Changinggear
BY LOUIS FEROX WITH the weather cooling down I’ve started to look out my deadbait gear, while lures and flies are still effective, the first frosts usually get me thinking about checking bite alarm batteries and digging out the big rods.
Deadbaiting comes into its own in the winter months. You can fish in even the worst weather conditions when you’ve got the right gear and, if you time your trip, you can have some serious red letter days, even if you do run the risk a cold day catching nothing.
I’ve got a day booked on an estate lake in Argyll after Halloween, it’s a big bit of water that fishes well for Pike up to double figures.
Last time I was there I was well on the way to one of those cold days catching nothing, the early drive was full of hope but stepping in over the top of my wellies on the first cast put a bit of a dampener on those.
As breakfast time gave way to midmorning, no further bites had come our way. Sometimes on short winter days it’s all too easy to sit tight camping up in one swim where there may not be any fish feeling like picking up a bait. It pays to be mobile and adaptable, plus the walking helped warm my feet back up!
So I’d pulled in the static baits and swapped over to a wobbled deadbait in a bid to tempt a Pike into striking.
You can use a standard deadbait trace. But adding a little flash and maybe some split shot or a tungsten bead to get the balance right, when you’re making up your own wobbling trace, can make all the difference.
A natural bait fished with a sink and draw retrieve is as close to matching the hatch as you can get, a flick of the rod tip brings the bait to life sending it fluttering and wheeling through the clear water in the margins using the light rig and short casts on the wobble covering the gaps in bays that hadn’t produced anything to static or popped up baits.
Weed grows best in the shallow water which holds food that attracts prey fish and in turn Pike, even in winter when that’s died down this water is the first to warm up but sometimes your first instinct is to cast to the horizon just because you can and these areas can be easily ignored.
This method has proved itself again and again, rescuing some dour days, sometimes conjuring out a fish from the same swims that had been completely lifeless previously.
I think I’ll start off with the warm socks and waders on to keep my feet dry with wobbling gear prepped and ready for the next trip back.