Reader’s Query: Winter, silt and glugs question.
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 winter fishing this year and wonder what bait you would recommend and what size. I like the look of the Fruity Trifle.
Tom
Hi Tom,
Fruity Trifle is one of my favourite winter baits. The base mix 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 background on the lake it is a old estate lake about 4 and a half acres in size and it has got lovely beds of lily pads that unfortunatly seems to have faded out of most lakes which is disapointing. It is very silty which is the bad smelling stuff at times and finding the gravel seems to be the best place to fish. Would you recommend a fruity trifle pop up that has been glugged to keep the smell out or bottom baits.
Cheers for your help Tom
Hi Tom,
Glugs come down to a personal choice scenario. They give a lot of people a lot of confidence but nowadays particularly during the colder months I find myself using them less and less. It seems the common denominator that most seem to boost the flavour of their bait during the winter, so it is something I no longer do. I have always tried to be different to others in my own fishing and since starting to use ‘conventional’ flavoured baits rather than boosted flavour baits my winter catch results have far from suffered.
Regarding the areas to fish and the situation of the ‘smelly’ silt.
I have spent a lot of time on silty waters. Probably the most famous of these is the Mangrove in Shropshire where I was lucky enough to be a syndicate member for many years. The Mangrove is thousands of years old so has a massive build up of silt. Pop-ups didn’t work very well at the Mangrove. Silt feeding carp simply feed ‘in the silt’ and this is where they expect the food items to be. Certainly any free baits you fire out will end up in the silt rather than hovering over it. It all comes down to confidence at the end of the day but try fishing two baits close together on the same baited patch. One popped up the other on a normal bottom bait and see which method the carp prefer on the water you fish.
One thing I would advice if the baits are taking on a lot of the silt smell would be to pre-soak your baits in bottled water before you go fishing. This way they will soak up ‘tasteless’ water and be less capable of taking in so much of the silt taste.
If you can find some firmer areas of silt then these are the areas I would concentrate my efforts. Firmer areas are firm because they are regularly fed upon. They can be very difficult to find but one major clue and one I incorporated into my Mangrove fishing was to always smell the lead when you wind in. The swivel will always trap a little sediment and water from where you have been fishing. You will soon find the really nasty areas to avoid and once in a while you will wind in ‘clean smelling silt’ – if that makes sense?
Hope this helps
Best fishes
Shaun Harrison
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Tags: angling, background, bait, base, Below, boilies, carp, catch, confidence, denominator, estate, favourite, fish, fishing, flavour, france, lily, Mangrove, mix, queries, scope, silt, silty, smell, tackle, techniques, tips, Trifle, water
Hi Tom/Shaun, interesting that Shaun uses different size baits as I do this as well. I then use the smaller size as the hookbait. I don’t know if this actually happens, but I think that different sizes makes the carp apply different amounts of suck to pick up each bait. They are then less likely to detect the weight of the hook or resistance of the line on initial pick-up. The alternative is to critically balance, or partly balance.
I also fish the Mangrove and have found in normal situations that bottom baits outfish pop-ups as the natural food is in the silt. However, in extreme cold conditions I find a single pop-up can produce some excellent results. I have little confidence in pop-ups when it is very windy as I feel that they behave unnaturally. What do other readers think?
Glug wise I have done numerous tests with glugged and non-glugged baits and I can’t detect a lot of difference in results. However, other people may have had different experiences.
Hi people
In my experience glugs work very very well and will often glug baits for up to 6 months, having said that there is one water where the fish will not touch a glugged bait why i have no idea give em a washed out bait and they will feed all day. Fickle things carp. As to pop ups in windy conditions well all i can say is i have had no problems but i do change from hangers to swingers and put my rod tips in the water, as long as you dry and wd40 them after your tackle will stay in top notch condition. In winter i only fish with small single bright baits yellow being best followed by orange flavour seems to take second place as last year i used the plastic corn which has no flavour with excellent results
Cheers Ian
I like glugs too.
Dont suppose you were ever a chef ian were you??