Reed Bed
Carp Fishing for Big Fish using Innovative Tackle and Bait!
If you think that big carp are a worthy goal to catch you are not alone and these days that can be a major drawback! Carp fishing is big business and new fishermen are more and more rapidly swelling the heaving ranks of existing ones making it more and more competitive and crowded.
We become a victim of our own success by the overuse of successively popular and successful tackle baits and methods and carp soon wise up to anglers familiar baits and tackle on many pressured big fish waters. Food balanced nutrition baits will still be constantly eaten as they are often the naturalised food supplementation supporting stocks of big fish. But fish are certainly aware of our fishing activities and tend to respond by changing their behaviours.
Anyone who disbelieves this obviously does not fish the busy circus type waters in the UK (Or is that circuit waters) Carp anglers have historically had to heroically constantly overcome innumerable new challenges in their quest and this is one aspect of carp fishing that keeps us all going. however the difference between the world of efficient modern carp angling and pressure on waters today compared to forty years ago have little in common.
Today a complete beginner can buy everything instantly from baits rigs instructional books DVDs and so on; in fact everything but experience. He can buy confidence in a bag by depending on ready made bait even though he has no idea how it works. The same goes for tackle. Every item has been produced to solve a problem.
Indeed long range rods and reels heavier leads casting tutorial DVDs and even lessons are to a great degree the result of our own angling activities forcing fish to seek refuge further and further from the bank. Such distances anglers 40 years ago would be more than shocked at. Ive hooked fish from 300 metres away and even though they were dream fish in every way I personally prefer a range where I can throw bait out myself! Fish do love to follow contours and edges with its variety of destressing bankside cover and natural diversity of food items.
But it is noticeable that just because an inexperienced angler has never fished before but has a powerful rod and a big reel with lots of line he will often cast as far as possible. Usually this is to the most obvious island reed bed gravel bar or water lilies or lacking a target casting to the horizon. There is so much information now about watercraft skills correct technique the latest in methods and baits. The thing is often the marketing although a great help can provide certain disadvantages. For instance in the days when casting 100 metres was not just unusual but an angling feat for most fishermen the fish were far more often at marginal to 30 metres range.
Free baits introduced would more than likely be actually counted! In fact those who remember the advent of the ready made bait boom will recall certain manufacturers actually stating how many baits were in a packet; 300 for example. Bait base mixes were more often in pound mixes. These days its kilograms. I used to fish with 30 milk protein baits a day and that was very successful for me. Ive know guys to catch fish over a bed of 100 kilograms of bait or much more even treble that on some big fish waters. I remember the shock when I discovered at one water that while I was free baiting with 6 pounds of homemade boilies and really felt I was controlling a lake with quality bait I discovered somebody was unloading 40 kilograms of pellets from a boat regularly for which he had special privileges to do being a bailiff. Such gamesmanship and the completely disproportionate advantages those exploiting power games have definitely are far more prevalent today. Having to outwit aggressively competitive anglers is one aspect of carp fishing Ive not been impressed about.
The plain fact is that you can catch as many fish as a novice with endless bait and time on his hands as an experienced angler with limited resources who fishes a night or a day a week. Having said that I used to fish a water where over 70 percent of new visiting anglers blanked and these were the novices and the experienced alike. Their new wonder baits were powerless to produce fish for them as the key to this water was knowledge of the fish behaviours formed in response to constant angling pressure baits and tackle.
Standard round boilies of 24 to 21 millimetres became very hard to get takes on as were large Marine halibut pellets. This was despite being very successful previously. The fact that the fish fed mainly on free baits that had been in the water 2 3 or 4 days or more really showed how tricky they became. Any angler who just fished a day night or even 2 days and 2 nights were very unlikely to catch fish. On occasions it would be an entire 5 days from baiting a swim to fish feeding on the bait but such was their angler danger conditioned preferences. Intriguingly this applied to the big catfish as well as the big carp.
The relationships between these two species feeding behaviours and which triggered one into feeding or prevented feeding was very subtle but massively advantageous knowledge. This stuff was specific to the lake so the instant anglers had no chance and their catches was very sad. Inevitably they had the latest magazines out and were raving about all kinds of deadly methods and rigs and so on. I regard myself as a beginner in carp fishing and every other form of fishing I do even after 30 plus years doing it because every day is different.
Just when you find an effective method bait flavour or bit of tackle the fish adapt in response. variable aspects of fishing such as air pressures temperatures winds shifting feeding spots bloodworm and other larvae hatches occurring and so on impact on results. Even the effects of recent captures and heavy baiting on fish behaviour since your last visit to a water complicate matters.
You often now have to ask if you will even get a swim or get on fish at all. Sitting in fishless swims on pressured waters where the fishing is stitchedup by mobile phone networked locals is not my thing either and these things make you question exactly what kind of carp fisherman you are and what waters offer best what youre looking for. Ive been very fortunate in the past in having been in syndicates and even a day ticket water that became extremely difficult for a few years where I was the only person fishing at times.
Where much more time has been devoted over both summer and winter it is easy to see how the impact of anglers (and nonanglers) presence on the bank their lines in the water and baiting behaviours change fish. Ive watched fish that were feeding like mad on bloodworm with no obvious lines in the water and