CRUMBS! IT’S IN THE BAG...
MARK PITCHERS explains how you can transform your boilies for more winter bites
EVERYONE knows just how good modern-day boilies are – including the carp!
But in the colder months, in sub-zero temperatures, we need to make it a little easier for the fish to get the most from these awesome round balls – it’s time to get crumbing!
Boilie crumb offers so many benefits in the winter. Not only is it far easier for the fish, whose metabolism has slowed down, to digest, but it’s also superattractive. Visually, crumb stands out on the lakebed, and it activates your swim, with pieces stuck in the water column, attractors spread across the bottom and so on.
This attraction then only gets better when fish start to feed on it, with clouds of crumb generated from gorging fish, which then attract others into the area to investigate.
Everyone knows that maggots and worms are also winter winners, but on waters where these might be banned, or if you just want to be a little different, crumb is a viable alternative. HOW TO CREATE CRUMB Making crumb couldn’t be simpler. I just run my desired number of boilies through a blender until I end up with a fine dust. In the winter I want the only real food item to be my hookbait, so the finer the crumb, the better.
I like to then add some complementary liquids to enhance the crumb further. In the colder months my chosen boilie is a sweet and nutty bait, like CC Moore’s Live System, so to this I would add a similar sweet liquid like their Response + Cream Bait Booster or the matching Live System liquid. This is mixed into the crumb with a helping of lake water too. You want the mix to be a bit like a matchman’s groundbait, so it squeezes together as a firm ball, but returns to crumb with a simple rub of the hands.
Shelf-life boilies are one of my favourites for crumbing, as I can prepare buckets of crumb before the session, only adding lake water at the venue. It lasts for ages and there’s no waste. FISHING OVER CRUMB It’s entirely venue-dependent but there are some considerations to make when fishing over crumb. First of these is quantity. If the venue is of a low stock, a couple of handfuls will be enough to get you the one bite you may be after. If the venue is more prolific, however, you need to be active and keep the swim topped up with a few Spombs.
On venues where I might expect several bites, I will take as much as 5kg for a session, usually putting it all on the one spot, instead of setting individual traps for each rod.
To introduce it, for me that’s nearly always with a Spomb. If the water is only shallow the crumb will go out fine as it is. In deeper water you may need to give it a squeeze into more of a sausage shape, so it goes down to the bottom more easily.
When it comes to spots, you can pretty much fish crumb anywhere, even over light weed or debris, where it will stick at different levels. In this situation I’d be looking to fish a small pop-up over the top of it on something like a Ronnie rig, just so the hook point is clear of any rubbish on the deck.
On cleaner bottoms a simple wafter rig with a big hook is my preferred presentation and will get you plenty of bites.