PASTING THE FORGOTTEN LAKE
Even on a complex as busy as Bluebell Lakes, some waters can get overlooked. LEE CRAMPTON decided to use that to his advantage…
EVERYONE knows Bluebell Lakes in Tansor, near Peterborough. It’s arguably one of the most popular day-ticket fisheries in the UK, but there is one particular water on the complex that I feel continually gets disregarded.
Everyone makes a beeline for one of the usual suspects – Swan, Kingfisher, or Mallard – and drives straight past what I would consider to be one of the more captivating, distinct and enriched waters on the complex – Sandmartin.
Admittedly Sandmartin doesn’t hold the same volume of fish as the other waters, while the lake record is a low40 common. But what it does deliver in return is a crystal-clear, extremely rich, feature-filled water with every swim presenting something different. Plus, as it’s probably the quietest water at Bluebell Lakes, you tend have the freedom to move around and work the water, rather than ‘slotting in’ and competing with other anglers, which is rather an unexpected trait for such a prolific complex.
It’s not an easy water by any stretch of the imagination, and you need to carefully consider your tactics and approach them with caution, but providing you comply with a few fundamental rules that Sandmartin seems to dictate, you always stand a chance of encountering one of the many jewels that inhabit it.
Perfect for paste
Paste, much like Sandmartin itself, seems to be a forgotten aspect of carp fishing, but it can be a devastating tactic, especially at this time of the year. It’s well understood that in the colder months, while the carp’s metabolisms are slow, you don’t want to be presenting a volume of food items, but rather attraction and stimulants to try to encourage a feeding spell.
In these situations the obvious choice would be to use liquids, but how do you get a liquid to the lakebed, and how can you do so accurately? It’s somehow got to travel though the water column without being dispersed. In Sandmartin that can mean some significant depths, and you also want the liquid to gradually release its signal upwards (rather than dispersing downwards), to draw the carp to the source. One of the more effective ways to achieve this is with small balls of liquid-infused paste.
In its simplest form, these are uncooked boilies, but the paste is designed to be porous to absorb and retain a fair amount of liquid, and heavy enough to sink through the water column quickly and accurately. The mix is also created to break down quickly, releasing a continuous scent in the process, but leaving nothing behind other than a sediment on the lakebed.
Choose your liquids
Different liquids behave differently in water. Classic carp attractors like hemp oil, salmon oil and tuna oil will rise and disperse, while thicker food-based liquids such as tigernut extract, roasted nut extract or corn steep liquor tend to hold low and remain relatively local to the baited area.
I like to use a mix of both, incorporating oil-based liquids within the core of the mix. These will provide
a constant release as the paste breaks down, before I usually apply the thicker food-based liquids to the outer layers. I typically coat my paste in these thicker layers once it has been balled up.
I roll the balls roughly and manually rather than compress the paste though a boilie gun. Because the paste balls are not compressed they are able to break down quicker.
An added bonus is that by doing things by hand you will get a natural variety of sizes, which provides a mix of breakdown times.
Season with powder
The final process, if required, is to add a quick dusting of powder, such as tiger nut flour, or krill meal, depending on the mix. This is to stop the paste sticking together during transit, and helps it separate as it sinks though the depths.
I’ve used this method to good effect during spring, in conjunction with a handful of boilies as food items... one of which is my hookbait of course.
Good luck with your fishing!