Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Combine float and feeder
On hot, still summer days when fishing can be tough, match ace Mark Perkins reckons you’ll keep bites coming by using both feeder and waggler tactics
THE height of summer can be a difficult time to fish because the water is very warm, oxygen levels are often low and the fish somewhat finicky. This is when you need to be at your thinking best to make the most of a day on the bank. “There’s no point trying to fish the same as you did last week,” match ace, Mark Perkins told us. “You have to ‘listen’ to what the fish are ‘telling you’ on the day, so that you can present a bait the way they want it, not how you want to present it.” For the Nottinghamshire-based, Dynamite Baits Matchman Supplies-backed rod, this involves using a combination of the waggler and feeder. But not in a way that you would think... To find out more about but Mark’s approach, we met up with him on one of his local waters, Hackett Lakes, near the legendary Holme Pierrepont, where he set about putting a fine net of fish together in the face of some far from ideal fishing weather – hot, bright and windless!
Being flexible
At this time of year, the open-end feeder can be its own worst enemy. It often starts well, but after an hour or so the bites quickly dry up as the fish wise up and back off. Mark still wants to get a good bed of bait down quickly, for which the feeder is the ideal tool, but to keep the bites coming all day, he fishes over the top of this loosefeed with a waggler. “I use the two tactics in combination,” he went to explain. “I fish the feeder conventionally for the first hour or so to get the feed in, but once I switch to the waggler, the hooklink is removed from the feeder and it is then used solely as a baiting-up tool, similar to the way a carp angler would use a spod.” Mark could of course simply fish the waggler from the off, balling in his loosefeed. The problem with this, though, is the commotion caused will bring in the carp, who won’t necessarily want to feed, but will sit over the bait, bullying the silverfish away from the free offerings. The result is a dry net! “I am also fishing down the marginal slope, so if I did ball in, the loosefeed will have a tendency to roll down, spreading it over too wide an area,” he added. “Similarly, if I was to loosefeed conventionally, using a catapult, the fish will quickly come up in the water, creating massive problems with line bites and foul hooking. “Using the feeder as purely a ‘feeding device’ enables me to quickly and accurately deposit a
lot of feed right where I want it without bringing the carp in as a result.”
Get more bites with a waggler
Again, doing things slightly differently, he had his 4lb Shimano Invisitec line going straight through to the size 16 Kamasan B911 hook. The waggler was a no-nonsense two-Swan Drennan Straight Peacock, with a bulk of seven No.8s 18 inches from the hook with single No.10 and No.11 shot equally spaced below. “The thing about skimmers in particular is they like to follow a hookbait down over the last couple of feet,” explained Mark. “I have also had quite a few lift bites today, indicating that the fish are sitting off bottom, going down to feed and coming straight back up. This is why the feeder tends to dry up because you can only really present a hookbait hard on the deck. “You could have a long hooklink so it flutters down, but I find the bites extremely hard to hit – usually one out of every 10 is about average.”
On the feeder
Although the eventual idea is to use the feeder to just deposit the loosefeed, Mark does start on it for the first hour or so until the bites become finicky. Using 6lb Invisitec, he has his feeder tied to the end of the mainline. Just up from this, he has a rubber float stop and swivel and another float stop, to create a helicopter rig. “The float stops will enable the hooklink to come off the mainline should I get broken by a carp,” said Mark. “The feeders I use are 2in Thamesleys, with only a light 15g loading. The weight is irrelevant; it is the carrying capacity of the hopper that is important.” In the feeder, Mark uses a combination of Dynamite Baits Silver X Bream Original groundbait to cap off, while the main food items are an equal mix of 2mm Dynamite Baits Meaty Marine pellets and casters. This gives him the ideal combination of sweet and fishmeal, but at a level he is able to control by the number of pellets he adds. Pellets will help to hold the fish while groundbait on its own can lead to gill feeding.
Kicking things off
To start the session, Mark clips up his feeder’s mainline before rapidly casting eight to 10 full feeders on the same spot. The hook is then baited with double maggot and re-cast. This first cast will be left for 5-10 minutes to see what fish are about then, thereafter, he will re-cast every 3 minutes until the bites dry up. This normally happens somewhere between an hour and 90 minutes. This is when the waggler rod comes out. Again it is baited with either double red maggot, double caster or half a Dynamite Baits Mini Meaty Pellet.
“Topping up with bait is the element that’s not an exact science,” Mark told us. “This is where you need to use a little watercraft, letting the fish tell you how much they want by the regularity of their bites. If I have a couple quickly then have to wait for the third, I will make three casts with the feeder to refresh the swim after this third fish. “If the bites are all fairly quick or steady, I top up again after every three to five fish as they obviously want a bit to eat. “Acquiring watercraft is one of those skills where there are no shortcuts.” Today’s session was textbook. The early sport was brisk, quietening off as the sun reached its peak, although his use of the waggler did help him to keep the fish coming, albeit slowly, while other anglers on the lake remained biteless. Being fluid and having the ability to adapt is what sorts the better anglers from the puddlechuckers.
The more you think about what you are doing and why, the better day you will have. Even in the toughest of conditions.