Yes help would be good I have had more than my fair share of problems with loosing fish though I will describe how I have interpreted them latley .
I have had a big problem using berkley vanish as a hook length that I stoped by not using it any more, personally I think it should be banned it's that bad.
Last summer when I started fishing again after a 16 year break I was striking at all bites very positivley and had a few hook pulls and tears in the unfortunate carps mouths.
It was because of this that I joined this forum to find out what I was doing wrong and found striking on self hooking rigs and striking far too hard were problems.
I then started my barbel campaigne using atfirst 8lb line and 6lb hook lengths but they were not enough and snapped at the first touch of a snag so I whent up to 8lb hook lengths in the days when I suspect my hook tieing abilities were not what they are now I also reused the hook lengths to often and did't sharpen the hooks.
I found on two occasions I had kamason 911 hooks straighten out on me when I was sure I had set the clutch just right on my reels .
I feel I have sorted that out by having a much more flexible aproach to the clutch and tightening or looseneing it up as and when it feels right depending on the fish .
As well as moving on to stronger hooks like QM1's.
I caught 4 carp at a venue useing my 2.5lb carp rod but must have lost 3 more on that session all hook pulls and have found the obvious answer has been to use more flexible rods though I did catch a 19lb carp from this venue and thought I was gearing up for more of the same.
I now know the test curve is all about casting weight not fish size.
My standard aproach to carp and barbel has been to try and get away with the smallest hook I can to improve presentation so I tend to use size 12 and 14 more than any other (this is an area I suspect might need improving though the 19lb was on a 14)
I have been told fairly recently that my hook sizes could be part of the problem?
I have found that I should not reuse 8lb daiwa sensor hook lengths more than a few times as they tend to snap but I do use lots of pva mesh bags so this could be putting strain on them.
Prehaps I shoule be attaching the bags to the lead somehow to stop this strain ?
I have just this week swapped to 9lb incognito but so far have no idea on it's service life maybe the safe side would be to not reuse after two sessions.
I have started to religiously sharpen every hook before it gets caste out.
As an example last night( my barbel session is now this afternoon as I ended up with to many things to do to make it worth paying to go to the comercial yesterday)I whent to my local for 2 hours had one under 2lb carp on my flayden telescopic boat rod .
Then lost another about twice the size after a small fight with the clutch set loose enough to let it run (so I thought) no idea how it got off I was not winching it in though the presure was on ,can't explain it the hook was ok and it seemed a good hold .This is not typical but on average session I will only land around two in every three runs so I know somthing is not right with me.
Any help is welcome I want to get better that is my main focus with this forum.
It's the barbel session this afternoon
:j:j