* Lockdown *
Bait, Feed, and Rig
I don’t know about you, but the enforced Angling shutdown has caused not just frustration about not being able to go fishing - but has provided plenty of time to be able to think about re-evaluating Strategies and Tactics when things finally get going again.
Typically, previously, when I fished a new water or even a new swim I’d never fished before - or even one I hadn’t fished for some while, the first thing I did when arriving was get the ‘leading’ (as in lead weight) rod out to find out where the weed was. The bottom strata determined what rig I wanted to use, so if there was thick weed where I wanted to put a bait, I’d cast around to see if I could find clearer areas, or if it was patchy, try to get a sense of where the best place to put a bait would be.
What I found determined what sort of rig I’d use, so if there was heavy weed the chances were a solid bag would have been my approach of choice, or if there was a chance of my bait landing in sparser or more patchy weed I might have gone for something like a ‘Ronnie’ or Pop-Up rig - a rig which would lightly settle down on top of whatever was out there. On clean ground I’d use whatever my current favourite was, the one which gave me the most confidence.
Then I’d probably introduce some spodded feed over the area; in recent years I pretty much standardised on Hemp and boilies and it’s been much the same ever since…
For some while though I’ve been wondering whether this is in fact ‘arse-about-face’ as it were. Instead of the spodded feed being the last item on the agenda, maybe it should be the first? What do I mean?
In the past I’ve kept pots of hook-baits of both Wafters and Pop-Ups of many brands and makes (and even ‘hard hooker’ bottom baits) and these have been the ones slung out into the pond on the rig. The constituents of the spodded feed however have invariably been different to the hook bait, being generally a cheap ‘bulk’ ingredient (typically Hemp) and boilies of various kinds - whatever was on offer at the right price at the time.
But what boilies are being fed around it? Are they the same or completely different?
But Wafters and Pop-Ups of the same make and brand often resemble in appearance and smell, nothing like the boilies out of the bag introduced out into the swim. So a Cell boily (say) out of the bag is nothing like the pop-up out of the pot and certainly doesn’t have the same intensity of smell either. This is not surprising since pop-ups and bottom baits are made from completely different base mixes. I started wondering whether this altogether made sense.
Bottom - Mainline Cell pop-ups straight out of the pot.
Even in these images you can see they are not the same baits at all!
So you are expecting to get carp feeding on a bed of spodded feed; that feed comprises Hemp (which you can not use on the rig [well you can, but that’s another story]), and boilies (say for the purposes of this debate, Mainline ‘Cell’) in whatever size you can get - say 18 mm. And then, you throw out a 14 mm. Cell pop-up which resembles the feed boilies only vaguely and is certainly not the same size as the feed, and moreover, you fish it off the bottom, completely unlike any of the free offerings you desperately want the carp to confidently feed on! Worse still, you figure that you might want a ‘Cherry-On-The-Cake’ type scenario and fish a pink 14 mm. ’Northern Special’ over the top; now that is bonkers! This bait looks and smells nothing like the 18 mm. Cell you have been feeding them on! The fact this actually works I think is more to do with the carp hoovering up everything edible in their path than being a rational strategy I feel.
I do concede however that many of the Korda ‘Underwater’ videos clearly illustrate the pink bait being singled out and sampled in preference to everything else lying in the swim and this is a massive flaw in my argument! I confess, I have no idea why this is…maybe the ‘Cherry-On-The-Cake’ does work because it stands out amongst all the other free offerings and appeals to a carp’s sense of curiosity?
I really don’t know.
What I do know is that an approach that is logical to me and makes more sense, gives me the confidence to sit behind the rods when there is nothing happening out in the pond. If you don’t have confidence in what you are doing - then you are reducing the whole process to just a lottery.
So my ‘arse-about-face’ approach begins with the feed I’m actually putting out there; everything else about my strategy and tactics arises from this.
My current favourite is Sticky Baits ‘Manilla’ boilies and Hemp. Hemp is still relatively cheap when bought in bulk and I get it from here:
(I'm fickle like that...)
