Carp Catchers Blog

Customer Michael Madeley had a weeks session at Lake Molyneux in France recently and caught the 28lb 12oz mirror carp shown below. Mike was having a lot of trouble with aborted takes and tried lots of different tricks to cure the problem. Eventually he lengthend the hair and had the mirror almost immediately. He was fishing Korda Subline to a gravel spot at 80yrds. Mikes’ rig was tied with Kryston Super Mantis to a size 6 Korda Kaptor Hook. Well done Mike.

Best Fishes,

John

Shop regular John Jones banked a 3o plus common on a new water recently. The fished weighed in at 35lb 2oz and was a fish caught a month earlier by Ian Smith at a similar weight. John tempted the fish back to the bank with a mixed bed of sticky baits boilies and a snowman hookbait. The set up John used was a Korda 4oz lead on a  Korda Safe Zone Safety Lead Clip  and Johns’ rig was tied with Kryston Super Mantis Green Hooklink and a size 6 Nash Fang X Hook. Well done again mate. Nice photo too.

Tight Lines

Dave

Customer Ian Smith caught one of his target fish recently. Fishing a new water, Ian caught the magnificent common carp shown below after only a few nights. The common weighed 35lb 5oz, a little bit down on it’s normal weight. This is no doubt due to the good spawning weather we had a month or so back. Ian fished a light scattering of mixed sized Nash Scopex Squid Liver Plus Robin Red Shelf Life Boilies  to a silty area in open water. The rig Ian used was a 10”  Kryston Super Mantis hooklink tied to a size 6 Gardner Mugga  hook. The hookbait was a Nash Scopex Squid Liver Plus Robin Red  pop up fished an inch off the deck. This guy just keeps catching, well done Ian.

Best Fishes,

John

Congratulations to Andre Kormoniki from London on landing the world record carp. Andre used a  Greys Platinum 12ft 6” 3lb Carp Rod to land the 91lb, YES 91lb monster from Luke Moffats Le Graviers water in France last week. The leviathan is known as the scarred fish or the fish of two halves as it has a scar running round its body. The scar was caused by a rope which was tied around the fishes body to retain it, this was done many years ago before people were less concerned about carp care. The bait Andre used was the awesome Baitcraft T1 a bait with a track record for the bigger specimens. Andre used a blowback rig tied with a Kryston Super Mantis hooklink and a Korda Longshank X Hook to catch the carp of a lifetime. Not content on catching the world record Andre went on to catch ten more fish including carp of 63lb, 56lb, two at 50lb, 40lb, 37lb, 33lb, 32lb, 29lb and 27lb. Well done again Andre, Well done also to Luke Moffet for nurturing such a special water and such a colossal fish.

Best fishes,

John

Which hooklink? good question, I’m going to run a little mini series featuring the most commonly used hooklink materials. I’ll also discuss the accepted wisdom as to their best use.

Coated Braids

Coated Braids as the name suggests are supple braid hooklinks covered with a thicker, stiffer material usually a plastic of some description. Some good examples are:-

    Sufix Camfusion             Atomic Jelly Wire             Super Mantis

These coated braids have a plastic coating. The coating can be stripped back to reveal the supple inner braid so that you have a stiff section running from the swivel towards the hook and a supple section near the hook. This is essentialy a combi link rig but easier to tie, which is the main reason coated braids were developed. Coated Braid Combi Rigs can be used with bottom baits or if you put some tungsten putty where the coated section ends, pop ups. Coated braids can also be used without stripping back any coating to produce a stiff rig with increased abraision resistance.

Cut your desired length of coated braid, decide how much coating you want strip and grip tightly with your thumbnail (if you have any).

Dig into the coating with your thumbnail and pull away till the coating is removed.

If you don’t have any nails get yourself a  Korda Strippa Tool  they strip away the coating quickly without damaging the braid, they’re brilliant.

korda Hybrid Stiff/Soft

Korda Hybrid Stiff  and  Korda Hybrid Soft  differ to the above because they have a fluorocarbon coating which is both stiffer and heavier than the plastic coatings. Because of their inherent stiffness the Korda Hybrids need to be steamed over a kettle to straighten them and to bed down knots though this is extra work it is worth it.

There are lots of different combinations that can be tied with these hooklink materials, imagination being the only limit.

Best fishes,

John

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Heres the photo of the first twenty James caught on a recent day session at Headlands Lake. James’ PB carp weighed 23lb 6oz and was caught on a Blowback rig tied with Kryston  Super Mantis , hookbaits were Mainline Activ Maple-8 dumbells .

The photo quality isn’t perfect as it was taken on a camera phone but a cracking fish all the same.

Well done mate

Tight Lines

David ï¿½