Who has had a great idea in their head that turned out to be a huge fail when put into practice? One of my finer moments many years ago was pinch a shopping trolley to get around saint John's oxford....worked well until we met the gravel then had to unload the excess we took!

In reply to Post #1
I remember pre corkball days, late 80's early 90's, via a chat in Orpington Angling... frying a small amount of boilies ( Richworth Salmon Supremes ) to make pop ups.
LOL, popped up initially, then sunk.

Then there was the polyball inserts around your boilie paste, If you boiled them too hard or long they melted, leaving you with a great void in the middle of your bait, sunk or came off really easily. That black rig foam cut into small cubes didn't melt, but was a pain to roll a round boilies around a square foam piece and not get air pockets.... Funny now looking back

This could be a great thread, plenty of epic fails to follow, all in the name of progress.

In reply to Post #2
Early days on Gerrard's maxey......my mate says hes put 5 swimfeeders on at once to up the quantity of bait going out.?...great idea until he realised how heavy it was so couldn't cast it out.

In reply to Post #1
Home made spods made from silicone sealant tubes with not that bouyant foam in the front end, sometimes didn't up end and tip out the contents, also which minimised the loaded contents, together with not quite well aligned tail fins, or fins that fell off, that when cast out wobbled badly, and sprayed the contents everywhere, except where you wanted it.... no more spod trails ( wasted bait, not on the spot )

Todays youngster's don't realise how luckily they are now to be able to accurately bait up and not waste so much bait, with your accurate Spombs & Spyder spod's etc.

When i was still rolling my bait by hand i made some kilograms with shrimp meal. Went to my spots, baiting up, and initially they all sunk, but after a few minutes i could see them all pop up, one after another, hundreds of baits rising to the top.

In reply to Post #2
Microwaved pop-ups, my mother was not impressed

I have had many great ideas that failed over the years.

One of my many was back in the late 60's, I was getting annoyed with a tree branch just to the side of my swim growing parallel to the bank and over my swim as I kept hitting my rod tip on it, but it was too high up for me to reach and snap it off.

Then I had an idea, the bank behind me was high up, I could just jump out and grab it and snap it off. Well that part of the idea worked a treat, but I overlooked the fact that I had to land somewhere and due to the trajectory that place where I would land was in the pond.

I went straight in with an almighty belly flop holding the branch, the water was crystal clear and I ended up face to face with the bottom of the pond. I was absolutely soaked and it was mid Winter and because of that, it was end of session and go home and get dried out.

I never did that again!!!!!

In reply to Post #5
I had a friend who did that, tipped up one day back in the mid '80's, showed me his new bait and he had made it from just Shrimp meal and a binder, I new what would happen as I used shrimp meal but mixed with other fish meals. Shrimp meal is very bouyant

He threw one in, it popped back up , so he tried another, and everyone he threw in just popped back up. I tried not to laugh.

Oddly enough, knowing how good Shrimp meal is for catching fish, I never ever made a poppup consisting only of shrimp meal and a binder.

When I was younger I was a dab hand with a catapult so had a great idea to put the lead in the catty and fire it low and hard under some over hanging trees on an island

Needless to say mega fail rig wrapped around the elastic lead wacked my knuckles line birds nested everywhere

Put that firmly in room101

In reply to Post #9
Hell, that has also reminded me of when I tried similar, but, the 4oz lead never came out of the pouch with it being so heavy, it swung round still in the pouch and hit me in the thigh and I went down like a sack of spuds in agony rolling about in pain on the bank. I honestly thought I had broke my leg.

I also never tried that again.

In reply to Post #8
For me it was around that time too, maybe a bit later. Then you had that orange/pink shrimp meal, lots of shell, i didn't know better until then Now most are advertised as having low shell content, different color also. It was a truly sad sight, i was so ready, thought i had it all figured out.

In reply to Post #1
The slow sinking bomb / feeder had hit the match scene and was being banned everywhere - I'd tried it myself on a commercial when fishing with the kids and it was an excellent and exciting summer method . . .effectively fishing all the layers from the surface down in a single cast, with aggressive bites and good results . . .smaller carp taking the bait on the drop and the bigger fish waiting until the feeder had hit the deck . . genius method.

Thought I'd try it on my then moody syndicate with the fish showing on a bar at about 90yards on a regular basis but refusing mixers / floating baits / zigs. The issue was creating a 'feeder' that had the weight to get to the zone but that also sunk incredibly slowly . . .spent hours fiddling and testing with some fox range feeders (that were like mini spods) adapted with a pole bung in the nose to offset the weight; each one was carefully crafted and tested, slowly shaving off the buoyant nose foam/ trimming tiny slices off the plastic tail fins until slow sinking perfection was reached. . . .

