21lb winter scaly

Winter is always the hardest part of the year for catching carp. This year I have been adjusting rigs and fishing different hook baits to try and get me that extra bite. I’ve been using pop up rigs lately and having some good results. The best fish being a stunning 21lb scaly mirror.

Last winter was a very hard time for me as I did about 30 sessions and blanked them all. I Lost fish so I was doing something right to get the bites but I just couldnt land them! Having so many blanks in a row really got my confidence to a very low point. That’s why this year I wanted to up my game and try and get a few fish.

So far I have had 7 fish in 7 sessions. Fishing on my local club water and a few day ticket waters, I have fished lakes about 2-3 days after they have thawed out and knew it was going to be tough I have also fished lakes that have been half frozen when I’m there  and I have still managed to get amongst a few. This just shows how much the carp love the Quest Baits I have been using! continue reading…

Warm, high coloured water – perfect !

I was talking to one of my match angling friends at work the other day and he was asking me how I go about locating barbel in the winter, especially on the stretches that I fish, which in general do not hold that many fish.

Most of this guys’ fishing is done on the Middle Severn or River Wye on stretches that hold loads of barbel and other fish. As long as you fish sensibly on areas like the Middle Severn you can catch barbel in literally any conditions. I used to do it myself years ago and have caught barbel with a river temperature of as low has 3.0 Degrees C and an air temperature of 0 Degrees C.

Pick a swim that you know is a hotspot (holds lots of barbel) feed little and often with maggots and you will catch the odd fish even in extreme conditions. This is very similar to the advice a lot of anglers give about winter carp fishing “For a chance of consistent sport pick a water that holds a large number of carp and avoid the hard waters with a low stock density”. This applies to barbel also, pick a prolific stretch and you have far greater chance of  catching a barbel. continue reading…

I come from the generation of carp anglers that started out making their own carp bait. Quest Baits with their extensive range of boilies pellets hookbaits and pop ups didn’t exist and in fact for a few years I was fishing boilies didn’t exist.  Early attempts at catching carp included a multitude of pastes, cat food and eventually my first boilie manufactured from pilchard flavoured Go Cat Munchies.  Eventually I heard about Fred Wilton and his experiments and started sourcing ingredients to copy his HNV boilies.  It wasn’t too long after that that base mixes, ingredients, sweeteners, attractors and flavours became available commercially and tackle shop started to resemble a chemists.  It seemed that every carp anglers kitchen or garden shed if you were using monster crab; had become a boilie factory.  Equipment wasn’t good and not very efficient and much of the old closed season was spent filling bait freezers for the next campaign.  I remember I destroyed three hob tops in one of my kitchens and demolished a mate’s kitchen leaving the house reeking of Monster Crab and Compound TF when eight of us descended on his house while his wife was away playing hockey in Holland for the weekend. continue reading…

June 2011 and with the Grenville season closed from the end of May until the end of June I took a break from carp fishing for a while. I had several jobs I wanted to do at home and  if I didn’t get them done over the 2 month close season I know full well that I would be another 12 months before I got them done.

Living on my own I find it too easy to go through life enjoying myself and in recent years have tended to put more and more decorating type jobs off, thinking ‘I’ll do it next week’ but never do!

I'm quite lucky where I live with a nice choice of walks

I like to have an hour walk in the morning before work with Brook my Staffordshire Bull Terrier bitch.  Being quite fortunate where I live I can alternate this between a wooded hill walk or a river walk without having to get into the car and drive anywhere.

It was during one of these morning river walks that I spotted a few chub in my local river which were larger than I had seen before. Now these weren’t monsters by any stretch of the imagination but were larger than I had realised were living there.

The following morning I was feeding them 10mm boilies and soon our varied dog walks saw us not varying it at all and all of the walks were down the river as I started to get these fish waiting for their breakfast each morning. Brook didn’t seem to mind the ‘same old’ routine as she was included in a few boilies treats herself which she didn’t get on the hill walk.

