"The More You Know"

On Saturday my friend and I fished for Carp at Oak Hanger fisheries near Crewe Cheshire these fish were caught on 10 metre pole with pellet and paste.
Notice the guy in the back ground he was in the process of attempting to retrieve the top two sections of his pole which where floating across the lake.

Which brings to mind, a fundamental rule in most clubs and fisheries never to leave you rods or poles baited up in the water unattended, this is bad practice and common sense not to do so!

Personally I don't like to see this, and people who ignore it should not be allowed to fish there again! perhaps they should also consider the probability of the costly consequences before doing so!!

However just for the record total weight of this bag of carp was 52lbs just about as much as you should respectfully keep in one net.


Hopefully this post may be of help to those young Anglers amongst you, who may be reading my blog.

As you will no doubt be aware I have been around for sometime now! and although I have not achieved the success I would have liked, I have learned a great deal from some very good Anglers who were always willing to provide me with information,with regards to methods and the best baits to use!!

Which just reminds me of a simple quote made by former world Angling champion Ian Heaps, whom I have had the pleasure to meet on several occasions, a true gentleman and a real ambassador in the sport "The more you know the more you catch"a quote of which I am regularly being reminded of each time I return home from what I consider to be a good day!!

For example on this particular occasion after previous visits to this water, we had learned that there was an abundance of skimmer bream to be caught almost on every peg.

This time I decided to target the Carp as I had heard that you could not win a match with skimmers. Therefore I decided to keep it as simple and as cheap as possible , instead of the usual casters and chop worms as bait I took micro pellets, some six ml pellets and some paste.

I had soaked both the micro's and the six ml pellets separately, in some special additive mixed with cold water in the fridge over night, the benefit in doing this is three fold it helps the pellets to evenly absorb the additive.

It also helps you to feed them in a small toss pot, as they are better than feeding them dry because they stick to the pot, and don't bounce out as easy, when you ship out with them. They also break down faster on the bottom leaving a nice bed of ground bait, initially I fed two full pots and then continued to feed half a pot full every put in.

Personally I am not a great believer in the use of additives, preferring to keep things as simple as possible, but if it helps to build your confidence up there is no harm in it! However on this occasion it seemed to work a treat and certainly didn't prevent the fish feeding, so there just might be something in experimenting with additives after all !!

But if I was to choose a golden rule in Angling this would be, whatever you feed to feed it on a regular basis all the time! You will often hear Many Anglers describe how you should feed a swim, by the numbers of fish they are catching e g: feed every three or four fish! Although this is a good yard stick.

Another way of looking at how to feed a swim, is by the response you get from the fish in front of you "the number of bites", the logic being the more bites you are getting the more fish in the swim. If these bites result in carp what you must remember is carp will consume a great deal of food, especially on these commercial fisheries where they usually are plenty full.

What you must also consider is the depth you have in front of you, if say you have shallow water in front of you it would be a waste of time piling in plenty of food . This could possibly attract to many fish into the swim at one time, and result in to many fowl hooked fish. And as a consequence you may also lose the shoal eventually!

On the other hand if you are fishing deeper water say five to six feet, there is more water for them to select their food confidently, and if carp are the main fish you are catching then a toss pot full every put in can work well, if bites start to slow up then all you do is gradually reduce this to half a pot full.

A good general guide is to feed every three or four bites. Even if you miss a bite you should consider this a fish.

If bites are slow you have a number of options, you can try either fishing up in the water,
as with constant loose feed entering the swim, the fish may have moved up in the water to intercept your feed, if they are hungry!! Or you can put a large pot full in and rest the swim for 20 minutes or so and fish another line in the hope the fish will feed on the bottom again when you return to fish that line. It's all a matter of judgement!!

Some very good Anglers I know prefer to feed as many as three or four swims and take one or two fish from each swim, mostly on these heavily fished commercial canal type venues, where the water is shallow.

Having said that knowledge of the water your fishing and the fish you are attempting to catch is equally as important, as some waters which contain large shoals of fish can respond to large initial quantities of feed, this is better known as bulk feeding, this method of feeding is usually preferred if Bream are the target and you have depth in front of you! get this right and you will most definitely put more fish in the net.

But if you choose to feed like this you must also remember "what you put in you can't take out".

I hope you have all enjoyed reading this post as I have in creating it, and remember "The more you know the more you catch" Knowledge is the key to success!

By the way I hope the guy in the picture remembers to take a spare top two sections of pole with him next time.

I know I will be taking two nets this weekend so until next time tight lines!!

Fishing On The Whip!

This catch proves the more you know the more you catch! these fish where caught at Oak Hanger Fisheries near Crewe Cheshire. my mate and I had fished this on two previous occasions.

On our first visit we did OK! but as it was some time in January and the water was clear with ice on it! we decided to fish out in to the deeper water at about 10mt rs on the pole.

This was around about seven feet deep,a good depth for winter fishing! personally I expected to catch there but all we caught were gudgeon small Rudd and roach but as usual I had fed two areas as a secondary measure. At 10mt rs I had fed chopped worm and casters and at 3mt rs all I fed was some loose casters giving myself two options.

I had tried the 3metre line a couple of times during the day, but didn't appear to be getting many bites, so I persevered with the long pole, deciding to fish close in during the last hour or so.

This is a tactic employed by a lot of the top flight match men, and more often than not can provide you with some big surprises, and it did as I caught a carp of about 3lbs and some decent Roach on casters.

However we had a reasonable catch considering the conditions, but on reflection I felt that the majority of fish could be caught at close range! the picture above is the result. Although the weather had improved slightly this has reassured me that their are more fish to be had at 3mt rs.

Consequently after our second visit and always wanting to improve on the previous catch, I decided to feed hemp and casters and to try the whip but with a slight difference. I have just recently bought a set of whips and have substituted the top section of the 3metre whip, by incorporating a no: six to eight elastic in to a very fine hollow tip which I found in my garage

You might think this is somewhat unorthodox, however I can assure you it works and helps you to subdue those extra bonus fish that may enter your swim! it worked perfectly for me as you can see from the picture below, I was able to cope with small carp up to 1lb 8oz .

John and I fished with single red maggots on size 18 hooks, myself changing to caster later on because it seemed that I was catching far to many gudgeon. Although you had to re-bait up more often with caster it proved to be worth while because this change produced more Crucian carp which were bigger.

It was also an added bonus not needing my glasses for these! for a fiver a day it is certainly worth a visit, especially when you consider you are also able to see what you have caught at the end of the day, "as keep nets are allowed". John and I agreed it was a pleasure to catch such a mixed net of fish!! "Tight lines"