Helmut's Blog

[paulhthomas]

I've been out again.
My lovely wife came up with the cracking line: "Do you mind if the girls come to the house tonight?" Before she'd finished the sentence I had the car loaded and I was off!
Got my rods in about 3pm yesterday, a quick overnighter and home by about 6pm today.
Unfortunately all I landed was a pund of bloody skimmer bream and no carp. Nobody else was catching either, which made me feel slightly better, but still would have preferred to catch!
I did however have chance to try out my new Trakker Big Snooze sleeping bag and a Trakker Thermal bed cover, that I bought last week. What a difference! It was actually frosty by about 2am this morning and I was in my shorts in the sleeping bag. Bit better than my 2 x £5 Woolworth sleeping bags, lol.
On another positive note I got talking to a guy who I've spoken to a few times on the syndicate and he agreed to sell me his JRC Defender Brolly, wrap, and a 2-man multi-fit Extended Wrap for £100. Bargain! Now to find a buyer for my Wychwood Maximiser Brolly!!
To go back to the posts above, the bait arrived this week and has been suitably frozen, and I have my air dry bag at the ready! Booked a few days off work in October, so going for a 4 dayer (while the wife's in Butlines with her mates!), cannot wait to get back out!!
Will I ever catch my first 20!?!?

[madcarpin]

HI before we start i think u were in school with my brother brent phillips, in vanyor and penderyn.(hopefully you remember)

glad to know another local carp Angler i have been carp fishing for about 10 years and loved every minute of it!!! i have recently bought 20kg of bait from BOSBAIT and ur name was the only name that come up on the internet i bought tropic 2 when it arrived in a massive box i was quite suprised at how much there actually was!!! i have used it around merthyr and have caught quite alot but to be honest anything will work on the local water lol
i went to butlins minehead last week and i couldnt find nothing on the net AT ALL about this lake, so as soon as i got to the lake i realised that i could only fish the one side of the lake and everyone i spoke to had said there hadnt been any carp out of here for bout 4 years and alot of other people told me that too down there so i was gutted to find this out but i still couldnt wait to get this bait in the water so the first full day there i went to the lake for duskin hour just to scope the lake out and to find sum swins to fish and out of the whole lake i only found one feature that looked worth fishing so i prebaited and did so for 2 nights.
i had planned to fish the first day but the misses was havin none of it!! so i had to go the last day i was there rods out at dusk 3 rods and i had one on the new BOSBAIT and the others on chick peas and from the moment i cast out the BOSBAIT rod it was the only one i had action on even thou it was ALL BREAM i was still happy to catch on this bait i was tempted to put all 3 of the rods out on these but i was being plagued by bream non stop so atfer mid day i was abit fed up of catchin bream so i upped size hook bait to a 22ml pop-up (which i made from BOSBAIT paste they also sent) they bream stopped and after an hour with no action at all i had a one toner from the pop-up and i was actually into a carp i was chuffed to bits becasue i didnt think there were carp in there! and after 20mins 2 SNAGS and and half a tree snagged around the fish i had a 21lb3oz Mirror even thou i look like i had been through world war 3 it was one of the old heads of the lake, so after half of butlins gathered around to see this fish and take photo's of me with this fish (my HEAD as massive a felt like the God himself Terry Hearn) i was over the moon!

sorry to have gone on and on but when buying Unbranded baits its always Good to hear that other people have caught on them because it took me ages to use unbranded bait on good waters like oxford st johns and whitesprings and even Bryn Bach!! So i hope this gives u a little confidence of using this particular company

If ur ever up for a session somewhere give me a shout im free most weekends

Picture will be posted soon!!

justin phillips

[paulhthomas]

Hiya Justin, yes mate, it is I. I have funny feeling that I saw you fishing down at Cyfarthfa a few months ago, but cause I haven't seen you or your brother since school and i wasn't sure if it was you or not!
Funny you should say about catching bream on the BOSBait. I hadn't defrosted any for this weekend's fishing cause I had some shelf life to use up, but I did have the glug with me. I soaked one of the shelf life boilies in that over night (nothing else was working) so and that's what caught me my bream. I hope it's not a sign of things to come because there's loads of the sodding thing down there!