I loaded the feeder with a mixture of pellet and set up the hooklink so that it sunk in harmony with the feeder - I was going to haul on a match fishing method so devastating that no-one had ever witnessed before . . . .heroic top rod status awaited and soon the whole lake would be enquiring about my cheat code. . .

First cast - splosh . . .and wait . . . and all the fish f*cked off and never returned . . .

The gardner suspender controller thing for fishing mixers.
It kept the hooklength off the surface but as soon as a carp touched the mixer it knew something was up.

And the gardner mixer fixer, a small controller float that you could slot five or six mixers down the tube and a little jiggle on the main line could pop one or two out.
Sounded good but never seemed to work well in practice.

In reply to Post #5
Also did this with shrimp meal but they never sank, floated on hitting the water...can't remember if I used them as surface baits or binned them in disgust

Two more great ideas that that failed: -

I fished a carp match many years ago, I spent a whole hour tying and playing about with what I thought would be the perfect rig to win the match instead of using one of my many rigs that I make in a few minutes, a carp would only have to look at it and it would be hooked.

When the Horn sounded for the match to start, it was only about a 50 yard cast to my mark, somehow I cracked off, loud enough for everyone on pond to look to see what was happening as my rig sailed down the pond never to be seen again. I was that annoyed that I just tied a rig on from out of my rig case.

Then I had the great idea that as Fluro popups were catching me a lot of fish, I thought that if I powder coat my leads with a white coating, the fish would see it from further afield and be drawn to my bait.

It was a complete fail, within minutes of casting out, my rod tops were constantly twitching and my alarms single and double "beeping", it was driving me mad esecially when all 3 rods were doing it, so I sacked the idea and went back to using plain uncoated leads.

All I can think of was every silver fish etc in the whole lake was attracted to the white lead and were nudging it etc to see if it was food. A complete fail.

In reply to Post #5
Yes, done this myself back in the day, first and only time I added shrimpmeal to a fishmeal mix. Put them in the boiling water and they all floated, luckily it was the days of the 10oz mix.

In reply to Post #1
When I was a kid I couldn't afford a rig board, but had a load of pins which were spares from my Dads rig board.

I had the ingenious Idea of stealing the sponge he uses to wash his car.

Perfect length, perfectly held the pins in place, perfecly held more than a dozen old school snake skin hooklengths.

Within second of taking it down to the pond, a gust of wind took the lot into the drink, and I saw my perfectly imperfect rig board drift away into the out of bounds.

Where’s that blanket bloke when you need him.

Would putting a tarpaulin on the lake bed in spring and weighing it down stop the weed growing?

In reply to Post #18
I think there is indeed a heated blanket out there now most likely a usb type and not hot water/steam if I remember the thread correctly

In reply to Post #19
i put a corrugated sheet in place in the margings of a water that suffered bad weed growt, worked a treat but was a bitch to get out...the spot was clear as you like

In reply to Post #20
There’s loads
Nash sell em
His was gas powered iirc.

In reply to Post #21
But did you catch off it andy?

In reply to Post #23
I did yes, it was a far margin and.hard to see the clear spot from where I was chuck from so ended up putting two 4ft canes on the back two corners to give me a marker to aim at.

In reply to Post #21
I did the opposite, unfortunately.
Back in the 90's, fishing a pit of around ten acres I somehow stumbled across this little spot, about 3ft X 1ft that would just produce more bites than anywhere else I placed a bait. After two good seasons catching of that spot, amongst others, I decided to give the whole area of the lake bed a clean up, as there were loads of bits of bicycle strewn around (another story). Anyway during my close season clean up I pulled out a piece of zinc sheet, about 3ft X 1ft from exactly where my most productive spot was. Oh how I wish I hadn't. That spot was useless from then on.

In reply to Post #25
A pond I used to fish had a big "board" out in the middle, in Winter when the pond was frozen over, it was easy to spot where it was as no bubbles would rise to the surface from under it except at the edges of it and just under the ice, there would be a perfect rectangle free of air bubbles trapped beneath the ice.

I never fished it though as there was plenty of good fishing spots to put a bait

Not a failure as such, but hindsight

Yrs ago made my own pop ups ,handrolled,using large polystyrene beads,worked well,no issues ..what I did was to critical balance em using a large cut down coke bottle ,nipping bits of heavy metal til ,they sunk proper,slowly, that was the difference tween catching or nowt

I often thought ,what a good idea ,a clear sided bucket or some such, would be a great addition..

Now they make such a thing ,....'carp fishing industry '...lol...