Cost for 20kgs is £34 which is under £2/kilo although you’ve got to add shipping to that although I notice that they’ve now gone ‘Click and Collect’ (is this because of Lockdown? Best to check with them.) you may well be able to get it cheaper elsewhere near you, but it’s pretty cheap stuff to throw at the fish.
Not so the Manilla boilies however which is why I tend to be a bit parsimonious with them in spod mixes.
Cost is £45 for 5 kilos of 20 mm. and £42.50 for 5 kilos of 16 mm. If you want to go small then 5 kilos of 12 mm. will set you back £50.
I tend to use the 20 mm. when Bream are a nuisance and 16 mm. for general use, but to be honest, if Bream are not an issue then I tend to use Corn tactics anyway.
Anyway. So I’ve got Manilla boilies mixed with Hemp out on my spot and I now need to decide what I’m going to put out over the top of it… exactly the same boilies that have gone into the spodded feed. It makes perfect sense - if you’ve got them feeding on Manilla (in-between mouthfuls of Hemp), why sling out a ‘Northern Special’ or some other completely different bait? [Incidentally, the Hemp is included because there are many thousands of seeds which will take the carp a lot longer to hoover up than the relatively expensive Manilla].
Get them feeding confidently on a specific food item and their confidence in eating it should make them easier to catch. Anyone who has floater-fished at all will have observed that this initial feeding of surface baits without putting out a rig is sometimes essential for the fish to ‘drop their guard’ sufficiently to take the one with the hook in it, although even then, floater-fishing can be immensely problematic with the fish wary of the line on the surface or some other fear trigger that you can not immediately discern. The basic principle remains the same however - feed them beforehand to catch them afterwards.
What rig you use to present your chosen boily will depend entirely on what you feel confident with. I would stick my neck out here and say that all rigs are capable of catching a carp; maybe not all the time, but most of the time. Even dreadful rigs, if they are structurally sound and permit the hook to enter the fish’ mouth, they will eventually catch a carp. I remember Kevin Maddocks describing the early days of The Hair Rig in development saying that he and Lenny Middleton tried different lengths of ‘hair’ and caught carp with them up to nearly four inches long! Although the rig caught fish I don’t think I’d fish it with any confidence these days!
I believe Kevin used an actual hair from his own wife's head during the first trials!
(If you see a bald-headed woman on your travels, be kind to her; she made her sacrifice in the name of Carp Fishing!)
My own preference at the moment is for a Simple Fluorocarbon Rig. Actually, this preference swings between that and a fluorocarbon ‘D’ Rig, Horton Rig, Slip ‘D’ Rig, call-it-what-you-like-rig. The ‘D’ Rig accommodates both bottom baits and wafters and is very versatile although is a little more complicated to tie than the Simple Rig which I reserve mostly for bottom baits out-of-the-bag. The Simple Rig has the virtue of being extremely simple to tie and it works. This is its greatest virtue.
Of course, that'll never work. It can't. It's not complicated enough...(?)
I do and have used wafters a lot recently although I don’t like the fact that they are not perfect copies of the spodded items laying on the bottom around them. I prefer to use cork inserts to increase buoyancy since I do think they can be more successful at different times. Bottom baits can be used in ones or twos; I’ve had many experiences of a double-bait out-catching the single and frequently fish a single on one rod and the double on another. A wafter is generally the third rod. Match the size of the cork to just give positive buoyancy to the bait; the weight of the hook should anchor the thing down. This may initially require a bit of fiddling about but once you’ve got the length of the cork right you’re away.
So that’s basically it. Match the hook-baits to the spodded boilies to take advantage of the confidence the fish have acquired in eating them and the ‘job’s a good-‘un’. I admit it’s not rocket science and there is absolutely nothing new in this, it’s just a slightly different way of thinking about things is all.
Now let us all get out of this wretched Lockdown and get fishing…
Comments
Post a Comment