Looking forward to seeing the picture of the Butlins Beauty

Will let you know about a session, always on the look out for people to give with and learn from.

Cheers

Paul

[madcarpin]

alright
you should have come over i would have least talked to you!! yeah im up for doing a session anywhere as from learning from me u got 5 mins spare have you haha even after all this time im still learning myself the main thing i have learned is always keep it simple!! so as long as i have a hook bait in the water then alarms on and my pocket tv on the footy HAPPY DAYZZZ

here are 2 mins the misses took on here phone my friend who was there carp fishing aswell has better pics on his camera but i havent seen him since that trip!!

this fish look like it had been throught the wars on one side and was on its last legs on the other BUT i must admit it was the most unexpected fish i have caught in awhile but with the hard work and prep that went into finding it made it all worht while
ps i was on holiday so please excuse the top haha

[paulhthomas]

ah man that fish is bad condition
nice one on catching the poor bugger though, goes to show, if you put in the work in, you'll get the fish

[madcarpin]

my friend has another pick of his month it is really bad i put loads of fish aid on it but it needed a facelift or something lol
with the amount of people i seen fishing with cheap rods and reels i could see how easly these fish could get messed up god help the supposed 30's in there!!

[Lee]

jesus that is in bad shape poor fish... people need shot leaving them in that condition...

[paulhthomas]

Well my kit's out of the shed, a quick trip to Tesco for some bread rolls later, and I'm all set for tomorrow morning. Going to hit my syndicate water around 7am tomorrow for 4 days of carpy goodness, a nice Thursday-Sunday session, I'll stink by the end of it, but I'm determined to get that forts 20lber!
I've got some different approaches to try, a new bait, which will hopefully bring me that bit of luck we all need now and again (no Gemo, it's not Skittles ).
The boilies are drying out nicely in the air dry bag. The wife was very impressed when I replaced her hanging baskets with air dry bags full of bait, haha. In all fairness, she was a little more impressed with that than the smell in the house as the baits were defrosting!!
Will report back on Sunday and will hopefully have some pictures to show you!!

Helm

[paulhthomas]

Well,the first 20lber yet again evades me, bugger!
A very hard 4 days fishing. Very very bright conditions during the day, and very very cold in the nights. Woke up yesterday morning a layer of actual ice (as opposed to frost) on my unhooking mat!
The new bait didn't bring me any luck at all, not a sniff.
I do take heart in that a lot of experienced members there gave up by yesterday and went home, not a single fish came out friday with 14 anglers on the lake.

A guy that I've met on the lake and ended up buying his bivvy off him, turned up to see how I was doing. He gave me a little tip that was catching some fish last winter.
He saw that I had some 10mm Pineapple popups in my bag, and said get one of those pink ones out, cut it in half and put the 2 halfs back to back, so you end with an hourglass looking shape. So I did, I hair-rigged the boilie on, and stuck it tight to the island.
About 4pm yesterday, when I was considering packing and going home to watch X factor (i know, i know, but I have Sky+'d it!) after a painfully quiet 2 days, and rod shot off.
It was the rod with the pink pink popup.
After kiting to my right, straight over the top of a mates lines and into some weed, I knew he'd be trouble. I didn't want to drag him back over the line's so I had to get to my mates swim.
I couldn't walk to the right because there a huge tree that I'd never get the rod over, so in I went, only up to my ankles, but I walked across to his swim and we netted it there.
Here it is!



Will the first 20 ever arrive!?!

[Tom]

Well done fella, good to see as well you put the fish's welfare before your own and you were prepared to get your feet wet . The reward looks well worth it too.