Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Brothers Carl & Alex, two of the biggest angling stars on YouTube, enjoy a memorable session for zander then dust off their carp rods now that the weather is warming
CARL – It’s approaching the end of February as I write this, the sun is shining bright and it seems everything is coming back to life after the winter. I have been stuck at this desk for weeks on end through the colder months working on many different angling films, but finally the slate is clean and my ‘to do’ list is short enough to forget work for a couple of days and go fishing! Up until now our sessions have been short day-trips or overnighters between work, but I hope you enjoy reading what Alex and I have got up to during the last 30 days.
Perch fishing
Alex – Soon it’ll be spring and the perch will become aggressive again, shoaling up the roach fry and attacking anything that gets in their way. This is when we have found lure fishing on our local waters to be most effective. Over the last couple of months, however, Carl and I have done very poorly with lures, so instead we opted for a more traditional approach, using floatfished maggots over a bed of groundbait. No matter how exciting it is feeling a tap on the lure while reeling it in, we also get a mega buzz while watching a float dip beneath the surface and the intense battle that normally follows after hooking a big perch. I love it! Over the past week that’s exactly what I have been doing during a few short evening sessions on a couple of local ponds. After arriving at the water I tend to walk the pond or lake with a bucket of groundbait laced with maggots. I put a few balls of groundbait next to any promising features whether that be an overhanging tree or undercut bank. This will attract the smaller species such as roach, rudd and gudgeon and, in turn, the predators. I leave the baited spot to settle while setting up my tackle. I use my 13ft Drennan Acolyte float rod paired up with a small reel loaded with
5lb line. It’s important for this style of fishing to use a lightweight, balanced set-up so you can hold the rod at all times, ready for when the all important bite comes. For my margin floatfishing I opt for either a small stick float or pole float as I have found a top and bottom style float easier to work with when fishing under the rod tip. I use a spread out shotting pattern so that the hookbait sinks slowly and attracts perch on-the-drop. If very small roach or rudd are a problem then I simply create a bulk of shot nearer the hook to get the bait down quicker. A 3lb hooklink is tied on and a size 16 hook is perfect for three maggots. Once the tackle is ready it’s simply a case of plumbing the depth. I set the rig at dead depth then, as soon as the perch takes the bait, I get an indication on the float. On each day the fish will have different confidence levels so you will have to figure out the best time to set the hook. Some days the fish will take the bait really well and you will get good hook-holds, whereas other times they will be very finicky and you have to wait a little longer before the bait is taken properly. I drop the rig in on each of the baited spots around the lake and although some of the baited areas will be devoid of fish, others are likely to be teeming with life and just on dusk it is possible to have some great perch action. In fact, my best session was not too long ago when the weather was really overcast and the fish were in the right mood. It was bite a chuck for the last hour of light and awesome fun on the light float gear. I even caught a little pumpkinseed fish which came as a bit of a surprise. If you’re struggling to catch perch with lures like we are then maybe this will work for you. Good luck.
ourselves zander on the lures and I struggled to keep all three of my deadbait rods in the water at the same time. I think we had five zander in the net at the same time at one point! It was non-stop action! Nothing over 4lb graced our net but we didn’t really care. To be hauling zander on a freezing cold February afternoon, what more could you ask for? The action did slow into the dark hours but we still managed the odd bite before calling it a day and making the long drive back down south. As weather is warming up I think that will probably be our last zander session this season. But what can I say, we’ve learned loads about the species, caught them from both a huge reservoir and a small canal and also managed to land them on both lures and deadbaits. It’s safe to say I’m happy with the way our zander fishing has gone this winter and I’m already looking forward to fishing on Rutland come September. For now, bring on the spring, my favourite time of year.
The carp are waking up
Carl – Spring is in the air and we are loving it. The main reason why spring is such an exciting time for us, is that with it comes carp moving around in the margins and near the surface. We did a few quick sessions chasing pike this month and even they are now more willing to chase a lure in shallow water than pick up a deadbait in a deep part of the lake. Looking in more detail at our current carp fishing tactics reveals the truth about our fishing mind-set – keep it simple! There is a time and place for more complicated methods, but I get by far the most satisfaction by catching carp while freelining. It enables you to have nothing but line and a hook between you and your quarry, and in most cases creeping up on a shoal of carp in the edge gets your heart beating mega fast! At the moment we have been fishing exclusively with bread. Most of the places we are fishing have slightly coloured water because of the rain, so a visual, slow-sinking hookbait seems to do the trick. We also think that there isn’t a carp in the world that won’t eat bread (possibly one or two may be gluten intolerant, but I can’t be sure!). However, canals, park lakes and anywhere with people, ducks and carp the fish should be well aware of the white stuff and recognise it as a food source. One of our favourite canal locations lends itself perfectly to freelining with bread, particularly one end where there is a large tree which you can climb and fish from. In just one three-hour session, we fished three locations and caught a carp from each. Nothing massive, but we didn’t care. It was just nice to get out and hunt down the carp, rather than sitting and waiting for them to come to us like we have had to do throughout winter. Looking forward, we have a tiny bit more pike fishing to do next week. Somehow we managed to get invited to a really beautiful stretch of the River Test so, fingers crossed, maybe a 20lb river pike could bid farewell to this winter for good? We will see.