Improve Your Coarse Fishing (UK)
You don’t need vast quantities of bait to catch lots of carp - as Shannon Swallow proves using just a pint of pellets!
You might be tempted to go all out with the loosefeed at this time of year, but Guru’s Shannon Swallow advises that a more cautious approach will pay dividends
IT CAN be tempting to lash the bait in at this time of year. After all, the fish are feeding hard right now and anything that breaks the surface is going to be swarmed upon almost instantly and quickly hoovered up. While it may feel refreshing to regularly feed handfuls of pellets after months of being restricted to tapping in tiny food parcels via a pole cup, this approach can hit you hard in the wallet. When feeding in this fashion you can get through four or five pints a session with
no trouble at all. But Shannon Swallow has found a much cheaper bait solution that has the additional benefit of putting her among the biggest fish on offer. The Guru-backed angler tips no more than a pint of pellets into a tub at the start of every session and her results certainly speak for themselves. “A pint sounds like a small quantity of bait at a time of year when the fish are at their hungriest but feed it wisely and you can trick some hefty carp into feeding,” she revealed.
The trickle effect
Whereas some anglers set up multiple rigs to cover different species, baits and areas of their swim, Shannon is a firm believer in putting her faith in one simple approach. Shoals that were tightly grouped in certain areas of the lake and refused to budge an inch have now dispersed and willingly head to wherever the bait goes in. As a result, Shannon concentrates her efforts on the short pole line. This involves fishing at the bottom of the nearside ledge or slope which is usually 6m out. “This area of the swim is deep enough to hold the fish all day long and it only requires a top kit and a couple of pole sections to target. “It is also a natural patrol route because a lot of the bait that is fed in the margins gets wafted down the slope or ledge and comes to rest here,” she added. The fact that there is every chance there will be carp in the swim from the beginning determines how Shannon introduces her loosefed particles. “The whole purpose of feeding is to draw fish into the peg,” she stated. “If there are already fish present, however, piling in a big bed of bait can actually make it tougher to get bites. This is because it reduces the chances of them finding your hookbait quickly. It can also get the fish over-excited which results in them dashing around the peg and giving you line bites,” she warned. Instead, Shannon feeds five, 6mm pellets and the odd grain of corn by hand at the start and repeats this every minute. The only time she breaks this pattern is when she is convinced the swim is devoid of any fish and she then adds a top up with her big pot. “This trickle effect makes a little noise that often stimulates a response and draws in more fish. Despite feeding regularly I am still only introducing around 350 pellets an hour so there is a good chance that any big carp that turn up will find my hookbait quickly.”
No-nonsense tackle
Scaling down your tackle may get you more bites but it’s slipping the net under the fish that ultimately counts. So if your kit is fined down too much, you’ll hook plenty of big carp but almost all of them will smash you to bits! Thankfully, when the fish are hungry and up for a feed they are more likely to throw caution to the wind which means you can get away with using tougher tackle, reckons Shannon. “I am confident of landing any fish I hook with my rigs and I’ve fished plenty of venues where a 20lb-plus carp could turn up at any point. “My elastic is a black Daiwa Hydrolastic and the mainline is 0.17mm Guru N-Gauge to a ready
tied 0.15mm hooklength with a size 14 Guru SLWG hook.” This set-up is ideal for big F1s and carp of all sizes and there’s no reason why it won’t also lead to quality skimmers, tench and barbel coming to the net too.
Decoy delights
Yew Lake at Cambridgeshire’s Decoy Lakes is full of double-figure carp and Shannon was determined to extract her fair share of them for the IYCF cameras. With a gentle ripple on the surface and plenty of signs that fish were cruising around, conditions looked perfect. The 0.6g Guru MW Wire Pinger float was gently lowered in with a banded 6mm hookbait before a pinch of bait was fed by hand over the top. That feeding regime was repeated 10 times in as many minutes before the float dipped and the elastic zipped out. A 4lb common was her reward and while she was pleased with the opening result, bigger fish were in her sights. But rather than panic and make rash changes, Shannon stuck to her guns. “It is all about building up the swim slowly. If there are smaller stamp fish there, you can guarantee the commotion they are causing will stir up interest from the doubles.” Several other small carp came to the net before her first double – a stunning common of around 12lb – was landed just past the first hour. Action was steady throughout and on the rare occasion of a brief lull, topping up with the pole cup quickly saw normal service resume. After five hours, Shannon had fed just under a pint of 6mm pellets and a pinch of corn – a pittance of bait when you consider she had caught five doubles plus 80lb of smaller mirrors, commons and F1s. “I have barely foul-hooked a fish today and that is because I have limited the amount of loosefeed. Carp will eat literally everything that goes in at this time of year and giving them too much can lead to an over-excited shoal that becomes increasingly difficult to catch. “Feed with a negative mindset and you’ll soon notice an upward trend in your catches,” concluded Shannon.