliminate this one, find some deeper water or a plug that works shallower.
This next only occurs if you have been trolling the lures. A lot of people are guilty of trolling plugs far too quickly, including me. It even says on the box of some lures to troll 4 knots, which is way too fast. This causes the lure to fly about like a dexter wedge. Try trolling at 1-1.5 knots and you will actually see the lure working the tip of the rod back and forth.
I hope you have enough here to help you.
Posted by keens on August 11, 2009 under Carp and Coarse Fishing, Tackle Reviews |
Written by Dean (Keens Tackle)
With carp fishing becoming more and more popular throughout Wales more newcomers are looking for the best ways of catching that dream fish, but a lot of people forget that all important thing that will without a doubt put more fish on the bank than the most up to date rig and that thing is a good quality bait.
Mainline have been leading the way for years now with new flavours, shapes and sizes for all your days fishing from ground baits to dips and dumbells. For the day ticket angler they have a massive array of shelf life baits that can produce impressive results instantly or for the specimen hunter who will be working on a water the frozen range is far better suited with better ingredients and easier digestable protiens. The fish will recognise the difference in this bait and will keep coming back for more and in the long term will end up hunting the water wanting more and more of this bait leading to the big fish being caught. So before you make a decision on rigs to fish choose a quality bait to put on the hair first!!
Posted by keens on under Game Fishing, Tackle Reviews |
Reviewed by Gary (Keen’s Tackle)
For all the 15 years I have worked at Keen’s Tackle and Guns, originally as a saturday boy, the Cortland 444 has remained a best seller. It offered a perfect balance between punching power, presentation and being supple. It is a compliment to the original 444 that in all that time it never changed. However, technology moves on and Cortland have produced a line that I believe performs better!
New to its range is the XP or Extra Precision line. Not too dissimilar to the original it still retains a silky texture and its infamous peach colour. But this time around it offers greater presentaion when turning lighter flies onto the surface.
I never used my original 444 as much as I had liked, but thats just it. I may go 4 -6 months at a time without a fishing session, yet when the line is cast it flies out as though it was used the day before. It has lasted more than ten years and is still going strong, which is probably why the core traits have remained in the XP.
The main difference is that American lines are heavy! I mean an American 8 weight is close to a British 9 weight AFTM. Obviously this is what gives the 444 its shooting power, so they had to balance weight and length to retain that and they have. By slightly extending the belly of the line and adding to the length of the front presentation taper Cortland produced a line that would shoot and turn a perfect line lay every time. The real beauty of this is that it does not rely at all on the weight of the fly meaning you get great presentation with the smallest of dry flies.
Sometimes the old ones are the best, but Cortland really have excelled here!
Shop Item ID 44XPWF0
