Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Big carp on small Methods
Top carp angler John Bassili hasn’t looked back since adopting small, match-style Method feeders
YEARS ago, specimen carp anglers and matchmen had an almost pathological dislike of each other and their chosen discipline of the sport. Neither would speak to the other because as each claimed they are ‘not our kind of angler’! Thankfully nowadays, those lines between the ‘speci’ and the ‘match’ side of the sport have blurred and merged, with both camps beginning to learn and copy each others methods, tactics and tricks. The seatbox boys now regularly use boilies and glugs, while the bivvy brigade, well at least one of them – John Bassili – have embraced a classic matchman’s approach. And it’s helping him to rinse carp waters! With fish to nearly 30lb and regular hits of 15-20 carp in a day, we just had to go and check it out for ourselves. The technique that is doing the damage is a simple 45g Guru X-Safe elasticated Method feeder! To find out more we met up with the Bait-Tech-backed carper on the banks of Ashlyns Farm Fishery in Essex, where he quickly set about banking several 20-pounders.
The long road to success
John was quick to admit that getting to where he is now wasn’t exactly a straightforward process. Having always been a carp angler, John has also started to undertake coaching sessions for kids in the past two years. This has seen the 41-year-old take up more ‘match-style’ angling techniques such as using poles, floats and seatboxes. “I had forgotten how much fun it was to watch a float,” enthused John. “I’ve even entered a few matches recently and even won one a couple of weeks ago!” From here, John progressed to trying his hand at feeder fishing with a 10ft feeder rod and a small Method feeder. As is welldocumented with this tactic, it proved to be highly successful on the commercial pool he was fishing. Moving on, he took along his young son fishing at Ashlyns Farm where he used traditional carp tactics – heavy rods, alarms and boilies – while he set up his son with a 10ft match rod. “Within 10 minutes of casting, we had a 20lb carp on the Method,” said John. “Forty-five minutes later, we’d had four
more, while my boilie rods hadn’t had so much as a single bleep! There has to be something in this, I thought to myself.” Swapping leads for inline Method feeders, John found, to his dismay, that although he got plenty of bites, the combination of size 4 hooks and carp rods resulted in a hook-pull every time. “I then swapped the in-line feeders to Guru’s elasticated versions, lowered the hooklink to a 12lb mono matched with a strong size 12 hook, and the rest is history,” he added. “I regularly get multiple hits of carp, while those around me are blanking, just as I did prior to the switch.”
Why go small?
Although a few tackle companies do sell large ‘carp’ flatbed Method feeders, John prefers the small match feeders. “I find you get quicker bites because they present the fish with a small parcel of food, akin to using a small PVA bag or stick,” explained John. “It’s a one-mouthful tactic with the hookbait presented in the centre of the loosefeed. With the larger Method feeders, the loosefeed spreads too far, which can lead to the fish becoming preoccupied with the smaller loosefeed pellets and ignoring the hookbait.” The other advantage John has found is that on most carp lakes the fish see beds of boilies, boilies and more boilies. They learn these situations are fraught with danger, so they feed cautiously. His Method approach is a little trap that they aren’t expecting and, more importantly, can’t deal with.
John’s set-up
At the rod end, everything looks carpy. A pair of 2.75lb rods with Baitrunner reels loaded with 12lb mainline sit on bite alarms. It is only at the terminal end, where things change radically. The feeder is a large 45g Guru Method, set-up with a five-inch hooklink of 12lb mono to a size 12 Drennan Super Specimen hook. The hook is tied with a hairrigged bait band to which he attaches a hard 8mm pellet. For the loosefeed, he chooses 4mm Bait-Tech Carp and Coarse pellets. These he soaks in lake water for two minutes, before pouring off the excess and leaving them to stand for 15 minutes to moisten. To increase the stickiness and add an extra flavour punch, he adds around 50ml of BaitTech’s Sweet Coconut liquid to every 1kg of pellets.