Carp Catchers Blog

Choosing areas on your lake to pre-bait can be the key to success. You need to do your homework on the lake to determine the best areas to target. I would suggest you pick a couple of areas to keep introducing bait to avoid disappointment should you turn up for a session and find someone in one of your baited swims. Just because you have baited a swim it unfortunately doesn’t mean other anglers won’t fish there.

I would pick two swims in completely different areas of the lake so that you have the choice of which to fish. This means that if the weather conditions should favour one area you can head for that area. I would personally pick one area on the end of what would be a south westerly wind and another in an area where you know the fish visit frequently. Once you have chosen your areas its time to decide on the spots/features you wish to fish. Its best to do a bit of marker work in the swims you’re baiting and find any likely holding areas and/or patrol routes. You could be looking for a needle in a haystack, but remember if your going to be spending money on travelling to bait up its worth putting 100% effort in. When looking for spots you could be looking for subtle differences in depth, smooth areas of “clean” silt where the carp have been feeding, bloodworm beds or areas which are not so choked with weed. It really all depends on your water. 

If you are able to observe the fish then watch them closely and figure out what sort of areas they are feeding in and on what sort of lakebed. If you can’t observe the fish then I would suggest you look at past captures if any, or speak to other anglers and see if they are willing to tell you what sort of areas and lake bed they have caught from. Obviously don’t go jumping straight into these areas as they could well be popular swims which you should try to avoid, as other anglers will be benefiting from your bait and hard work. Once you have built up a bigger picture its time to find the spots you wish to bait. Margins are always a good bet too and very often neglected by other anglers.

Make sure once you have found your spots that you have marked them on your lines or paced them out and you have picked far bank markers to aim for. It can sometimes be easier to note these things in some sort of a fishing diary, which you can used to build up a better knowledge of the lake. Here is a blog which may help you when it comes to this stage.  Another Carp Catchers Blog which may help is New Season Baiting Campaign .

Tight Lines

Dave

Single hookbaits are a good approach all year round although they come into their own during the winter when bites definately slow. Single hookbaits are many anglers favourite approach during the colder months because of their effectiveness at picking off fish in their winter mode which otherwise probably would not have been caught if a bed of bait was used.

There are a wide range of baits out there which work particularly well as single hookbaits. I prefer to use glugged pop-ups for singles but most high attraction baits are suitable. Some anglers prefer high viz baits where others prefer high attraction food baits. My favourites are white pop-ups such as the Baitcraft Snowball, yellow pineapple pop-ups such as Mainline Hi-Visual Pineapple Juice and food bait pop-ups such as Dynamite Baits The Source. This gives me a good enough range to try.

My tips would be to make note of any fish you see show during the winter months this year and in previous years if you know the water well and use these areas as starting points each session. Bear in mind on some waters the fish could well be at range so use simple pop-up rigs that are less likely to tangle and don’t over complicate things too much. And remember if you see fish show it might be worth a cast at them as fish are less likely to move much during the winter so the closer you can get a bait to the fish the better chance of a run.

Tight Lines

Dave

Autumn has to be one of the best seasons on the calendar for carp fishing, as well as spring but we’re not there yet. During the autumn period big carp all over the country start to fed quite hard in a bid to up there weights for the winter ahead. It is not uncommon that all the larger residents of a lake will get caught during this period. This could be due to the fish being in competition for food or just generally being greedy about how they are feeding before the onset of winter. Either way they more often than not make mistakes this time of year.

If you’re planning to fish through this autumn into the coming winter then pick yourself a good quality bait such as the  Mainline Cell  or Activ 8 freezer boilies, the  Nash Amber Strawberry  or  Baitcraft T1 are all proven winter baits. Big carp know what’s good for them and what’s not, that’s how they got so big in the first place so picking a good quality bait is very important. This time of year it’s also important to find those areas which the carp are prepared to feed and get some bait on them, if you have the opportunity to prebait these spots in readiness for forthcoming sessions then it can pay to do so. Although prebaiting can be a frustrating game if the lake your fishing is targeted by a lot of anglers it can pay off in a big way if everything all comes together. Prebaiting can get the fish feeding confidently on your chosen bait in your chosen areas while there are no rigs in the water. If possible try to prebait on or just after darkness, this will avoid any unwanted attention from the birdlife residing on your water.

If you can it helps to find out as much as possible about captures during the autumn from previous years and the kind of spots they are getting caught from. If you can’t do this then I’d suggest targeting the deeper silty areas as this is where the majority of the carp’s natural food can be found in abundance. Carp are a creature of habit so it can become very difficult to get them to feed in areas they wouldn’t usually visit, so the areas you target must be visited by the carp on a regular basis or you could very well be making the challenge even harder for yourself.

