Wintercarping can be one of the most sole destroying pastimes imaginable. What with the long cold nights, freezing days and with little chance of a fish anyone would be mad to fish through the winter months-wrong wintercarping can be one of the most rewarding and exciting parts of carpfishing, if you get it right. The fish are normally at their best weight and in excellent condition. The million dollar question how do you get it right in winter?
Firstly my definition of a wintercarp is one caught between 1st November and 1st March just to make it clear. Now that has been cleared up what makes the difference between success and failure?
I have winter fished for carp for well over 20 years, with some spectacular successes and some dismal failures. The problem with wintercarping is that there are few rules. (more…)
Below is a quick exchange of emails I felt may be useful for a few other readers…
A question to Shaun.
I am doing some winterfishing this year and wonder what bait you would recommend and what size. I like the look of the FruityTrifle.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Fruity Trifle is one of my favouritewinter baits. The basemix I started using right back in the 80’s and have caught literally hundreds of carp on it. It is very easily digestible so the carp will feed again quite quickly – very important in the winter as many baits stay inside them for too long. Size wise I always try and mix the sizes in my own fishing and if the distance being fished allows I always crumble baits up for loose feed as well as offering whole ones.
Ideally I would introduce a small amount of 10mm’s, 15mm’s and 20mm’s whole and broken But if I were limiting myself to just one size of bait I would take the larger 20mm’s simply because there is plenty of scope for breaking them into smaller pieces and trimming them down etc.
Hope this helps
Best fishes
Shaun Harrison
Tom replied.
Thanks for the reply like most nowadays I read you must use 10mm in winter and so on. Just to give you the (more…)