It is baffling why people would comment on other peoples stuff, i remember around 10 years ago i was doing a lot of carping on a budget, i didnt have any rod pod, fancy matching rods and reels. I had 2 odd 3 piece match rods with 2 okuma reels, with 3 quid bank sticks.
Me and a mate went on to the watergate lake between Seaham and Murton and saw some guys fishing, we approached them and you could actually see them physically uncomfortable with us talking to them, they had all the top brand gear, we asked if they had anything and they said no and that me and my mate would definatly be wasting our time with a bit of a snigger.
Me and my mate were no amateurs and had a secret bait which had just come onto the market at the time and we had some awesome results with it.
Within minutes we were pulling fish out, i think in the first hour we had 7-8 fish between us and this carried on for the following hour, then low and behold we see one of them guys heading round our way to see exactly what we were using.
He got absolutely nothing in the way of information from us and he wasn't best pleased that apparent idiots with below standard gear had completely out fished the so called professionals...
Me and my mate had a good laugh between ourselves as they blanked.
The bait was mainline Assasinate boilies...
I tend to find the freshwater fishing scene is a lot more snobby than the sea fishing, i think you have just ran into the 0.1% which are nobheads.
