Carp off the top!
Bob Roberts is your guide to nailing big fish on floaters
SITTING in a tent for 48 hours guarding a battery of rods and waiting for the wail of a bite alarm is all well and good if you have time to kill but it’s not my cup of tea once the water warms up.
Now you’re much more likely to find me creeping around like a burglar, travelling light and trying to mug a carp or two.
Today I’m fishing a lake called Westwoodside in Lincolnshire.
Normally it doesn’t get too much pressure, but this is Friday afternoon – and the prospect of the warmest weekend of the year so far has brought out the crowds so it’s a fair chance the best swims have already been taken.
On my first circuit of the lake I discover a group of fish in a neglected corner.
Leaving my gear in the van, I sit quietly with a bag of mixers and a catapult. There’s just enough breeze for me to catapult a dozen baits into a spot where they will drift towards the fish.
It isn’t long before I see a fish turn, approach a mixer, then gently tilt backwards.
A top lip emerges through the surface film... ...The first mixer disappears, and soon more fish join the party. However, it’s not until the carp are feeding confidently enough for me to actually hear a slurp or two that I consider fetching a rod, net and unhooking mat.
It’s already set up with my mugging kit, which doesn’t house a controller, but a piece of wood sawn from a tree branch with a fencing staple nailed into one end. My ‘stick’ is normally held in place between a couple of pairs of silicone float stops. I used to prepare my mixers by soaking and flavouring them. They would swell, go spongy and smell delicious, but it was while making our Caught In The Act DVDs that we realised species like carp and tench make loads of noise when grinding hard baits in their pharyngeal teeth.
This noise stimulates nearby carp to join in so you’ll often find me feeding hard baits, not soft. LOOSEFEED
GET SHARP
Your hook must be razor-sharp. I used a size 12 barbless Gamakatsu G-Carp Specialist RXBL pattern (GC203).
You might fear it’s too small, but it’s plenty big enough for the job if you use a forgiving rod. I use a barbless because confident fish will frequently prick themselves when mouthing the hookbait. This often results in a screaming take because the fish hooks itself!
BACK IN THE SWIM
I had been feeding for a good 20 minutes and there were several fish in front of me feeding in a leisurely fashion. They weren’t exactly competing with each other but there was no hesitation or detailed inspection of the free offerings either. All that was required of me was to cast my stick controller well beyond the fish, give them a few more freebies and gently draw the rig into position.
To say I was confident is an understatement. I knew my chances of catching were as good as they come. I expected to catch and I expected to catch within minutes, probably sooner. Sure enough, I watched a dark shape approach my bait, slow down, head and shoulders lift almost out of the water and SLURP, I was in – quick as that!
What then followed did my head in. I knew the fish would go for the reeds and I was ready to keep the rod high and apply just enough pressure so it would kite and bend them over thus avoiding snagging.
What I didn’t expect was for something to cut through my line as cleanly as if it had been pulled across a razor blade. I was gutted! There’s a fair bit of pressure to deliver on a feature, and everyone else on the lake was sitting behind stationary bobbins and silent alarms. Damn! I had blown the perfect chance.
Still, no reason to panic. Keep feeding, which I did, but the fish had spooked and moved off. Time to get moving. I worked my way round the lake with my eyes peeled. It didn’t take me long to spot a few cruising fish.
Once again I started feeding mixers and they responded on cue. Once again it was a case of curbing my enthusiasm until the perfect moment – not too soon, not too long – and guess what? Second cast of the day and I’m in again within seconds.
The fish went mental, thrashing the water to foam and refusing to come in easily. I wasn’t surprised to see I’d hooked a common carp. Is it me, or do they fight twice as hard as mirrors? And do all carp fight better without a great lump of lead 10 inches from their noses? Or when there’s a feature at stake and you dare not screw up!
Lloyd Rodgers, my photographer, wasn’t complaining. He was getting action shots to die for! Eventually the Bobster prevailed and slipped the net under a fine looking fish which appeared to grow before my very eyes as it rested in the net. My earlier estimate of low doubles was now revised to high doubles, in fact very high doubles. Not so much fat but chunky in a Wayne Rooney kind of way!
Of course, with both of us paddling in the water in order to take some fantastic pictures the swim was ruined, but who cares? Time for another mooch, and it wasn’t long before I came across yet another group of fish cruising in the warmer upper layers. This was turning into the most perfect day. Even though more and more anglers were turning up they all headed for the ‘best’ swims and started pitching their bivvies.
I stuck with the rubbish pegs and caught fish from almost every one I tried. By 4pm I’d caught four cracking fish, all commons, and dropped two more off.