Tommy Pickering reveals his winter pellet tricks.
Tommy Pickering will help you win more
IF YOU were forced to pick one bait that could guarantee you success on commercials, it would have to be pellets.
Hundreds of thousands of pints of these are fed into fisheries every year, and the stocks have become accustomed to searching for them when mealtimes arrive.
But after a busy summer on the banks of venues nationwide, the fish have started to wise up to the fact that a bed of pellets can spell danger.
You might think that using completely different baits such as corn, maggots and bread would increase your catch rate, but while these will get you bites, there are still plenty of ways to ensure the bites keep on coming with pellets.
One of the best is by adding colour to your pellets. It’s easy to do, but I promise you it can make a world of difference to your catches at this time of year.
In their standard form they’ll still help you string a few fish together, but add a dash of colour to them and they’ll be even more deadly.
STAND-OUT HOOKBAIT
It goes without saying that the point of loosefeed is to act as an attractant and draw fish into the same area as your hookbait.
Dropping in a few pellets will
certainly trigger the shoals’ inquisitive nature if they are nearby, but once they arrive you need to offer them something that looks completely different on the hook.
A brightly coloured expander pellet is the ideal choice. With the water now starting to clear as the feeding habits of the fish become less intense, a bright offering will be highly visible.
I have toyed with a wide range of colours, but at this time of year red and yellow can produce a lot of bites.
The more unusual colours such as blue and pink work even better at times, as the fish normally never see them at all.
Dyeing your expanders couldn’t be easier, and I follow a simple four-step process (see sequence, right) to get them ready.
KEEP IT LIGHT
Now that you’ve got your bait sorted you need to make sure your rigs are equally as effective.
Fishing rigs that incorporate floats, lines and hooks that are too heavy will seriously harm your chances of experiencing a great session.
At this time of year the fish aren’t fighting anywhere near as ferociously as they were a few months ago, so you can easily get away with using a Preston Innovations 11H elastic, 0.13mm mainline to an 0.11mm hooklength and a medium wire size 16 or 18 hook when carp are the primary target.
If F1s and skimmers are what you expect then scale down even more to a 9H elastic, 0.11mm mainline to a 0.10mm hooklength and a finer wire size 18 hook.
Regardless of the species, make sure your float is well dotted down and use the lightest you can get away with, while still having full control of where you want the rig to sit. The shotting pattern couldn’t be simpler – set a bulk of shot
around 18ins to 2ft above the hook and then have two small dropper shot spread below to slow down the fall of the hookbait as it enters the zone where the fish are sat.
Make sure you moderate your loosefeed, introducing a sprinkling of micros or 4mm pellets via a small pot after every fish. This will make sure there is some food content in the peg at all times, while not being enough to overfill them.
If you’ve been on a winning streak throughout the summer you’ll be desperate to keep it going, and coloured pellets can play a big part in keeping those brown envelopes coming.