Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Rob Hughes
Is it possible to catch decent carp on short sessions? Expert tactician and England manager Rob Hughes shows how to be successful when the clock is ticking
Carping on a time limit
RIGHT then.. I’ve got four hours to try and catch a carp or two. Not a long time, the equivalent of an afternoon or an evening session, but very often that’s all the time I have.
Venue choice is so important when you’re on a tight timetable. Ideally you need to have somewhere close to home. It doesn’t necessarily have to be loaded with carp, but if it’s close enough you can get down for a walk as often as possible and find out it’s moods.
There’s some amazing waters on our doorsteps that we ignore for much of the time. The park lake, the match venue, the little club lake. They probably hold a few carp and for short sessions they’re brilliant. I’m really lucky with my local venue, Shearwater in Wiltshire. It’s only 15 minutes from my house and it offers some brilliant fishing. Nestled in a forest on the Longleat Estate, it’s quite a big lake that is stunning at all times of year and it’s a pleasure to visit. To get my fishing fix I usually grab an hour or two in the evening stalking with small PVA sticks or some floaters.
I arrive just after 1pm and I’ve got to be away by 5pm so my approach is going to be different. I’ve pitched up not far off the middle of the lake so I can see what’s going on. I’m travelling light so I can move. Two rods, spod bucket on sticks, spod rod, rucksack and a mat. No chair, brolly or bivvy. This is hit ‘ n’ run carping.
Do the basics
The first thing to do is get the marker float out and establish exactly how deep the swim is, and what’s on the deck. I’ve got an idea as I’ve fished it before but I want to know exactly. Floats are something that people tend not to use as much these days, relying on leading around and distance sticks. I’m old school and like a visual, and in two casts I can find out what’s on the bottom by feeling the lead down on a tight line, and how deep it is by letting the back float up. You’d never see a matchman begin a competition without plumbing up. It’s the same for carp anglers.
It’s 16ft deep and the bottom is reasonably firm silt. The weather is changeable so the fish could be up in the water or down on the deck. I know they like to feed up in the water here, especially in this depth, so I’m going to use zigs to kick off. Straightforward yellow zig aligners will do the trick.
Bait is the key
Before I start, a little like surface fishing, I want to get some bait in the peg. Shearwater fish get spodded a lot and associate the noise of the spod with food. A lot of high stock waters are like this. The carp in Drayton, Thorpe Lea, Linear etc all use sound as a food locator so if your lake is heavily stocked, don’t be scared to spod.
Into the mix goes some Dynamite Grubby Groundbait, some corn - which the zigs will mimic - and a healthy dose of liquid Sweet Tiger Nut feed. The idea is to create a cloud in the water with regular casting that the fish will hear, come to investigate, and pick off the falling corn on the way down. The mix needs to be sloppy like runny custard. To Too weak and it won’t pull in the fish. Too stodgy and it
will sink too quickly.
“In two casts I can find out what’s on the bottom by feeling the lead down, and how deep is by letting the float back up”
Ten Spombs later and I’m ready to cast in. The cloud leaves a lovely little slick and cloudy spot showing me exactly where I need to cast my zigs, so in they both go. Bang on the money.
I’ve got one 4ft below the surface at 12ft and another at 6ft off the deck. This will hopefully allow me to pinpoint where in the water column the fish are.
Once they get feeding they have a tendency to follow the bait so they could actually go down to feed on the heavier particles and end up on the bottom, or come up in the water to get to the bait sooner than their mates. I’ve actually seen them hitting the Spomb on the surface when they are really feeding hard.
Fishing a Fox quick change lead clip means I can quickly change tactics by swapping the zig for a short, bottom bait rig to fish on the deck.
And we’re off
It’s 2.15pm and I’m now fishing effectively. I’ll give it 15 minutes to rest before trickling in a bit more slop. Nothing’s showing yet but there’s still time. Three more spods delivered every 15- 20 minutes keeps the spot refreshed and it’s an hour in before I start to see a bit of action around the cloud.
Out of the blue the left- hand bobbin, the one at 6ft, drops back and I’m on it like a shot. Immediately I feel the resistance of a fish but it’s not the type I want. A weak kick and no resistance tells me I’ve got a bream. There are a few in here and they’ve cottoned on to the fact that zigs are tasty!
I’m confident that I should stick with it but another bream on the same rod tells me there’s a shoal feeding here.
Not what I wanted!
Attention to detail
It’s important that I keep my wits about me and watch what’s going on. There’s no significant carp action up in the water but whenever I cast out I’m feeling the lead down on a tight line and on the last two casts I’ve “bumped” fish on the way down.
It’s a great way of finding where the fish are especially as the water cools ( use a light lead, 2oz max). A quick change from the 12ft zig to a bottom bait is now on the cards. A yellow 10mm Dynamite Hit N Run pop- up and a small mesh bag of pellets are fired out to the same spot, but now I’m on the deck not up in the water.
It’s just after 4pm when another marauder on the 6ft zig shows the bream are still in the area but a positive take on the bottom bait rod shortly after is definitely a carp. The fish that I was bumping on the way down could have been bream or carp, but this one is definitely what I’m after. It gives a good old scrap for a low- double common and it’s job done. Dropping to the deck had produced the goods and with the clock running it’s time to pack up and head off back to the world.