Tim Kelly

Poor Artarctica, it must feel deliberately snubbed.

Scary fast.

I don't know what it's called, I just call it a dropshot knot. I was shown it 10 or more years ago by a Dutch friend when I was fishing in Holland with him. For all it's simplicity, it's a surprisingly strong knot. I don't remember ever breaking off at the hook with it. Found a video of it.

That is the drawback with the FLW tour in some ways. There are a few players and a lot of donators.

No bass here, so I'm happy travelling to the US, Canada and Spain to get my fix.

This is becoming a "thing"! Who needs BFS, we seem to have a SCF revolution going on. Shallow Creek Fishing. Now how can we make money out of SCF? ?

Can't beat a good adventure. ?

If you accept that people are idiots and not considerate, you have to think about whether you're being foolish taking a small boat to a place where it is likely to be inadequate for the conditions. No different to me trying to take my 12ft tin boat across the atlantic. I might make it, but it wouldn't be the right boat for the conditions! My little boat is perfect for where I do take it though.

Went out fishing yesterday and it was dire. The river Thames was 76f, which I certainly don't ever remember seeing before. Predictably the fish have pretty much shut down and even the tiny perch were proving hard to tempt with the smallest of crappie jigs. So I went exploring. Proper swallows and amazons stuff up a little backwater. Motor trimmed up and front troller held to the surface on the cord. Amazed how far I got, the boat must only draft about 4"! Anyway, got to a gravel flat that I couldn't pass and got out for a splash around. The dogs loved it charging about in ankle deep water. I doubt many boats had ever been up there, a few kayaks probably, but I had it to myself only about 12 miles from the center of London! The heatwave is predicted to end in the next week or so, so better make the best of it. The last summer like this was 1976. We don't get many great summers! ?

Kayaks are great and allow people access to the water who wouldn't otherwise be able to. They are small boats though, and just as you would be cautious of taking a 14ft boat out on a big water, you need to be realistic about the conditions you're likely to face in a kayak. While it's obviously wrong for people to blast past you 10ft from your yak, it's hard to see how you'd be in a situation where that could happen. Unless you were fishing down a little channel which is regularly navigated through, in which case you put yourself in a position where you were likely to meet challenging and potentially dangerous conditions. While other water users can be pretty dumb, you have to take sensible precautions to keep yourself safe as you're the vulnerable one, rather like cyclists in cities. Car drivers should be more considerate, but you're better off expecting them not to be and staying safe than moaning about how they nearly killed you when you allowed yourself to be in a vulnerable position.

I tried some 6lb Advance over the weekend. Seemed fine. Didn't fish it long enough to really know whether it was an improvement over previous monos. Certainly was easy handling and seems pretty low stretch. I did notice a bit of a curly wurly bit of linea few feet from the bait, so I don't know whether the line dragged over something, but this seems to happen to mono lines sometimes. Over all, nothing bad to report so far and I'm intrigued to see how it goes. Just need more time on the water, but wasn't that always true!

Out with the team on the newly completed boat. Having so much fun with the boat, and the dogs are loving the poop deck on the front.

Braillist? Presumably they're white and for detecting blind bass?

Really? I can't believe I could raise my motor another 2". It starts sucking air and cavitating with very little extra trim as it is. Flat bottomed shallow draft boats probably set up differently to deeper hulled boats.

I have a similar aluminium boat with a long shaft 20" transom, the anti cav plate sat about 3" below the bottom of the boat. I made a temporary wooden transom raiser and tested it and yesterday got a shop to weld on a 3" aluminium extension. Anti cav is now level or fractionally above the bottom of the hull and it's much better for the modification. Not sure why boat builders design it like this, but most boats need modding in some way, nothing ever suits every situation.

I tend to buy 2 piece rods as all my bass fishing involves a flight (no bass in the UK). I've tried to find something suitable and failed so far. I have a Daiwa Airedge glass cranking rod, 2 piece, but it's only 6'6" and I find it really difficult to cast accurately with it for some reason. If you have the patience and inclination you might find something JDM, but as they tend to use shorter rods you almost certainly won't find anything in the 7-8ft range in a glass or composite. On the other hand, the "regular" action is mod fast, so if you don't mind carbon, then you may find something. I bought a Volkey 7'6" a couple of years ago, which may have worked well, but I took it out fishing in the sea and it was a rough day and I managed to tumble onto the rod and break it before having a chance to use it in anger. The joys of importing!

It's definitely whether it's in the water or not and not the angle it's at? if you drop it down when the boat's on the trailer, does it run? Just wondering whether there's a short when the motor is at a particular angle cause by worn wires. Would be quite odd for the water to stop it working, but as soon as it's out of the water it worked, as it would still be wet.

Can you hear the motor running when it's in the water? If the motor's running, but the prop's not turning then it's probably the pin. If the motor doesn't run in the water, try holding the prop out of the water and starting it, see if the motor's really weak and it will turn the prop in air, but not in water. That might be the motor or might be the battery, or a connection.

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

Can you explain how you heat, bend and re-temper hooks? I have a swim jig mould which requires a 30 degree hook, but I don't believe there are any smaller lighter wire 30 degree hooks made, so I've been bending 90 degree hooks, but the snappage rate has been high!

A friend of mine was having similar problems when he started using the Ned. He came out in the boat with me, and we were both catching fish on Ned, but he remarked on how much more firmly I set the hook than he had been. I think the tendency is to think the little hook with set itself with a reel set, but it actually needs a little more force with the lighter rods. He started setting more firmly and his problem vanished. Ned Kedhe (sp?) uses smaller hooks than most of the commercially available hooks, and a medium power rod. Maybe tells you something about the firmness of the set required?

Probably just me, but that doesn't really seem morally right. The idea is to do your research, then make the purchase.

You do charge it properly?

Have you tried using it when fishing? If it runs out of puff pretty quickly, you probably need a new battery, assuming the connections are all sound. I expect voltage will drop when you run the motor, especially at full power, doubt it should drop that much though. Probably not ideal running the motor out of the water either, it may overheat.

Knot tests on a rig are of interest, but don't necessarily tell you much about real world situations, especially when the knot is going through the guides. I found the alberto and double uni worked satisfactorily if you were using a short leader that didn't go through the guides, but as soon as you're casting it through the guides it weakened quickly and failed unpredictably. if you were snagged and pulling for a break it would always go at the leader knot. The FG has totally corrected the issues the other knots showed up and I can use very long leaders, the knot never breaks and I can keep re-tying all day without running out of leader. I'm sold.