TARGETING THE HIDDEN GEMS IN CARP LAKES
...where the chub and roach grow big on a diet of leftover boilies
THE banks of lakes up and down the country are getting busier this month, as hordes of bivvies begin to sprout up like mushrooms on a damp morning.
Carp anglers, who have been in hibernation for the past few months, know that their favourite species is on the move, and you’ll find me sitting happily among them – but carp aren’t my quarry.
Quite why I accept the idea of stillwater chub yet turn my nose up at a barbel in the same environment is sheer hypocrisy, but when was fishing logical? Find a stillwater that holds chub, look for surface movement, and your quarry won’t be far away.
Lake inlets are a case in point. Instinct tells the fish that food will be carried their way across the flow, so this is the perfect place to lay an ambush.
Oxfordshire is perhaps the spiritual home of big stillwater chub, and deadbaits have led to the downfall of many a monster. I, on the other hand, used to prefer spraying maggots every chuck and fishing on the drop with more of the same on the hook.
The reason I abandoned this tactic was simple – it stopped working! Maybe I had located a shoal with bizarre feeding habits, but I don’t think so.
So many boilies and pellets go into carp lakes that chub see them as a natural food source. Yet if I simply cast these baits out into the lake I might as well be carp fishing.
Relying on luck isn’t really my style, so I stealthily seek out the chub, their white mouths easy to spot as they gulp in oxygenated water. A heavy footfall or a shadow cast on the water spells failure, and a handful of loosefed boilies is probably as much disturbance as the chub will tolerate.
However, I’m more than happy to mould Sticky Krill paste around the hook and cast out a simple paternoster rig on a Drennan medium quivertip rod.
Most times I’ll watch the bait get sucked in, or see the line zip across the surface and strike. It’s an early spring tonic for sure, and holding a big chub among the daffodils is almost enough to make you forget that the rivers are closed.
Rolling roach at dawn
Another species of running water that’s equally at home in lakes and pits is the roach. Carpers really are a godsend for this enigmatic fish – not only are they on the bank 24/7 to help keep cormorants at bay, but the bait they pile in is a welcome source of food. No redfin is ever going to ignore a Spombload of pellets and particles.
In early spring the hen roach have plump white chests because spawning is close, so it’s easy to see why a supersized specimen is possible right now.
I prefer to floatfish for roach, but many venues are huge and the food fed by carpers is normally fired in at range, so this is where the roach sit too.
A bolt rig won’t go down well with the purists, but I take pleasure in every tactic…so consider the scene.
Two silver backs break the surface at dawn – blink, and you’ll miss them. This
“It’s easy to see why a supersized specimen is possible right now”