In message , "Matt (IS Team)"
writes
I had a very frustrating few hours fishing floaters on Saturday.
The swans were a pain in the arse, but the most frustrating part was
watching the carp take all the freebie's and my hookbait being left well
alone!!

I was using dog biscuits that I had flavoured with Liquid Molasses, mounted
on a hair of 4lb Shinobi hooklength to 6lb Maxima, 4 feet from the
controller float.
I lost count of the number of fish that started to rise to the hookbait but
turned away, only to take some freebies under a foot away!

I tried swapping to a 3lb flourocarbon hooklength, but this just sank and
pulled the biscuits right next to the controller. Hook was a PR27 size 14, I
tried dropping this down to a 18. I put fresh bait on the hook every 10
minutes. Tried half a biscuit.
Nothing I did made any difference, hookbait remained untouched - while the
freebies were sucked down with confidence.

I must have got through nearly a pint of biscuits over the course of the
day, with no fish hooked!


What can I do to improve my presentation??

Something I've always wanted to try is effectively an upside-down float,
to lift the trace out of the water. Imagine one of those really big pole
floats with a long fibre stem and a spherical body. Thread it onto the
line so that it's almost as far from the hook as the length of the stem.
Then shot it *above* the float, so that the float cocks upside-down with
the stem waving in the air. With the weight of the bait pulling it over,
it should leave the bait sat on the surface with no line in the water
visible to the carp.

You'd probably have to make it yourself rather than actually using a
pole float, but I reckon it could work.

Is this where someone tells me Drennan have been making them for years?

--
Steve Walker