Tactic of the Week
How fishing positively is the key to bigger catches
Scaling down your end tackle is often seen as an essential element in fooling crafty skimmers.
But Guru’s mikey Williams laughs in the face of this advice and has been taking commercials apart with rigs that most silver fish enthusiasts would dismiss out of hand as being ‘agricultural’.
“light lines and hooks are always used when skimmers are the main target, but when it comes to fishing for them on commercials you need to think differently,” explains mikey.
“feed a swim correctly and these fish will soon drop their guard. once this happens they become easy to catch on much more positive rigs with thicker lines, heavier floats and stronger hooks.
“the beauty of this is that when a carp turns up – which is
inevitable – the odds are stacked in your favour that you’ll land it.” it’s no secret that pellets are the number one bait on commercials, but mikey likes to give his an edge to create a feeding frenzy.
“i dampen half a bag of micros and place them in a tub. once they have soaked up all the moisture i place them in a food bag, add a few squirts of mainline match captiv-8 flavoured colouring and then shake the bag.
“it spreads the colour and creates bright pellets that stand out a mile. my favourite flavour is chocolate orange,” he says.
these are mixed evenly with normally coloured micro pellets and fed as small balls, with a couple going in at the start. this makes sure all the bait gets to the bottom, where the big skimmers and bonus carp will be.
corn hookbaits will stand out in coloured water, reducing the amount of time it takes for the fish to find it. expanders are a back-up but are only effective on waters where nuisance roach and rudd won’t rag them off the hook.
larford Magic
the prolific specimen lake at Worcestershire’s larford lakes is home to huge shoals of skimmers, but carp to over 20lb can show up at any point – the perfect place for these positive tactics! feeding a couple of small pellet balls at the start, it took less than 10 minutes for the first bite from a chunky 2lb skimmer. topping up with a nugget once bites slowed kept them coming steadily.
“if bites stop then the fish will rarely have rarely vanished – they’ve just backed away slightly and they can’t resist coming back over the main zone when more bait goes in,” says mikey.
two bonus carp joined 50lb of skimmers, and mikey’s rigs were more than up to the task of banking them. so bin the light hooks and lines this week and watch your skimmer sessions hit new highs.