Observation is the key to finding the feeding areas that carp are visiting, first and last light are the best time to watch for feeding carp. Whether that be bubbling, crashing or clouding of certain areas of the lake. If these areas are located you are half way to banking carp in their autumn colours.

If you bare in mind the factors I’ve discussed when planning your autumn campaign then you could well be in for a good one.

Tight Lines

Dave  

When it comes to casting accuracy a lot of people struggle with hitting the right spot every time when carp fishing, hopefully this blog will help you towards hitting that spot time after time.

Once you have located your choosen spot with your marker whether it be a clear gravel patch, silty pocket or just a choosen area to spod bait to wind down your marker float until it hits the lead then clip it up, making sure you have picked a suitable far bank marker to aim at which you will be able to pin point even during the hours of darkness. Now lay your marker rod down behind your swim along with the rod/rods you wish to place on the area, loosen the clutches then walk the marker setup and leads down the bank until you hit the clip on your marker rod. Now lay them all down side by side and walk back to your rods to clip them up also, before retrieving the leads attach a line marker such as the Armaled Mark Up Elastic  (see August blog – How To Tie A Sliding Stop Knot) to the line on each rod making sure it will sit behind the alarms and won’t affect bite indication. Once this is done you will be able to cast at your far bank marker during daylight or darkness and be completely confident that you hitting that spot,  just make sure that you unclip the line from your reels after casting out so your rods won’t be dragged in should you get a take. If you wish to spod to the area, place your spod rod on that same spot and walk your spod rod down to the same point, a stick in the ground is enough to ensure you don’t lose the mark. I would advise that you clip your spod rod a few feet short of the mark to allow for the swing back that will occur on the clipped up rods as they fall to the lake bed.

If you have to reel in the rod/rods to rebait make sure to clip the line up again with the line marker in the same place as when you first attached it to the line, i.e. if you attached the line marker between the last two eyes make sure you re clip the rod with the marker between those eyes. Also if you have a fish from the spot cast the rod out into open water away from the area to avoid any disturbance and clip the rod with the line marker in its original position.

A few tips to consider when using this method.

1. Make sure you lay all your rods in the same place when walking the leads down the bank.

2. Make sure you stand in exactly the same spot when casting, as if you stand too far forwards, backwards, to the left or the right you may land off the spot.

3. Once you’ve cast your rod out hold the tip high in the air to avoid the lead/spod bouncing back off the clip and missing the spot, this will also avoid damaging the line if you hit the clip too hard.

4. If the cast has strayed slightly left of the mark on the cast hold the rod up and out to the right slightly before you hit the clip, this will help correct the cast and visa versa if the cast has strayed to the right.

And remember if you miss the spot then recast the rod as it could mean all the difference between a blank and a fish on the bank.

Tight Lines

Dave

Watercraft is one of the most important but most neglected aspects of angling, a basic understanding of watercraft and where to fish a lake in given conditions will put you well ahead of the rest. Knowing the basic watercraft skills will help you find the fish which most of the time puts you half way there to catching them. Firstly when you arrive at a lake you need to look at the wind direction and know which direction its coming from, a strong south westerly wind will be a warm wind and fish will generally follow this but they will generally sit on the back of a northerly wind as this will be a cold wind; this is only a general rule of thumb, it can and will be different depending on other conditions and the lake you’re fishing. The second thing you need to think about when you arrive at your chosen lake is the water depths and the weather conditions on the day, if its a sunny day then it will make more sense to fish the shallowest part of the lake as the fish will move up into the shallows to feed as the water will warm up quicker than the deeper parts of the lake. If its a cold dull day then the fish are more likely to be found in the deeper areas of the lake. Again this is just a rule of thumb and will differ between lakes and other conditions. The last bit of watercraft you want to look at is observation, when you arrive at the lakeside don’t just setup up in the closest or most convenient swim take a walk around and see if you can spot any signs of fish. Spend a little time scoping the water out and watch for fish topping, feeding or cruising around, get yourself a decent pair of Polaroids such as the ESP Camou Polarised Sunglasses and climb some trees if its allowed but be careful as it can be very dangerous. Once you’ve chosen a likely looking swim have a think about where you want to put your rods before chucking them out and think about where the fish will be likely to pass through your swim, for example if your fishing next to a bay then it might be worth putting a rod over into the entrance to the bay to try a catch the fish as they are entering and exiting the bay. 

I hope these few basic pointers will help you get your watercraft on track but remember not everything I mentioned will be entirely true on your water so keep an open mind and try to learn more about the lake itself to build up a bigger picture in your head of how the fish behave in certain conditions.

Cheers

David

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