Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
Keep silvers on the deck – Greg Cooper
Using a baitdropper is the perfect baiting tool to force fish to feed on the beck. Dynamite Baits’ Greg Cooper shows you how...
WHEN the water starts to warm up, it can be a double-edged sword regards how you fish. The fish are up for a feed and you can use heavy tackle and loads of loosefeed. But it’s not all good news. When targeting deeper swims – 5ft or more – once you start to loosefeed slow-sinking baits such as maggots fish are quick to respond and will come up in the water. This is fine if you want to catch fish shallow, but it is much easier and faster to catch them on the deck. This is why I use an item more commonly seen on rivers to introduce my loosefeed - a baitdropper. Filling this with loosefeed, I can lower it where I’m fishing and deposit it all hard on the deck, exactly where I want to catch. For today’s session, I am on the First Spring Lake at Springvale Fishing Lakes, near Bevercotes, Nottinghamshire. As well as a healthy stock of carp and silver fish, First Spring Lake is rammed with a big head of ide. The species feeds well all-year round and they are well-known for their greed and willingness to come up in the water, the perfect venue to demonstrate my baitdropper tactics.
What is an ide
Many anglers who catch their first ide are confused as to what they have just landed. A cross between a roach, dace and chub, they are a non-native freshwater species typically found across mainland Europe and Asia. Also called orfe, the ornamental golden and blue versions of which more commonly found in garden centres, the name ‘ide’ comes from the Swedish word ‘Id’, which refers to its bright silvery colour. Attracted by the noise of bait hitting the water, they can be just as easily spooked by any bankside disturbance. They can reach a top weight of 5lb, and the ide at Springvale average 1lb to 2lb, making them ideal for putting together a big weight, if you fish well for them.
Dropping in
As a member of the Trentmen match squad, I tend to use baitdroppers a lot when I’m fishing rivers, but they are rarely seen on the banks of stillwaters. I find them the perfect baiting tool when you’re looking to feed slow-sinking items, such as maggots, for silver fish that are all too
willing to come up in the water. In essence, it is just like using a big feeder. The only difference is that I can be much more accurate because I’m dropping it off the end of the pole. If I were to loosefeed maggots by hand or with a catapult, fish such as ide and F1s don’t need much of an excuse to come up that will result in line bites. On deeper venues this makes a baitdropper the perfect way to loosefeed a swim.
Tackle up for ide
I’m fishing five metres out just past the marginal shelf, where the lakebed flattens off because this will give me more of a chance of a big weight. The terminal tackle is fairly light and balanced. My elastic is a size 8-10 hollow. This sounds quite heavy, especially if you compared it to a solid 4 or 6, but the reason for this elastic is that even though it is a bit heavier than a lighter solid, it powers up much more gently. Solid elastics, even those with a much lighter rating, can still be too abrupt, especially when targeting soft-mouthed ide. The mainline is 0.13mm Preston Innovations Powerline to 6in of 0.11mm Powerline. The hook is a size 18 Guru F1 Maggot, which I have plumbed to fish 2in overdepth. The float is a 4x14 F1 Maggot, again from Preston. It’s a lovely slim pattern, designed for use with maggots and other light baits. Shotting is a bulk of No.10 set 18in from the hook and two No.10 droppers, equally spread. It’s a simple but highly-effective presentation for this style of fishing.
Feeding is key
At the start of the session I feed a medium-sized baitdropper filled with chopped red maggots and 20 to 30 live ones. The reason for using chopped maggots is that it is similar to chopped worm. Chopping the maggots releases all the grub’s natural juices and creates a cloud in the water to draw fish in. To add even more attraction I add a dash of Dynamite Baits’ Strawberry XL Liquid. Ide love fruity sweet flavours much more than fishy or spicy ones. I then throw 15 maggots over the top of the float after every fish or every time I lower in my rig. This helps to hold the fish in the swim as well as drawing more in. It is important not to do this too often as you will encourage the fish to come up in the water. You will know when this is starting to happen because bites start to die off and you will get line bites and other strange knocks and bumps on the float. As soon as this happens it is back out with the baitdropper. This usually results in four or five fish before the handfeeding starts to bring them up again. I have also found that it pays to use red maggots, although I have brought half a pint of whites as an alternative hookbait. Simply top up the baitdropper as and when you feel you need it, depending upon what is happening in the swim at the time. When the bites start to dry up, this is often a sign that the ide have backed off. You can also tell that is the case here at Springvale because you’ll start to catch more crucians. When this happens you have two options – either add a section of pole to fish further out or introduce a little more loosefeed. Personally, I would try feeding heavier at first, maybe feeding two baitdroppers or upping the hand-fed loosefeed. If this doesn’t work, then try adding a section. If you are adding sections, only use the baitdropper on the longer line but keep throwing loosefed maggots on the original short line. This way you won’t push the fish further out as the session continues. By doing this, once the new baitdropper line dries up, you can come back to your original five-metre line and start the whole process all over again. Although ide can be a little skittish, if you follow these simple guidelines, you can very easily put a big net together in a short time, just like today with a finishing weight of nearly 60lb in four hours.