BACK TO BASICS FOR BIG FISH…
LUKE STEVENSON bases his approach on moving on to fish and applying bait with a catapult – an almost forgotten baiting tactic, but one that works wonders for him…
WHENEVER I go fishing, I watch the lake religiously, and this puts me in a position where I can nearly always ‘get on’ the carp.
Providing nobody else is fishing in the area where I’ve spotted the fish, that’s exactly what I aim for every trip – to be on, or moving on to, the fish at all times.
TWO-RIG APPROACH
In many ways, being proactive and locating the fish is the easy part. Once this has been achieved, it’s just a case of getting a hookbait and few freebies in front of them while making as little disturbance as possible.
My tactical approach is remarkably simple. Put the rigs into areas where the fish are showing or where I think they are feeding, catapult a few pouchfuls of boilies around them, and I am fishing. It’s a style of fishing that has almost been forgotten about, but it works as well as it ever did before and it’s certainly my ‘default’ tactic.
The modern day obsession with marker rods and Spombs has, in my opinion, put the fish on edge in some waters. Don’t get me wrong: I would love to be able to land on a rock-hard, clean spot on the very first cast every time, but without being armed with prior knowledge of the lakebed, you would have to be very lucky to do that. And the only other option is to thrash the water to foam with a marker set-up which, to my mind, puts you at a disadvantage before you’ve even cast a baited rig out.
This is why I only fish one of two rigs with this sort of fishing - either a chod rig, or a hinged pop-up rig of some sort.
How do I go about choosing which of this pair to use? Well, I would opt for a hinge if I knew the rough contour of the lakebed and that there wasn’t too much weed around.
Likewise, a chod is the better choice if you know the area the fish are showing in is weedy, or you have absolutely no idea of what the lakebed is like in the first place. With the top bead
“The modern day obsession with marker rods and Spombs has put the fish on edge in some waters”
positioned a few feet away from the lead, the rig will settle down on top of the weed or whatever else is littering the lakebed.
CONFIDENCE IS KEY
Once the rods are out, particularly when using chod rigs, I like to fish a really slack line. I use a fluorocarbon mainline and I allow it to sink down and out of the way of any passing or feeding carp. If they know you are there or that they are being fished for, they can be really hard to catch.
I tend to fish a ‘match-thehatch’ pop-up most of the time, apart from in spring, when I might reach for a bright ‘white one’ if conditions demand it.
I can’t stress enough how important it is to have complete confidence in the bait that you use. There are enough variables these days in carp fishing to undermine your confidence, without having to worry about whether the fish are keen on eating your bait.
To that end I stick to using Krill for most of the year, and if those fish are eating the loosefeed I’m catapulting out, then I want my hookbait to match that and be taken without a second thought.
On the more highly-pressured lakes, I always steer clear of really bright hookbaits, and this approach has always served me in good stead.
SPREAD YOUR OPTIONS
When it comes to loosefeeding, my preference has always been to spread the bait around the rigs in an approximate 12-yard radius. I want the fish to be moving between each mouthful of bait, as I think they are easier to catch while they are grazing around the area in this fashion, rather than being sat on one spot for ages, troughing away at an array of small bait items.
This style of feeding perfectly suits the rigs that I favour using. When you feed just boilies, and no small particles, the fish swim between each bait
“I can’t stress enough how important it is to have complete confidence in your bait”
systematically, dropping down to pick the boilies up if and when they see them. A matching boilie popped-up just off bottom is taken without any hint of hesitation a lot of the time.
It goes without saying that hook sharpness is key in all fishing situations, but whenever I’m fishing with pop-ups (which is a lot of the time) I am fastidious about having a mega sharp hook. Unlike when fishing with bottom baits or wafters, with pop-ups there’s little chance of the point becoming burred over by touching something on the lakebed. The combination of that aggressive curve in the stiff
hooklink material when fishing with chods or hinges, and that mega sharp hook, makes it almost impossible for the fish to deal with or eject it.
ON CLOSER INSPECTION
If I have seen carp feeding in an area, and have flicked the rods out and caught nothing, I will wait until bite time has well passed before I have a cast around with a bare lead on the end of some braid. In this situation, I use only a small lead in a bid to to cause the least amount of disturbance possible.
Thanks to the braid and its zero stretch, even with a small lead I can get a pretty good idea of how firm the lakebed is from the ‘drop’. I then pull the lead back across the bottom a few yards to give me a general idea of how clean it is. Once I have found some spots that I like the feel of, I clip the fishing rod(s) up to the same distance, attach my rigs, cast to the spots and then catapult a few pouchfuls of boilies around them. That’s as complicated as it gets a lot of the time.
This isn’t just a quick, quiet and easy way of fishing – it’s also an extremely successful approach, and seems to be effective at singling out the bigger fish too.
These tactics have served me really well this season on the lake I’ve been fishing, which was a bit of an unknown quantity when I first began on there. By keeping my eyes on the water and keeping mobile in order to stay on the fish, I’ve been able to drop on to opportunities with the minimum of fuss… and without having to reach for the marker and spod rod either.
Try going back to basics yourself this season. It’s a really refreshing – not to mention productive – way to fish.