After 10 years away from the water i'm coming back

[Addersadam]

I've dug out my old match rod, a 12 ft ABU carbon and my Mitchell Match. I've talked the wife into buying me a feeder rod for my birthday. I'll be going out to buy tackle for the business end soon.

What should i buy and avoid, have things changed a lot over the last 10 years or are the basic tackle and methods from a decade ago still a good starting point. I'm not interested in big carp fishing so boiles and bolt rigs are of no interest (I'd like to know what 'the method' is and why it seems to be banned in quite a few waters). And what of bait, are maggot, hemp and corn good baits to use.

What about venues, i live in the Romford area and don't want to travel too far, i fancy the Lea as a river to fish but don't know about still waters around here.

Hope i'm not asking to much but i really need advice[:I]

The games about glory, doing things in style....

 

[The percher]

More experianced, and better anglers than me wil be able to give you better advice, but ill tell you a few things.
The method is basically a huge lump of really sticky, firm groundabit, moulded around a method feeder( there are different types to go for) which is laden with goodies of whatever you want. The carp seem to get into a frenzie, and start nudging this ball of feed so they can break pieces off, the idea being to either bury your hooklength and bait in the method ball, or leave a very sort hooklength from the ball, so the fish comes across your bait and wraps around the tip, you usually get loads of liners before this happens.
It's probably banned because some of the method feeders are very harmful to the fish if you become snapped, imagine a carp trailling around a lake with a huge feeder in its gob! I'm not very good at describing so someone else will tell you which the ones o avoid are.
The stuff you buy really depends on what type of fishing you wil be doing, if your fishing commercial carp waters, soon they will be enforcing a law which requires you to have keepnets, and landing nets with a lilypad sign on them, to protect the fish, but most commercials don't let you use keepnets anyway apart from in matches. You'll also need a decent sized landing net, mostwaters require you to have an unhooking mat for carp, and all the rest really is up to you.
All the baits you mentioned are excellent, wether your silver fishing or carp fishing- magot is a killer bait still, as are casters-which seem to sort out the btter fish, hemp is a brilliant attractor for all species, and for me corn is the best bait of all time- along with worm- no matter what species your fishing for.
For commercials, another good bait is pellet, but on these commercials the carp will eat basically anything, from meat to dog biscuits, cheese to catmeat!
You'l probably find that fishing cost a hell ofa lot more than it used to though!
Good luck and welcome to the site

J.Tolley

 

[Steve]

Hi Adam, welcome to Maggot Drowners.

I did exactly the same thing last year only with a break of almost 20 years (sea fishing was my passion during that time).

Yes in that time things had got a bit more techy with PVA bags, boilies, curry flavoured meat and the list goes on.

The best advice I can give is get out there and start from where you left off, buy a few copies of Improve Your Coarse Fishing (I expect you have done that already) and browse the tackle shops. You will be up and running in no time.

When there is something specific you want to know just ask here and you will get an answer or two to point you in the right direction. Don't be too general with your questions as they are very difficult to answer. You can pick up a lot of info just by reading the posts.

Don't worry about asking very basic questions providing they are specific you will get an answer.


Fishermen have more fun than people do!

Steve

 

[Peter]

Adam,
First of all Welcome to Maggotdrowning,It's always nice to see a lapsed angler returning to the fold.[]

One of the most helpfull features you will find on the site is the SEARCH option at the top right of the Forum.Use this to look for discussions on various types of tackle & baits etc.
If you can't find what you want post a question and we'll do our best to help you out.[]

Peter.

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