The summer never came and the autumn went from warm to freezing overnight (snow in October – last time that happened was in 1973!) You could say it’s time to pack the carbons away in the shed, turn the heating up and endure X Factor until Christmas. You could that is.
      Or, you could take a note of what Jim Shelley has been doing for years – catching more in the ball-crushing months than in the summer. We’ve all read the reports, seen the pictures, but now Jim tells all on exactly how he does it. It clearly works as that picture in the top right proves: two in the net at once in January! Page 47.
      You’ll also need the right venue to carry out your winter attack and back from this month is our detailed venue maps (P124), this time covering one of Jim’s favourite winter haunts – Waveney Valley’s D Lake. It shows you the depths, the features and most importantly, the areas were you’ll catch them from.
      CARPology is fully committed to helping you get the most out of the 08/09 winter and what with Joe Morgan carrying out this month’s Stop Making Those Silly Mistakes (P33), Nigel Sharp’s (P54) guide to fishing gravel pits and Myles Gascoyne on hookbait presentation (P27), you’ve got a great footing to see the last part of the year out in style.
      The tackle and bait manufacturers are still hard at it and this month we give you a complete rundown of the new tackle systems from Nash – Box Logic (P14), the new ESP landing (it’s genius and on page 122), Gardner’s ‘Convert’ end tackle range and if you’ve ever wondered how your favourite background feed is made (pellets), then head to page 113 where all is revealed.
      And now for the real big news… Daa, de daa… Our new revolution rig testing series. Each month we’ll be testing a well-used rig on actual ‘live’ fish – and as our headline states: “Not the back of your hand!” Each rig will be tested, tweaked, retested and tweaked again until it goes it perfectly – and nails ’em everytime! It all starts on page 40. Enjoy the issue.
Joe Wright, Editor