NEW SERIES – Andy May
Top tips for getting the best from lakes
APLUMMET – a piece of lead and cork – costs less than a quid, yet you should never be without one.
I use mine to find every contour in my peg, even a depth change of a couple of inches, and I’ll devote at least 20 minutes to this process of mapping out of my swim.
Many people take just seconds to find the depth. This is fine until bites tail off and you need to think about fishing somewhere else. If you’ve put the time in with the plummet you’ll already know where to go when this happens!
To us, a depth change of three inches doesn’t seem a lot, but to a carp or F1 it can be prime real estate.
MAPPING THE SWIM OUT
Anglers will plumb up in one place for a chosen line, so if they have a line on the pole at 13m they will ship straight out in front of them, quickly plumb up and then leave it at that.
Chances are they are going to have to chase the fish around and fish to the left or right of this original area at some point and, when they make this change, they assume that they will have the same depth of water because they are still holding the pole at the same distance.
Often, though, moving your float just a few feet can place your rig in much deeper or shallower water. To get an idea of the true contours of a peg, I’ll plumb up from left to right in the swim, noting areas in the swim that are the same depth so I know for a fact that I can make a switch and still use the same rig. Always use far-bank markers so that you know exactly where you should be fishing. Your elbow should also be on the same place of your pole section every time.
WHY DO FISH MOVE?
You’d think that the fish would be happy feeding in one spot all summer but things can happen as the day goes on that will make them move about.
If the morning is on the cool side but the day heats up considerably, the carp could begin by sitting in deeper water and then seek out a shallower spot. It’s also possible that the disturbance of their mates being caught or the feed going in might make them back away.
Bankside noise can also do this, and on some venues I’ve fished, the carp never seem to sit right over the feed in the first place. You always have to fish just past this area by half-a-metre or so.
MULTIPLE RIGS
Because the fish will move about it is best to have several rigs ready to go, each one covering a slightly different area and depth. I find that constantly adjusting one rig is likely to lead to mistakes being made, or poor presentation, as a float for fishing in 5ft of water will be too heavy for changing over to 3ft, for example.
Regardless of where I am fishing in the swim I’ll always aim to have the rig set an inch overdepth to make sure that the bait is always on the bottom, even if a gust of wind dislodges the rig briefly.
Plumb up so that around half of the float body is showing when the plummet hits bottom and you will have the rig set perfectly.
PRECISION POT FEEDING
You’ll need to rotate swims if you want to keep in touch with the fish. Piling in lots of bait in one area isn’t always the way to go – trickling in a small amount after every fish is much more effective.
My aim is to attract justt a few fish every time I feed, as opposed to a number of them, as this will result in fewer false indications and line bites from feeding fish darting about the swim after the feed. Around thirty 2mm pellets after every fish is perfect, fed via a small pot on the pole. Making sure that this pole pot
is located within inches of the top kit’s tip is also important, as it means the feed will end up directly over where the rig will sit, increasing your chances of catching.
A catapult isn’t as effective as a pot when fishing a swim with varying underwater contours.
Being just slightly inaccurate in your firing of the pouch could lead to the contents ending up in the wrong depth of water.