In reply to Post #148
I completely agree with so many points said here. Into my late teens and early 20s I was heavily inspired (as many) by the Matt Hayes videos, and we followed him as he changed his tactics to a more "modern" approach. These days he has been completely alienated by this type of fishing, if you visit his Youtube channel you will see he has gone back to proper fishing, for species variety and using much less gear.

I think for those who have been fishing at least 10-15 years, they may go through this realisation too. When it comes down to it, size really doesn't matter. When it's all said and done, I find myself having way more fun on a bank in the middle of the country side, catching Chub, Tench, Barbel, Roach, Perch, Rudd, Crucian Carp and Bream. Even the smaller F1s are arguably more fun than many of the big brutish Carp you get in syndicates where you are lucky if you get a few bites in a day and past a certain size they seem to stop fighting as much and just become dead weight.

The difficulty I have at the moment is finding waters that aren't just stocked to the brim full of Carp.

In reply to Post #122
I started fishing when in 1998 I was 9 years old, my two uncles were passionate about fishing; one a very good match fisherman and the other an equally good fisherman who loved to even make his own maggots. I was extremely lucky to be able to learn off these two and from that I got my love for fishing.

During these years I fished a few matches and went all over the place and caught all sorts. The angling community was very different even then, you never heard a peep from anyone on the bank, most people were reserved, friendly and genuinely knowledgeable about fishing.

Fast forward to today (especially during lockdown) and my experience is very different. You can't even get peace and quiet, on Sunday I spent a day trying to fish on a pool that had your bog standard Bite Alarm-ringing, loud-mouth chav fishermen all around the pool, not one of them seemingly understands how to mute their phone, casting into my swim. Violent and thuggish behaviour and constant swearing.

Did these people not learn that sound travels quicker through water? All this obnoxious banter, music and other disturbances are turning off the fish.

What really grinds my gear is how they don't appear to love the sport. Not in the same way I do. I detest bite alarms and don't believe they should be used in the day time at all; it's just an excuse for lazy "easy" fishing, chuck out 3 rods, sit down and gorm out looking at Facebook, that's how these people like to fish.

I have opted to go for a more hybrid approach of fishing; taking on the lessons of past and present, I fish with 1 rod, a quiver feeder fishing or waggler float fishing,

I really love just sitting there analysing fish behaviour, trying to learn and expand my skills. But the art is lost on these guys, an apt metaphor would be the guy on the yacht listening to classical music vs the hatchback blasting dubstep whilst tumbling down a hill.