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Viewing entries tagged with 'carp'
Shaun Harrison's March 2021 Diary
After finally getting myself back on the bank and having a great result the last day in February, I was all fired up for another go.
More Moon Talk
Once more the rain pounds my window and leaves flutter by on their journey to the ground whilst I tap these words out. I have written a fair bit about moon phases as well as talking about the effect of moon phases on carp on two separate pod casts. In fact I was even flown over to Hungary to talk about it as well. This has all come from many years of studying its effect on my own personal catches. Because I have always kept a detailed angling log/journal/diary, call it what you will, I have been able to trace back the moon phases on all of my captures to over 40 years ago.
Water Birds – the Dreaded Bait Thieves?
Every lake I currently fish I find myself hounded by water fowl all wanting a share of the feast intended for the carp. It’s hardly surprising though as our target species shares a very similar diet to that of the bait thieves. Many years ago I learned to live with simply accepting that diving birds were going to take advantage of an easy free meal, just the same as the birds in the garden will. Yes, they are a total pain, picking lines up and every so often slipping up good and proper.
It was many years ago, way back last century when I realised how important the bird life can be and can actually speed up the capture of carp. As I touched upon above, bait robbing birds and the carp share a very similar natural diet, so, find the birds feasting upon naturals and you can be pretty sure the carp will be close by too and if they are not there at that particular time, you can be sure they will be visit.
Goodbye Spawning Carp and Hello to a New ‘Old Carp’.
For me, June 2020 has been a rather mixed month seeing me switching my week-end angling between 4 different venues, all down to the carp spawning or trying to spawn and me not being able to bring myself to fish for them during the time they really need to get this out their systems and then rest whilst left alone to get over their most important part of the year.
It really does sicken and disappoint me to see anglers continuing fish for the carp whilst they are at their in their most vulnerable and delicate state, particularly the older fish. Why on earth the fisheries don’t totally close is beyond me and extremely foolish (or perhaps brave) in my opinion when they are reliant upon good health of their fish to keep filling swims and selling tickets.
Some waters do nothing and just let everyone get on with it, whilst others unbelievably just close off the swim the fish are spawning in. This really does amaze me as protection is required after spawning in order for the fish to get over the most stressful time of the year. Some of the old females get absolutely battered by young males and can take a while to recover to anything like the norm. Closing a swim only stops people fishing at them whilst they spawn it does nothing at all to protect them after spawning, when they are in their worst state. Post spawning the carp drift off to other parts of the lake/pit/pond/river where people can be fishing for them. My mind boggles as to what good closing a swim can do.
Leading out of winter - Bait and presentation choice for a new venue?
I am often asked what baits I would use on a venue I had not been to for a long while, or a new venue I know little about. What would be my starting point in terms of bait and presentation?
Rigs - It's a Confidence Thing
In my last end tackle blog, https://www.questbaits.com/blog/pb-products-hit-and-run-system/ I explained why I like small or running lead set ups which then prompted quite a lot of people to contact me asking my advice on other rig aspects. During the rapidly developing years of rig evolution in the early to mid ‘80’s I was really into rigs. Tweaking, testing and developing different ideas. I was rig mad and was convinced (still am) that some of the things we were doing back then, (we being Baz Varney and myself) gave us one hell of an edge on the waters we fished. Baz was the only one at the time I discussed rigs with. He had an incredibly ‘tuned in mind’ back then and came up with some pretty amazing ideas and between us down the ‘Bass House’ our favourite drinking joint, we would fine tune them after eventually finding the right bits to actually make these rigs up. One rig in particular, we were looking for the right sort of tubing for the best part of a year. It was worth it though when we were finally able to put the rig into action.
SOMETHING TO TRY AT THE WEEK-END? Do you want to fish PVA Mesh Sticks at long range?
Here Carpology TV show a simple way of getting those mesh bags out there much further than normal utilising our Rahja Spice Micro Feed, crushed Rahja Spice boilies, Mini Mixed Pellet and Rahja Hemp, with other particle.
Once again, well worth just over a minute of your time watching this. It is so simple to do.
Quest Baits 'Ology' Spicy Spod Mix
With the water temperatures now starting to rise, this is the time to start thinking about your spod mixes again. This is a great one for a good spread of attraction.Very easy to put together with minimal ingredients, yet because of the ingredients in the Rahja Spice, it is still quite a complex mix with lots going off. As it gets warmer you can safely increase the hemp and as the water cools back down at the back end decrease the hemp and increase the broken and crushed boilie content.
A minute spent watching the video could get those indicators moving a little more.
Spring Tactics for Carp
The frogs have returned in volumes to my garden, which always means that I no longer need to work so hard to catch carp and now is the time to start moving on from my various cold water winter approaches to the methods that have caught me so many spring fish in years gone by.
With the daylight hours stretching on so much longer and the sun rising so much higher, the carp increase their activity and start to cover a lot more ground than they perhaps have been doing these past 2 ½ months.
So, how do I approach spring fishing?
The Largest in the Lake
Once in a while we all get lucky and hook into a fish we really wanted to catch. Occasionally someone has the presence of mind to grab a camera and rush round to take a few action shots. Rarely do the two situations join together. Thanks Dave for capturing those exciting moments for me.