Carp Catchers Blog

Regular customer Lea Baverstock has just upped his personal best with the cracking common carp shown below. Lea’s common picked up his Mainline Cell Dumbell Hookers hookbait tipped with Enterprise Pop-Up Sweetcorn at 6.30am and took 10 minutes to land. It was caught from A1 Pits and weighed 26lb 8oz. Well done Lea !!

Best Fishes,

John

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  

Martin Deathridge had a nice clean mirror carp from Bluebell Lakes Swan lake last week. Weighing 29lb 12oz Martins mirror was tempted from the edge of a weed bed at 70yrds range. Martin was using 18mm  Mainline Cell Freezer Boilies  scattered over a wide area. His hookbait was a snowman with a Cell bottom bait balanced out with a 10mm  Mainline Hi Visual Pineapple Pop Up. The rig Martin used was tied with  Nash Missing Link  in 25lb tied to a size 5  ESP Curve Shanx  hook. Nice one.

Best Fishes

John

Gary and I fished the 2009 BCAC Qualifier at Farlows lake again this year. We got down on the Thursday and had a good look round, then had a nice social in the bar that evening. The next morning we were up at first light and after a cup of tea we scouted the lake again. We had a hearty breakfast in the onsite cafe and then the moment of truth the draw!! Gary and I were fortunate and came out second and got our second choice of swim. We were up against some stiff opposition, The O’Connors, Ian Russell, as well as last years winners, but we felt confident. Things started slowly in our swim but after spodding out 3 kilos of 18mm  Mainline Cell Freezer Boilies  I had a run at 9.30pm on a rod fished to an island gap. I managed to get the carp away from the snag, but half way in it kited to my left towards a gap in the islands. The carp had to be stopped so I held on and gave no line and unfortunately the hook pulled argggh!! Gary had a take that night and was cut off almost immediately. Next morning we found another snaggy spot and had a fish within an hour which weighed 18lb and some ounces.

Finally we were off the mark with a nice common carp. The take came to a combi link rig tied with Rigmaroles  Hydro-Link Silt  with two pieces of  Enterprise Pop-Up Sweetcorn  as a hookbait. In the afternoon we tried zig rigs on top of the gravel bars to no avail. We spodded out about another 6 kilos of bait for the coming night. We added some sweetcorn and  Carp Company Icelandic Red Cranberry & Caviar Freezer Boilies  to the spod mix.  At about 5.00pm I had another bite on the island rod which was cut off after about 20 seconds. Another cut off on the same rod about two hours later had Gary and I pulling our hair out. We both tied on the heaviest Nylon leaders we could (leadcore and braid leaders are banned) in an effort to combat the cut offs. Gary had one cut off and landed one carp that night which weighed 19lb plus so now we were in the running. Next morning saw us land another 18lb pluser, which put us well into contention. It was not to be though and at 12.00 the hooter sounded to end another BCAC qualifier. Had we landed any one of the fish we lost we would have qualified.

Best Fishes,

John

Regular customer Lea also had a successful session on the difficult Pit 6 recently. Lea had two common carp weighing 16lb and two mirror carp one at 11lb 5oz and one at 17lb. The baits that Lea used were Mainline Cell Freezer Boilies and Dynamite Baits new Red Fish Freezer Boilies . No rig details from Lea but whatever he was using obviously worked. Nice one Lea.

Best Fishes,

John

Customer Eamonn caught this nice scaly 25lb 9oz  mirror carp recently still in it’s winter colours. Eamonn used his favourite Mainline Cell Freezer Boilies  to tempt his lovely mirror. His rig was tied with 24lb Drennan Carp Silk to a size 4 Korda Wide Gape Hook  and cast to a silty area.

Best fishes,

John

Customer Eamonn had a really nice scaly mirror recently. The fully scaled mirror carp weighed 19.5lb and was caught from an open water spot using Mainline Cell Freezer Boilies  in 18mm. Eamonns’ rig was tied using a size 4 Korda Wide Gape Hook  and Drennan Carp Silk . Nice one Eamonn!

Best fishes,

John