Welcome to the Thinking Tackle podcast, and today we're joined by a man who is perhaps best known for his detailed scientific knowledge of our quarry.

But this is a man who has caught some of the finest carp that the UK has ever produced,

and we're going to dig a little bit deeper into the fishing archive of Mr. Carp, Simon Scott.

The Thinking Tackle Podcast.

So I thank you very much for joining us in the studio today.

Yes, my pleasure.

Coming up from the deep south as you are. Yes. How's life? It's really good. Thank you, Rich. Yeah, it's very good. Thanks for inviting me. And before we get started, I'd like to congratulate you on your new position as host. Thank you. Couldn't have been given to a better person. Oh, you've got to make me blush. No pressure. It doesn't mean I'm going to be nice to you, though, is it? Hopefully you'll ask me really nice questions now. I think we really should start with some fish chat because I know how, well, frankly, everything in your life is fish. Quite fishy. Yeah, definitely.

What's been going on on the farm then, Ty?

Okay, well, good question.

The farm, we've had at this point a very, very dry summer and a very dry spring,

so we are short of water, and we've got some ponds that are very low.

Fortunately, because we have airation systems in the ponds, we're okay at the moment, but we're quite like a bit of rain.

I mean, the price of everything now, to run a farm must be giving you sleepless nights.

Yeah, the cost of the running the aerators.

It's a difficult balancing act because the aeration systems, not only do they directly put auction into the water by mixing air through the water column, but they also turn the pond over.

So they take the staler water at the bottom and they turn the whole thing over.

And that helps maintain the algae blooms and the ponds.

And of course, an algae bloom, so that sort of greeny tinge or a browny tinge in the water

obviously it varies you some ponds you get like a reddy tinge it varies from pond to pond even

ponds that are side by side can be very different but that algae bloom is creating free oxygen

so you've got a balancing act between one in the aeration on enough just to keep those blooms ticking

over and keep the pond healthy

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