It was whilst feeding these chub that I stumbled across some barbel – again not monsters but lovely to see on the river where I had first cut my angling teeth. I had caught tiny gudgeon sized barbel there 10 years previously whilst teaching Ruth to trot a float and to be fair had forgotten about them. Now it seemed they had grown on a little and would be good fun to try and catch on such a tiny river. On a stretch of around a mile I had found 5 barbel. 2 pools had 2 in each (along with lots of chub) and one pool had just one and again with lots of chub. I ended up watching and feeding these same 5 barbel every day not actually seeing any others. continue reading…

Friday 4th November – Old Estate Lake

Back to the Estate lake for another quick after work session. Got to the lake at about 2.30pm and actually saw a bit of fish activity (these fish very rarely show themselves at all).

Started fishing at about 3pm and again used the Rahja Spice shelf life’s in conjunction with small pva stocking mesh bags of the mini mixed pellet.

Had just about got the rods in when the heavens opened and it didn’t stop chucking down until packing up time at 11.30pm. I never had so much as a bleep although there was continued carp activity throughout the evening. I came away unsure as whether the weather was to blame (in all the years I have been fishing I have never really caught many carp during prolonged periods of torrential rain), or whether I should have put a bed of bait out to try and get the carp to feed.

Got home to an air temperature of 14 degrees C, crazy for this time of year.

Saturday 5^th November – River Dove

Made my first trip of the season to an area that I don’t really fish a lot. I checked the Environment Agency levels and the Upper Trent was showing 1.26m and rising (probably unfishable with the weed coming down), whereas the Dove was showing 0.72m and rising, so the Dove it was.

I wanted to try some swims that I had not fished before. The river looked like it was carrying about 2 feet of extra water and it was obvious that there was a lot of debris coming down but with a water temperature of 11.2 degrees C the barbel should be on the feed.

I started fishing at about 3.15pm. The first swim I chose had a nice smooth surface to it (signifying a nice gravel bottom) and a decent flow but it became obvious after about 30 minutes that I couldn’t fish it properly due to the amount of debris being washed down the river. I was using 5 ½ oz just to hold bottom a rod length out and this was only holding for about 15 minutes.

I went for a walk downstream and found what looked like the perfect swim for these type of conditions. All the flow was past the middle and to the far side of the river, creating almost a backwater on my side. This would enable me to fish out in the flow without the problem of debris collecting up the line as none should be collecting in the backwater.

With the extra colour in the water I added a matching paste wrap to my Rahja Spice hook baits hoping to give a little extra pulling power. I also baited the edge of the backwater with about 30 boilies of varying sizes.

I had a quick wrap on the rod top after about 10 minutes so I knew there were fish in the swim. After about 30 minutes the rod was away producing a barbel of about 4lbs which convinced me to stay where I was. I then missed an ‘un-missable’ bite about 30 minutes later so I shortened the hair on this rig. Within 15 minutes of recasting the same rod was away again and after a good fight and a few attempts at netting (a really awkward swim to fish) a nice barbel of 11lb 1oz was in the

11lb 1oz

net. I took a couple of quick photo’s and then returned the fish in a different swim (where I could reach the water level better and so look after the fish properly before it was ready to go back).

This swim was proving like chalk and cheese compared to the first one, I could leave the baits in for literally as long has I liked. Nothing else happened for a couple of hours and then the same rod produced a barbel of 9lb 15oz.

The sky cleared at about 9pm and by 10pm there were signs of frost on the quiver etc that were on the floor. I packed up at 10.30pm with no further bites but happy none the less.

It’s always nice catching fish from ‘new’ area’s, especially in quite difficult conditions. It also underlined the importance, once again, of being able to read the river to give you the best chance of fishing properly when the going is tough. Add to that being able to watch a terrific firework display for free and it was an enjoyable evening. continue reading…