Hey All! :D
Hope you buzzing anglers are nailing these odd seasons god has given us or to be fair what man has molded out of the earth system, I am very sorry I have not updated the blog for a while but Anglers Profile needed some TLC to keep you guys happy, I wanted to touch on the Carp angling Championships, now I always big these tournaments up to the max and Anglers Profile Supports it 100%, we list all event dates etc. but what's so special about the BYCAC (British Young Carp Angling Championship) BCAC (British Carp Angling Championship) & the newest of them all the CCUK (Carp Cup UK) ????????????????????????????????????????????

Well they can take you to big places if you win and not only that but you can gain a lot of money from them and most of all knowledge whether you win or lose, I am now 18 and feeling 80 with all of the carp market stress (wouldn’t change it for the world) but I have been doing the bycac for 3 years until this year as I am too old for the young ones comp but it really give me a wakeup call in carp fishing as in my round was rob Sutton, brad day, and some other good lads, and boy did they kick my sorry ass :( lol there was me thinking ha! I’m welsh you plonkers we are the hard fishermen, maybe physical but heck the are good mentally at carping, and to picture a glorious day at Brasenose 1 at linear fisheries, me and my father pull up unload the car and not to mention my mate Adam Morris who come along to see the action, I set up and I’m ready thinking yes! Ready before everyone else "what are those mugs doing playing with their lines walking there spods up and down? The guns going to go now you fool" those mugs, fools, twit won the eliminators and after the first one I realized how badly I sucked at carp fishing.
So as any good angler would do is move on and realize they need to train big time, no matter what the lake is and where it is just fish, really there is no difference between fish brains, it fries my brain when anglers are like "aww no I have to fish Trevor’s lake cause it has 50's in it...get a grip you cannot even catch a 20lb" it really does take time and effort to get better at carping and yes some anglers are lucky but at the end of the day getting the knowledge is the key to success and hitting tournaments like the ones above is the way forward.
If you are a father and can see your son loves carp fishing and is age 10+ then pay the £30 for him/her to go to oxford and learn more and come away with £140 worth of tackle...yes that right £140 worth that worth it in its own, really you cannot go wrong and if your son/daughter wins then whoop! They have bagged themselves a carp fishing career: p cool or what!?
If you are older like me and really want that fishing career and your fighting to get it whether you make your own way like myself or just do competitions or do both like me you cannot go far wrong than entering the BCAC or the CCUK as these cups are mega money, mega sponsors, mega angling, you don’t just fish against your own blood in the sport but compete against the stars from Korda, Fox, Nash, Carp Talk, Crafty Carper etc. so practice is needed...this month July coming next I am in the CCUK for Team AP and Simon and Mike have just passed the BCAC qualifier for their round and Aaron sluman is doing the BYCAC so hopeful we will get 3/3 atm we have 1/3 fingers crossed :D

Well enough about championships and I am very tired now as I have been working my socks off for you guys, and so I should: D love life and live it for a good time not a long time :)

Adios Dogs
Team AP

France Crete lakes

We arrived at Crete lakes on a roasting hot day in

France after a long journey all the way from

Birmingham. This was my first time fishing in France and after all the preparation I had put into coming on this trip, I for one could not wait to get fishing.

Swim choice
At Crete lakes a draw of passports takes place to decide on who gets 1^st pick on swim choice, luckily for us we came out 2^nd so we choose our first choice of peg, when we arrived we where given around 1 hour to have a good look around the lakes to see what pegs we fancied, because I was with my brother we decided to fish a double peg on lake one, the swim it self to the left had some lovely looking snags and a large willow tree to target as obvious features and also a inlet pipe gushing water into the lake to target and also to the right had plenty of open water to give us plenty of options as well.
We where there for a whole 7 days so I got the marker rod out to explore the swim in more detail.
In front of us we had 10ft of water dropping down to 14ft further out to the middle of the lake, the lake bottom was made up of soft layer of silt with some hard spots and at around 45 yards out we had a fairly big onion weed bed luckily not very thick weed and we would have no problem presenting a bait in it.

Bait & rigs
Crete is mainly a mainline boilies dominated water so I took with my 10 kilo of 15 and 18mill cell boilies from the bait feed company and also my ever faithful dynamite banana & pineapple pop ups, plus various other pop up and a couple of kilo of Nash tuttis just in case.
Hook links where the same I use at home my own combi rigs made up of fluorocarbon and a soft braid and I upped the size of the hook to a size 6 wide gap instead of a size 8 and where around 9inch in length just to sit nicely on the thin layer of silt and weed.
I fished snowman style with a cell bottom bait topped with banana & pineapple pop up, the rigs where fished with a p.v.a mesh bag of crushed cell boilies with the hook link passed through the middle of the bag to protect the hook point in the weed.
The rigs where simple anchor rig tubing and safety clips.

The Session
I placed one rod to the left just off the big willow tree and my right hand rod would be placed at the back of the onion weed bed as the lakes slopes off into deeper water. I decided to bait little and often rather then go for a big bed of baits and I would fish for one fish at a time.
Over both rods I put in a fairly tight area I would say half a kilo of boilies to start off with and I would top up the swim every time I caught one.


The swim

The traps where set and I was feeling pretty confident but after setting up base camp for the week, the disturbance of the marker float and the roasting heat of the day I did not expect to much to happen until night time.
At Around 2am I had a screaming take on my left hand rod and I landed my 1^st ever 30lb+fish it was a lovely looking mirror I was made up.


               1st fish of the week 33lb

 On the same night I also lost 2 fish to the snags.
After losing those fish in the snags and after some advice from the bailiff, I decide to fish locked up on the left hand rod and to trim down the lead clip so that I would lose the weight on a take occurring, so the fish would come straight up in the water and away from those snags This did the trick, all week I caught fish during the night and a couple in the morning in fact I only had one fish in the day!!!
I stayed with my spots and baited regularly all week using 12 kilo of cell boilies and a tub of banana and pineapple pop ups I total I caught 15 fish eight 20lb+ fish and seven 30lb+ fish and I lost 5 to the snags!!! The smallest carp of the week being 24lb and the biggest being 39lb and my brother after moving to another peg managed a 54lb mirror on the first day in his new peg.

What a great week I would recommend Crete lakes to everybody a great place to fish, good food, top bailiffs, Big Carp and we also meet some really top blokes as well.

Tight Lines

www.cretelakes.com

Hey all sorry the daily blog slowed down I guess the death of Roy knocked me off my feet :/ but that’s life and team AP is back full steam ahead, so today I have just posted  30 DVD's so look out for yours, if it doesn’t come then please let us know like Big Boy Chris did ;) keep it cool Chris.

So I’ve got to get fishing soon on the banks myself and with fairbrass at wellington syndicate, just waiting on his reply for when to go but that should a laugh showing him how to really fish...welsh style ;) hehe

We are encouraging female members to join as we know this is vital to keep the community going strong as where would man be without female...a lot richer but we love them so if you know of any female anglers nag them to join the site!

So from the team Froggy is working out the new competitions for the next couple of weeks, I have got hold of nash bait £30 worth, gardener tackle £50 worth, Thermal Flask Mugs, Wychwood Hats, DVD's etc. so watch the forum.

Going onto the forum I have noticed it has come alive! keep it going guys but remember we are not a forum we are a social network so this network is 10x stronger than any other, we are running on the same platform as facebook but under different ownership, Anglers Profile cost money to run and so far we have spent £7000 so please do not think this is something we get for free, we offer it for free as we love fishing, we make no money :)