GO EASY ON THE BAIT
Although you will always be in with a chance of a bite no matter what you’ve got on the hook or hair, certain brands of bait get used more than others on certain venues, and that’s also the case on Bluebell.
Nash Key Cray boilies have a great track record on the venue and they’ve certainly worked really well for me. The fish are used to seeing it, and eating plenty of it without being caught, so I don’t chop and change my baits.
This is an important area for me: once I’ve found a bait that I have confidence in, I’ll stick with it, safe in the knowledge that all I have to do is find the carp and fish sensibly, and I’ll catch them. Too many people chop and change baits too often, when all they’re really doing is wasting time and money.
Another big mistake that I see people making on this lake is introducing too much bait. Most of the time I will be fishing for just that one crucial bite, and that means just a handful of bait per rod. This will be a mixture of pellets, eight to 10 grains of corn, five whole boilies and a few broken-up ones. Not much more than a mouthful of bait, really, but remember, I am expecting the fish to come in and grab a mouthful of food and not hang around. Put more bait out than this and you could be killing your chances of a pick-up.
Just imagine three guys fishing in adjacent pegs and they have all put a kilo or two of bait out. A group of carp moves through the area, swimming in midwater over the weed, and the odd fish drops down to grab a mouthful of bait. The chances of them picking up the hookbait when there is that much bait in the swim are pretty low.
I think that a lot of anglers coming on to this lake kill their chances of catching within an hour of getting here. It may then take two or three days before the carp and silver fish get through the bait and reset things so you are in with a chance of a bite.
I am sure this is why some of the fish come out ever-so rarely. They are perhaps the ones that hang back a little, or just pick up the odd bait that has been in the water for a few days.
With baitboats allowed on here there is a tendency for anglers to put out a hopper full of bait every time. That’s a lot of bait to be putting around each rig. Now, I do use my baitboat in some swims, but I like to cast my rigs out and feel the lead down.
However, not using a boat can be just as big an advantage in some swims as using one. Let me explain. The spots where the carp feed regularly, whether they are in the edge or out in the lake, are very clean and you will definitely feel when you get the cast spot-on. If I am picking up weed or debris on the rig when I’m having a feel around I will scrap that spot because that tells me that it hasn’t been fed upon recently.
TRIED AND TRUSTED RIGS
I use nothing complicated in my fishing. Busy lakes like this see all sorts of trendy rigs. Right now, that means the Ronnie Rig is being used a lot. Pressured carp soon learn to get around any rig, and by the time a rig has become widely publicised, the chances are it has already been used on here on the quiet.
I like to keep everything simple and do my own thing. If you use the same rig as everyone else you are going to catch the same as everyone else, so I do things a little differently. While I would say that 90 per cent of anglers on here are using pop-ups, because of the weed, or because rigs like the Ronnie lend itself to it, I go the other way. A simple bottom bait rig has pretty much been forgotten about by most anglers, and I think it stands out less than a pop-up to the carp. It is a simple rig that hasn’t really changed for the best part of 20 years, and uses minimal components.
I like a big size 5 or 6 hook, and I mount the bait on a simple sliding D with the hair coming off a rig ring to give a blow-back effect.
One change I will make when using the baitboat is to use a braided hooklength. This gives a better presentation and won’t tangle when using the boat. When casting I use stripped-back Skin Link to avoid tangles but still give free movement at the hook end.
So, just remember, one bite a session is a good result over the course of a season. Okay, so I might miss out on the occasional big hit of fish when they decide to have a big feed, but for every time this happens there are probably 20 occasions when piling the bait in is the wrong decision.
Simple, subtle baiting and presentations, put into the spots where the fish want to be without disturbing them, is my recipe for these big pressured fish that have seen it all.