RINGER TO THE RESCUE
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Is it worth fishing to features in the cold? Den McCluskey, email
ONCE the weather gets cold and the water starts to go clear carp, in particular, start to look for cover. They feel safe with some sort of roof over their heads.
Compared to open water, a feature is a magnet for fish and chances are that if they feel settled and comfortable, there’s more chance of them taking your hookbait. But it’s not always easy to catch for any amount of time fishing up to a feature. Often, nicking a fish or two before moving on is the name of the game.
What features to target
There are lots of different types of cover that fish look for, but the main ones are low bridges, aerators, big rush beds, overhanging trees and even undercut banks. All of them will hold fish in the cold.
A less obvious feature that’s well worth looking for is a deep hole or a big depth variation.
Let’s say that the swim is 5ft deep, but when plumbing up you find a hole where it drops to 6ft. Even if the hole is just a couple of feet square, fish will pack into it in the cold. That’s why it’s well worth spending a bit of time plumbing up to check for underwater features that can’t be seen from above with the naked eye.
When plumbing up and looking for features, you might find that your plummet bumps a fish or two. If this happens, make a note of exactly where it occurred in the swim – the chances are there’s a ball of fish sat in that spot and it could make a good starting point.
Feed nothing!
Fishing to features is actually pretty straightforward. With the fish already hopefully there, you don’t have to worry about attracting them with feed – you just need to try and catch them! Nine times out of 10, when I’m faced with a feature, I’ll always kick off by dobbing.
Dobbing normally means fishing punched bread (8mm or 10mm for carp) and feeding literally nothing. In the cold, when the fish are shoaled up, they more often than not don’t really want to feed, but will suck in a soft piece of bread if it appears in front of them. Depth-wise I like to plumb up
then start off fishing 4ins-6ins off bottom, so starting quite deep. This way, I get more indications, which can act as a guide to how many fish are in front of me.
If you start too shallow you might never know the fish are there. Begin by fishing just off bottom and work your way up.
Get really close
Another little tip when fishing to features such as aerators or rush beds is to always try and start with the rig presented just off them. A foot or two back is perfect. This way you can nick a fish or two early before they start to tighten up and back off right under the feature.
When this happens, I move tight to the feature to follow the fish. And when I say ‘tight’, I mean really tight. Often with an aerator, unless my float is resting against it, I can’t get a bite! If you aren’t getting any signs you still have to be prepared to move. In the cold you have to go to the fish – they won’t come to you!
If you catch a few fish early and then follow them about before it totally dies, then that’s the time to feed a little bit of bait and see what happens.
In an ideal world you’ll be three hours into the session by this point, so the fish will be getting to the stage when they will come to a little bit of feed.
Drop in just five or six grains of corn or similar and then fish straight over the top of it. Normally this would mean feeding tight to the cover because this is the most likely spot for the fish to be hiding.
If I get a quick response to feeding, I’ll keep repeating the process while bites are coming. If I get no response, I’ll try feeding again, but in a different spot, until I find the fish.
If bread is banned...
I’ll always start off dobbing bread unless I have prior info that says that’ll be wrong! The beauty of dobbing is that it can’t really harm your swim because you aren’t feeding anything. It’s also a great way of building a picture of exactly what’s in front of you.
If bread happens to be banned on your fishery then both corn and maggots make great alternative hook-baits when you’re feeding nothing!
“In the cold you have to go to the fish – they won’t come to you!”