Day-Ticket Carp Tips Top tricks to stay under the radar
Are the carp in your lake getting away with it? If so, it’s time to adopt a super-stealthy baiting approach...
TARGETING big carp from day-ticket waters during autumn is a very different proposition from doing so at the start of spring.
In March and April, the fish in many venues have enjoyed several months of low (or non-existent) angling pressure. By October, however, they’ll have seen it all, and the sound of spods and marker floats repeatedly crashing through the surface layers can send them bolting off to the quiet areas of the lake.
Carp that are on edge and aware that they are being fished for are much harder to catch, so the key to keeping the bobbins dancing is to adopt a much more stealthy, subtle approach. Here are six tried-and-tested tips to help stack the odds back in your favour
SOAK YOUR BAITS
Shelf-life boilies are produced by air-drying. This removes much of the moisture, giving them a firm outer skin. The downside is, it can take a while for them to soften in water and release their attractors.
To overcome this, soak your baits the night before a trip in a bucket of water, but don’t use chlorinated tap water. Instead, use the water left over from cooking particles, such as hemp, or add some boilie dip to the water.
The resulting boilies will look ‘washed-out’, fooling the carp into thinking they are ‘safer’ to eat because they resemble boilies that have been on the lakebed for a number of days.
INGENIOUS FREEBIES
Snowman hookbaits are effective all year round for tricking big, wary carp, but especially so in late autumn. Here’s a trick that allows you to feed snowman baits alongside those that you’re fishing – which can be a big edge on
highly pressured waters, where the fish have wised-up to the usual offerings from anglers.
Take a 1cm length of raw, hard spaghetti and push it into the pop-up that will sit on the top of the snowman, then push the other end into a larger bottom bait, before pressing them together.
The result is a perfect replica of your hookbait, which can be fired out a considerable distance with a catapult, or fed via a spod.
GO NAKED!
Most day-ticket venues are devoid of snags and underwater obstructions, so leaders are required less for abrasion resistance than for sinking the last few feet of line above your rig so that the carp don’t bump into it and spook. Some lakes also have total leader bans.
The answer is to go ‘straight through’ with a fluorocarbon mainline. This results in a stronger set-up with fewer knots involved, and will also give you the ultimate invisible presentation… especially if it’s combined with a camouflaged lead!
To enhance fluorocarbon’s brilliant sinking properties, fix a couple of small blobs of tungsten putty up the line above the rig.