I get a lot of fizzing in my swim but I can’t catch. What’s going wrong?
Glen Proud, Market Harborough
“Fish dig into the soft silt to feed and lots of fizzing is the end result”
YOU might be thinking: “Why would you want to stop fizzing? Bubbles mean fish!”
Well, the issue is that a swim full of bubbles very often ends up, as you say, with no bites. I’ve seen it loads of times and it’s actually a very common scenario that happens on a lot of fisheries all over the country.
The cause of this, in my experience, is fishing on a very soft silty bottom.
Once you feed bait into the peg the fish dig into the soft silt to search for food and lots of fizzing is the end result. Because the fish are in the silt, they become pretty much uncatchable because your hookbait is sitting on top of the muck. Worse still, quite often, despite all those bubbles you won’t even get an indication on the float!
When the fizzing gets really bad, if you plumb the depth a second time you will often find the swim has actually got deeper. This is caused by fish scouring the soft bottom out. It sounds unbelievable, but it happens, and when it does,
I’ve seen the depth change by as much as six inches over the course of five hours.
So, if you are fishing in a fizzing swim then plumb up every now and again to make sure you are actually still fishing on the bottom!
The correct feeds
So, in this situation, what can you do? Well, the first thing to look at is the bait you are feeding. Smaller baits such as micro pellets or even small hard pellets (4mm and 6mm sizes) are a nightmare for getting the fish fizzing. Being small and heavy, they tend to sink deeper into the silt.
Hemp is another bait that is a disaster when fed over soft silt. The fish get a taste for it and start digging deeper and deeper into the bottom to find the grains. The end result is a swim literally frothing with bubbles but no actual bites are forthcoming.
It’s for this reason that if fishery rules allow, feeding expander pellets can work really well. Being a lot lighter and softer, they sit on top of the silt better and you get far less fizzing as a result.
Start new swims
Of course, venue rules might mean you don’t have much choice as to what you feed. If this is the case, the best advice that I can give is to be prepared to keep starting new swims and try to feed little and often as opposed to large amounts in one go. You see, what tends to happen is at first there isn’t a problem and you will start off catching well. Then the bubbles begin surfacing, and the fishing gets harder and harder.
When this happens, it can pay to simply start a new swim, say, 1m to the left or right of the original line. This way you are starting afresh and you’ll get another run of fish before the same problem arises again. When it does, you simply repeat the process, as in starting again in a fresh spot.
Go for big baits
If starting a fresh line isn’t an option, then something else to look at is hookbait choice. For targeting carp, a big hookbait will often get bites in a fizzing peg. When I say ‘big’, I am talking about a lump of paste or a big cube of red meat, basically a hookbait that will stand out. When a swim is fizzing, as I’ve said, it’s because the fish are feeding in the silt.
When this happens, the water in the bottom 12 inches of the swim gets highly coloured, so visibility is very poor.
That, in my opinion, is why a big hookbait works better than a small one, as it stands out and acts as a target bait.
Find a hard bottom
Something else to bear in mind is where you fish. If you know a venue to be very silty then it can pay to spend a bit of time plumbing up with a big heavy plummet to try and find harder areas of lakebed.
The way to do this is to hold the plummet around 12 inches off the bottom and let it drop fast. When you lift it out again, try and see if there is no resistance. If this is the case, the bottom in that area will be quite hard. If however, it feels heavy as you go to lift the plummet out it’s because it has buried and sunk into very soft silt. Often, in open water, you won’t find a hard area, but if you don’t plumb up properly, you’ll never know for sure.
If silt is a huge issue, it can pay to fish closer to the bank. One area that tends to not be too silty is the near slope, the reason being that the silt will be concentrated at the bottom of the slope, on a flat lakebed, as opposed to collecting on the slope itself.
It might be skimmers!
One last word on fizzing, and that is, don’t be fooled into thinking it’s always carp that do it. Sometimes it’s small skimmers that cause the bubbles. That’s why, at times, you can have a peg full of bubbles, yet you can’t get a sign on the float.
If they were decent-sized carp, then even if you couldn’t catch them you would still get the odd indication on the float.