PAUL GARNER
Make a boosted bag mix
IT CAN be very easy to get carried away with bait at this time of year.
The lengthening days and growing warmth of the sun often lead us to think that the water temperature must also be on the way up, making the fish more active. But dip your hand into the margins and you’ll find that the water is still bitterly cold, and it’s likely to be several weeks before it finally starts to creep upwards.
However, that’s not to say that fish, especially carp, won’t be moving around a little more now. They respond to the extra hours of daylight and often seem as eager as we are to get going after a long, cold winter. The problem is that their metabolism won’t let them, and they still require only a small amount of food each day.
As a result of all this, at this time of the year one tactic stands out for me – fishing with tiny PVA sticks filled with brightly-coloured and quite strongly-flavoured morsels that will attract the carp’s attention without filling them up.
There’s a vast array of ingredients that you can use in your sticks, but as long as you use small, easily-digestible items, you won’t go far wrong.
You can buy ready-made stick mixes, which work a treat, but I like to experiment with different ingredients. One of my favourites is fresh breadcrumbs, made by liquidising a few slices from a white loaf. Bread has a lot going for it. In water it expands quickly, forming a fluffy carpet that really stands out on the bottom. It can also be easily flavoured and dyed and, of course, carp love the natural taste of bread too.
Another really old school ingredient that I use a lot is powdered milkshake. I find the vanilla and strawberry flavours work well for carp, creating a sweet aroma in the water that the fish love.
While it’s still so cold, I’m only looking to win one bite at a time, so I make my PVA sticks about the size of a 50p piece.
This might not seem like a lot of grub, but it is designed to
“There’s a vast array of ingredients that you can use in your sticks”
attract the carp, not feed them. I want to have a good chance of hooking a fish the first time it decides to take a mouthful, because this might be the only meal it has all day.
To complement the small sticks I scale down my rig a little and use a small bait. I’ve landed carp over 30lb on size 10 hooks, so they’re plenty strong enough.
If you don’t have any 10mm boilies, try trimming down a larger bait into a barrel-shape so the bait matches the hook size.
Carp fishing at this time of the year can be a real game of cat and mouse. Rather than fish coming to a bed of bait, or the sound of feed going in, as they do in summer, right now it can be a case of landing a bait close to them and hoping for a quick bite before they move.
It’s a fun challenge, in my book, and by using tiny PVA sticks packed with attraction you can expect to keep catching this spring.