CARP TACTICS
Lewis Read explains why getting on the wrigglers will keep bites coming
Tricks for using maggots
DURING the colder months nothing else seems to create the same trigger as maggots. It really is little wonder when you think how close they come to resembling the carp’s natural food.
If you’re trying to mimic a bed of bloodworm, which is one of the carp’s primary food sources, there’s nothing better.
A totally natural live bait that gives off all the organic and chemical signals that ring the dinner bell, their wriggling creates the vibration and movement that help the carp to home in on something wholly and completely digestible. They really can be game-changers and continue to buy bites when other baits – namely boilies – fail to evoke a response.
Moderation is key
You don’t need 10 gallons of grubs to catch a carp! That’s ridiculously expensive and completely unnecessary.
A few pints are ample for a day’s fishing. A good approach is to bulk them out with boilie crumb and hemp – but use your imagination. Any bait that creates a carpet works well because the combination of ingredients keeps the fish browsing and grubbing about much longer. But it’s the maggots that set a bed of ‘bits’ apart and encourage aggressive feeding behaviour.
Don’t skimp on quality
Hunt around and you’ll find a shop that does a lot of maggots for match anglers. Such outlets tend to offer better quality at reasonable prices.
Buying quality maggots will give you consistently good results. A wealth of information is available about keeping them in good condition, but key points are to riddle off dead ones, avoid getting them wet or damp, and stop them sweating by keeping them in a container with a perforated lid.
When it comes to rigs, two reliable presentations will cover all eventualities. First up is the mighty Mag-aligner, which is incredibly effective yet so simple to use. If your venue is largely weed-free, this would be the first angle of attack I’d recommend, because all its component parts work together to create a sublime trap.
The rig features a short, soft
braided hooklink, fished with a lead arrangement that enables a large micromesh PVA bag of maggots to be added without the rig being ruined as the whole lot hits the water.
The easiest way to set it up is to tie a standard helicopter-style arrangement, but with an inline lead on the end of the leader, held in place with a Flexi ring swivel on to which you can tie the PVA bag of freebies.
Just before casting, nick the hook on to the PVA to eliminate any chance of tangles with the supple braided hooklink.
Hookbait twist
Hookbait is simply a few maggots mounted on to a smallish hook… but here’s the devilish twist. A fake grub is slid down the hooklink and pushed over the eye to create an aggressive turning action. After the PVA bag has exploded on the lakebed, the hooklink and tiny hookbait become impossible to differentiate from the dinner plate-sized patch of grubs.
On more weedy lakes, where you’re fishing to clear patches, and where the big bag and awkward lob-style cast associated with the Mag-aligner can make accurate positioning difficult, a more conventional rig can pay off.
Here, a standard rig with a small PVA bag fished over the top of spodded maggots catches countless winter carp, and resetting the trap is much simpler to do.
With this set-up, I favour a monofilament D-rig that sinks slowly thanks to a small piece of foam mounted on the ‘D’ to which I then tie around a dozen maggots.
If you trim the highly buoyant nugget of foam back so that the hook sinks slowly and settles flush to the lakebed, the maggots tend to hide the hook – a small but highly beneficial detail in clear, cold water.
If your lake rules allow, give maggots a go this winter. Far from these being a small fish bait, you might just find the biggest resident staring back up at you from your landing net!