How did you get on?

[Hugh Bailey]

The weather forecast showed a couple of dry hours for this afternoon, maybe even some sun before the rain came. So a chance to start 2025 off with a fish, though I would not expect much with low air and water temperatures.

View attachment 32666

After an hour the rod walloped around as a fish hooked itself, a good fight ensued but I struggled to get out of my seat to net this barbel of just over 6 lbs!

Great photo - looks like a landscape painting!

 

[Ray Roberts]

Great photo - looks like a landscape painting!

That's exactly what I was going to post. Aesthetically it would have been improved by the removal of the fluorescent rod rest head and two rods, but what a beautiful place,

 

[Steve Arnold]

Thanks for your comments about that photo! I usually take it during the summer, but I noted the dark beauty of the scene this raw winters day and managed to get a moment with a weak sun illuminating the misty clouds.

Yes, I am very pleased with that shot! ......and it has to have a rod in the frame for my taste, but perhaps vintage tackle and a forked stick would have been more in place!

This river has so many wonderful places, and it changes so much through the seasons. But how can I take photos without something to link the place with fishing?

I just can't do that!!!!

 

[@Clive]

That's exactly what I was going to post. Aesthetically it would have been improved by the removal of the fluorescent rod rest head and two rods, but what a beautiful place,

He's got no taste in rods or rod rests!

I associate that swim with big carp Steve. Are they still there in winter?

 

[Steve Arnold]

He's got no taste in rods or rod rests!

I associate that swim with big carp Steve. Are they still there in winter?

Two fish rolled in the middle of the river, they looked a decent size but could have been barbel or carp. In the summer there would have been big carp in that massive weed bed!

That short stretch between weirs has seen carp over 50 lbs caught this last year, reputed to have even bigger. Some very good silure as well and I may have hooked them. It is the one stretch I cannot land a carp out of, you really do need a dinghy!

 

[Ray Roberts]

Thanks for your comments about that photo! I usually take it during the summer, but I noted the dark beauty of the scene this raw winters day and managed to get a moment with a weak sun illuminating the misty clouds.

View attachment 32667

Yes, I am very pleased with that shot! ......and it has to have a rod in the frame for my taste, but perhaps vintage tackle and a forked stick would have been more in place!

View attachment 32668

This river has so many wonderful places, and it changes so much through the seasons. But how can I take photos without something to link the place with fishing?

I just can't do that!!!!

Photoshop, lol. To be honest I usually include some fishing gear in a shot. it was the clouds as much as anything that reminded me of an oil painting. That place is stunning.

 

[Hugh Bailey]

View attachment 32669

Photoshop, lol. To be honest I usually include some fishing gear in a shot. it was the clouds as much as anything that reminded me of an oil painting. That place is stunning.

That’s brilliant!

 

[Steve Arnold]

View attachment 32669

Photoshop, lol. To be honest I usually include some fishing gear in a shot. it was the clouds as much as anything that reminded me of an oil painting. That place is stunning.

JMW Turner would have made something very special of that scene"

Thanks for editing that, I was going to have a play with a free AI program later. I think you have done a better job than I could have hoped for!

 

[Ray Roberts]

JMW Turner would have made something very special of that scene"

Thanks for editing that, I was going to have a play with a free AI program later. I think you have done a better job than I could have hoped for!

I recently bought a new lap top as my old computer couldn’t cope with the latest 2025 Photoshop. I was trying it out over the past couple of days and it’s great for removing unwanted objects. It uses AI for generative fill. You just have to paint over the object with the brush tool and it removes it replacing it with an AI generated area based on what surrounds it. It takes only a few moments to do. Previously you had to do it manually using a clone stamp tool or similar. You can also choose what you want to replace something with. Lamp posts can be turned into trees or pretty much anything else.

 

[steve2]

Unfortunately while the pics are nice Ai is now everywhere and you can no longer belIeve in what you are seeing.

 

[Alan Whitty]

Except with your own eyes...

 

[Ray Roberts]

Unfortunately while the pics are nice Ai is now everywhere and you can no longer belIeve in what you are seeing.

People have always been able to manipulate photographs. Dodging, burning, cropping, retouching and blatant fraud have been used by photographers since the beginning of photography. When you see a picture in a newspaper or magazine it’s often a stock photograph. It’s just a lot easier to do now.

 

[@Clive]

Ray is right. Look up the story of the Cottingley Fairies photographs that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought was real.

The Cottingley Fairies - Historic UK

“There are fairies at the bottom of our garden,” announces the opening line of a poem by Rose Fyleman first published in 1917. Coincidentally, that was also the year two intelligent and talented young conspirators managed to convince some very well-known people that there really were fairies...

www.historic-uk.com

 

[Steve Arnold]

It's unfortunate that the convergence of social media and convincing photo manipulation being available worldwide to so many millions people, at low cost or even free, leads to our digital environment being flooded with convincing LIES.

Anyone, from the thoroughly stupid to those with evil intent, can back their story with a convincing image. AI has made life simple for perverse people!

These last few months I have almost given up with Facebook, except for those individuals and groups I trust. Anything unsolicited by me on Facebook is usually FALSE NEWS!

I tweak photos for use on social media as often the phone or digital camera fails to capture a scene as I remember I viewed it. But you do not need a computer to lie about the size of a fish, anglers have been doing that with a wide angle camera lens and "long" arms since they first took trophy shots!

 

[Keith M]

When I was serving as a Naval Photographer back in the early 70s I often used to add cloud formations to my outside photos when in the darkroom if the sky in the shot was particularly bland.

I had a small library of negatives with cloud formations to choose from.

Keith

 

[steve2]

It is not just photos that are Ai generated but pages and pages of false info that many now accept as true.

 

[Philip]

I dont want to be the kill joy here but one of the reasons the HDYGO thread has gone on as long as it has is because Peter Crabtree used to remind people to keep posts here about HDYGO to keep the thread clean.

 

[Ray Roberts]

Good point.

 

[Alan Whitty]

Better not talk about anything then eh,then the forum would shut, just saying....

 

[@Clive]

Talking of clean. I got the Honda stuck in mud today over 2 miles from any road or house and by the time that I had got it unstuck over an hour later the car and I were definitely not clean. I had to collect loads of branches to make a sort of mat for the wheels to grip. Fortunately the authorities had recently done some hedge cutting so although I had to make several journeys I got what I wanted the easy way. Eventually I bit the bullet and did a careful 5 point turn as reversing out wasn't working. Forwards was the way to go.

I set up a bit later than anticipated, fishing a seam on the River Charente. Bait was worm, sweetcorn, a cocktail of the two and soft pellets for three hours without a bite. The rain stopped around 2pm so I moved on foot a hundred yards downstream to where I'd been stuck. That was a confluence with a stream running in. I had three bites on sweetcorn, hit them all, but lost a chub of about a pound when it unhooked itself on near bank vegetation. That left me with a silver common carp and another chub, both around 2lb.

I packed up early after only three last casts so that I could wash the car and foot mat on the way home.